oh, my god.  3 months without a post.  that’s blog blasphemy.  excuses, excuses.  i’ve been wrapped up in personal stuff, not to mention lots of extraneous non-fishing travel,  being in the wrong place at the wrong time, freezing my butt off in the northern hemisphere during November.  then slowly dying in Buenos Aires with nothing going on but drinking and spending money.  need to get back outside.

well, needless to say, i’m back in Patagonia, now.  hosting a bunch of groups at our place with the Northern Patagonia Fishing Club!  holy crap, the weather is nice and the fishing fantastic (more on that later!).

went out with my good friend and guide Javier Herrera to explore a crazy little creek.  spent a few days backpacking to fishless water, but found a little gem of a creek.  caught a few 22-inch browns and spooked some even bigger.  here are some photos of the area and me with a chunky 18-incher.  lot of new zealand-style fishing here.  if you can stand long enough to cast, the horseflies were ridiculous.  you’d be lucky not to inhale one while breathing, they were so thick.  but isn’t there always some kind of catch with all good things???  (photos by Joey Lin and Javier Herrera, 2010).  cheers!

Dave and Emily were the perfect people to write a definitive article about dorado fishing.  they have been champions of warmwater and freshwater fly fishing for so many decades that they bring a complete and well-rounded perspective to publicizing and understanding this complex species.  dorado have so many characteristics of all the legitimate game fish species (such as tarpon, brown trout, atlantic salmon, permit, etc.), but are also uniquely their own.

the trip was quite successful, as both of them experienced the full gamut of the dorado experience…everything from sight fishing, seeing feeding frenzies, being skunked or frustrated by fish that wouldn’t eat, spooky fish, missed hook sets, broken leaders…you name it.  best of all, the last 2 days ended with lots of action and several big fish being caught.  pictured here is Dave’s 32+ pounder jumping, Dave with the same fish (with guide Alejandro Bianchetti) and Emily with a classic shot of her and a 26+ pounder in the Rio Itirizama.  that picture invokes a very “lost in time” feel, which quite accurately captures the essence of the fishing experience there.

more photos to come.  all photos © Joey Lin 2009.  cheers!

ok, i’m still here at Tsimane Lodge (Asunta), waiting for the arrival of some very special guests (more later).  here’s the second half of my first hosted trip in early September.  we took the small Cessna about 15 minutes to the next community of Oromomo where i met up with my good friend Ramiro Badessich who i hadn’t seen in a while, and guides Alejandro Bianchetti and Fabian Anastasio.  it had rained quite a bit the night before, so the Rio Pluma had muddied up considerably, and what was to be a 4-5 hour transfer (in low water), turned out to be but a mere 2 hours.

the next 3 days saw me and my group fishing the two forks that form the Rio Pluma (Pluma and Itirizama).  the lodge is great, an almost carbon copy of the lodge at Asunta, but with a few minor decorative differences.

the fishing was quite good despite the muddy water (which cleared by day 2), we saw lots of fish into the 30+ pound range, some were hooked and lost.  i followed some of the guys for a couple days, but had to stay back at the lodge as i got some kind of weird foot infection (from the water, presumably) that all the guides get, especially with waterlogged feet.  also, i stayed back to relax and catch up on some much needed work.

here are some photos from Pluma.  the top photo is Hayden Thompson (photo by Alejandro Bianchetti) from the last day with his 24 pound dorado.  a long time fly fisher in freshwater, this is Hayden’s biggest fish ever.  also some macaws, which are everywhere, but are hard to photograph unless you have your camera around your neck 24/7, which mine are too heavy to bother with.  the photo of the catfish is a “surubi”, a striped catfish that is not only bad-ass looking, but also very tasty (sorry for the tiny photo, i’ll put a bigger on up later).  the rest of the photos are pretty self explanatory.  the stars are from the lodge porch at night.  (photos © Joey Lin 2009, except the photo of Hayden and the photo of me, by Alejandro Bianchetti)

ok, i know this is late, this actually happened a couple of weeks ago.  i’m here for 5 weeks, hosting a couple groups and just doing some general hanging around.  i went from one camp to another, and back at the first one, took 2 days by wooden canoe going upstream.

Tsimane Lodge is broken up into 2 different camps just 15 miles apart as the crow flies (guests spend 3 days in each).  the first one is in Asunta on the upper Rio Secure.  the other is on the Rio Pluma.

this is from the last 2 days in Asunta from my first group.  Jim and Hayden stayed back at the lodge while Frank and Steve and i went up stream to check out the fishing up there as the fishing had been a little technical in the lower parts (with the guides, of course, we made camp).  we spent several hours pushing the boats thru the shallow rapids and got up to some gorgeous parts upriver.

a few dorado were caught in the 12-15 pound range, pretty decent dorado fishing.  however, moving up the river, we encountered lots of pacu.  here are some images of a few of the pacu that were caught on fly.  i’m trying to document the overall experience here, not just a bunch of people with big fish, although that’s important, but it isn’t just what this place is about.

here is also a set of images of one of the Tsimane “communarios” hunting sabalo with traditional bow and arrow.  sabalo are a carp-like fish that inhabit the rivers by the millions.  they are hunted for food by the Tsimanes as well as dorado and just about anything else.  it SUCKS to be a sabalo, i guess.  (photos © Joey Lin 2009), more to come soon…

guys,

i’m headed back to the Bolivian jungle for 5 weeks to host a couple groups of anglers in the new exciting destination, Tsimane Lodge.  if you want to book a trip during prime time for 2010, please EMAIL ME asap!!  (link is in the upper left corner)

here is part 3 of our scouting trip in June.  i’ve got lots of more interesting photos that i will share with you at a later date, but i know people were wanting to see some big fish, so here are a couple of them.  we caught countless fish in the 10-20 pound range, lots in the 20-30 pound range and a few in the 30+.   pictured here is Felipe Morales with a nice fish in the 34 pound range (??), Mike Nelson with an average fish (not his biggest), but you can see the beautiful clear small stream from which it came (and many much bigger)…also, here is a monster fish of mine that is pictured above and below in a different view.

this was my last fish of the trip, a view from above, courtesy of Mike Nelson.  this fish was very close to 40 pounds, but i will call it 38 just to be on the safe side.  look at the girth across his back (and his belly in the photo set above), i could barely lift him out of the water.  an absolute monster.

ok, i’m off to bed, going to Bolivia tomorrow.  cheers.  (photos ©  Joey Lin and Mike Nelson, 2009)

here are some photos from one of the ‘undiscovered’ rivers in the region.  a few of the Tsimane’s had been up this river before, but we think we were the first outsiders to fly fish this stream ever.  we spent only 2 nights here.  it was a bit difficult to get the canoes up the river as it was quite small in places, so we decided to leave our gear at a base camp and go up with lighter loads.

what we ended up seeing was quite amazing.  the river ran probably no more than about 80 cfs at the most, but the clear pools (3-5 feet in most places, but some very deep) were absolutely loaded with fish.  every curve in the river and every pool we entered contained many yatorana’s, a few schools of dorado in the 10-20+ pounds, schools of big pacu in the 10-20+ pound range, huge striped catfish (called surubi’s) in the 20-30 pound range, thousands of sabalos everywhere.

every beach had at least 1 if not 2 sets of jaguar prints, along with tarpir and jochi footprints.  none of us could believe what we were seeing, the place was absolutely full of wildlife, and totally virgin, not a single footprint or evidence of man.  Noel had commented that this was one of the best fishing experiences of his life.  we all imagined that it must have been exactly like this a thousand years ago.

we spent 2 days going up and down this river, exploring about 8 miles, sustaining ourselves with plenty of beef jerky that Mike Nelson brought from Montana.  there were several of us, too many really for this size and clarity of the water, so we took turns catching dorado and sight casting to large pacu.  pacu are a permit-like fish that eat fruit and are challenging to catch on a fly, but fight super hard when hooked and are absolutely delicious to eat.  both Felipe and Stahl got some pacu in the 14 pound range.  one of the biggest dorado landed was a 24 pounder by Rodrigo, but we had seen some fish well over 30 pounds in some of the deeper pools.  (photos © Joey Lin, 2009).  cheers.

here is part 1 of my 2-week trip in June to the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory.  this trip was first and foremost a scouting mission to see what these rivers fished like at that time of year and explore a couple “new” rivers .  we were also there to check on the progress of the construction of the new lodges for the new fishing program called Tsimane, named after the indigenous people who live in this area.

i was accompanied by my long-time friends Noel Pollak, Felipe Morales and new friend Rodrigo Salles of Untamed Angling who are deeply involved in the launching of this amazing new program.  Joining me was my good friend Stahl Urban from Austin, Texas and Mike Nelson of Bozeman, Montana who came to do some video work.

we hopped in a couple of Cessna planes that took us to the community of Asunta, a small village right in the heart of the Yungas, the forested eastern slope of the Andes.  the scenery was quite breathtaking on the approach to the small landing strip cut in the lush jungle.  upon arrival, we were immediately greeted by the friendly natives (referred to as Tsimane) who took us and all of our gear past their huts down to the river where we loaded up into dug-out canoes.  the Tsimanes have few visitors and are really isolated from more modern civilization, but were quite happy and curious to see us.

after a brief visit and dropping off of supplies we brought for them, we proceeded up the Rio Secure to the location of the first lodge with some hired hands (local men of the village) in their dug-out canoes.

the next couple of days found us dilly-dallying around as Noel, Felipe and Rodrigo were monitoring the construction.  we found time to venture upstream into the mountains and fished the clear waters of this freestone stream which normally hold huge quantities of dorados later in the year.  we caught a few dorado and saw a few in the 20 pound range, but we determined that the fish hadn’t arrived in full numbers from their seasonal migration upstream.  also, a recent cold front and rain had shut down the activity,  so we decided to head downstream and not waste any more time, as we had plenty of water to cover down below.

the rest of the journey had us covering many more miles and several other pieces of water.  the further we went, the more dorados (and bigger) we encountered.  here is Felipe with a fish about 28 pounds and Stahl with one around 15.  more to come later!!…(photos © Joey Lin, 2009)

hey, everyone…just got back to Buenos Aires.  i’ve spent the last month in Bolivia, fishing in the jungle and hanging out with great friends who are starting an amazing Dorado fishing operation there.  this is the coolest thing i’ve ever done in fishing in my life.  more details on the way as i gather my thoughts and edit my photos.  for now, here’s a photo of one of the many Dorados we caught.  countless fish in the 15-35+ pound range in virgin waters, ranging from  little clear mountain streams to meandering lowland waterways…more to come!!  (photo by Gerardo or Juan, no me acuerdo…)

guys, ok…internet connection here at Casa Blanca was down for the last couple of days, but here’s a quick update.  fishing is bad-ass…

SWINE FLU is a joke, the only pigs i’m seeing are the ones at the END OF OUR FISHING LINES!!!  i fished with Danny Canale yesterday with guide Eladio.  got 2 permit.  jumped a tarpon about 4 times and the hook popped out.  if i was more careful, i could have attempted a grand slam, but who gives a crap, right?  i’d rather just go after more permit or tarpon than comply with some arbitrary human construct or invention as a ‘grand slam’.  WTF is that anyway?  so we go and find some 6 ounce bonefish just to complete the ‘grand slam’??  but the point is that you COULD get one here if you really wanted to, cuz the fishing here rocks…

Danny’s permit was the second ‘lunch time’ permit caught this week, meaning it was caught wading while we were stopped and eating lunch.  today (day 4), John Howe got his first permit ever, wade fishing near Xhobon.  he’s not a permit virgin any more.  although there are much worse types of virgins to be than a permit virgin.  all in all, we have 9 permit landed for the week so far, which is pretty good considering not everyone is looking for them, even though they should.

tradition here at Casa Blanca and Playa Blanca says that those who catch their first permit on fly MUST eat a tequila-soaked scorpion.  i’ve caught many permit and eaten exactly 2 scorpions, none of which corresponded to the other, but hey…go with the flow.  pictured here is Chris Canale who was way over due with his scorpion dessert….ok, we look retarded here.  but we’re drunk and HAVING FUN, so cut us some slack.

ok, i’m getting the hell out of here and going to bed.  talk at you guys later.  oh, photos by Joey Lin, Danny Canale and JOE (i’ll get your last name here when i find out what it is).  laterz….