far out fishing
the travel blog for faroutfishingtrips.com (and other spiffy fishing stories)
Archive for April, 2008
April 19, 2008 at 4:04 pm · Filed under Argentina Fishing
ok, so the second half of my trip. i left Irigoyen and headed for Rio Grande where i had to meet up with some clients of mine that flew in. this was Bennett Dorrance and some friends, all super nice guys. we had originally booked Kau Tapen Lodge, but because of schedule conflicts, had to move to Toon Ken Lodge further up river. again, the fishing was a bit slow, the water was 1 degree celsius, and i was stuck guideless to fish the river. but this was a business trip for me to visit Toon Ken (haven’t been since they rebuilt the lodge a few years ago), and to visit some guide friends over at Kau Tapen.
there were some fish caught in the 3 days the group was there, but not many by either lodge in this particular week. some rain had brought some fresh fish into the lower river, but not too many up where we were. Bob Anderson got a 15 pounder and a 12 pounder, and the rest of the guys caught some smaller resident fish. i didn’t do so well. the photos are of the upper Rio Grande. there’s my friend Barrett Mattison with a 16 pound sea trout (hen) caught by an Argentine client. the sheep photo is on the Estancia San Julio on the way back to Toon Ken. i couldn’t decide which photo i liked best, so i put up this version. but CLICK HERE to see an alternate version. i like them both.
food and lodging were excellent at Toon Ken. the highlight of the trip for me was going with the group to Ushuaia (where Bennett had to park the plane), and eating centolla (king crab) and taking the flight back to Buenos Aires. Bennett was kind enough to invite me on his Dessault Falcon, an impressive private jet. never been on a private plane like this one. was the smoothest plane ride i’ve ever been on. was amazing how quickly and easily it climbed to 43,000 feet, our cruising altitude. photos © Joey Lin 2008, cheers!
April 14, 2008 at 6:41 pm · Filed under Argentina Fishing
so i just got back from Tierra del Fuego. for those of you who don’t know, it’s the island tip of South America. was headed down for a couple of reasons. one was to check out my friends’ new fishing operation for sea run brown trout on the Irigoyen.
this was a spectacular location, not the typical imagery of sea trout fishing on the Rio Grande. it’s a small river that meanders through forests. there are beavers and dead fall all over the river, which makes for quite an interesting setting to catch these monster fish (they were consistently catching them up to 24 pounds this past season). i got really lazy and didn’t take too many photos of the river itself.
the trip to get there was particularly brutal. we had a flight delay, then a 3.5 hour full flight to Ushuaia (southern most city in the world, jumping off point to Antarctica), then about a 5 hour car ride to the lodge on a private estancia in the middle of nowhere.
fishing was not so great since it was early April and the fish were just in the middle of the spawn. the water was also super cold, like 1 degree celsius during the day. i happened to be there for only a few days to check out the lodge/logistics and was with a group of 4 guests i didn’t know, so i really wasn’t left with much water to play in. anyway, here are a few photos from the area before i headed off to Rio Grande with a group of mine. more details on that later. photos © Joey Lin, 2008.
April 5, 2008 at 2:15 pm · Filed under Argentina Fishing
guys, this is a quick post. it’s been about 3 weeks since we went on our exploratory fishing trip. i shot this photo of my sandals in the river. these are made by Keen, and supposedly are made for water, but i use them here in the city in Buenos Aires and in the water when i wet-wade.
let me tell you, i love these sandals/shoes, but they absolutely suck on wet rock. wish they would make them with 5-10 sticky rubber or something. my last day of exploring, i took a nasty fall in the river and landed sideways, busting my knee and my ribs. 3 weeks later, my ribs still hurt when i cough or sneeze. it’s getting better, but i think i might have cracked something.
anyway, i like the photo, so i thought i’d share it. photo © Joey Lin 2008
April 2, 2008 at 6:01 pm · Filed under Argentina Fishing
ok, this isn’t really from this past week, more like 10 days ago. this is another creek that we had always known about, but never fished it. not much really to say about this creek, except that it had great pool-run structure. lots of healthy fat rainbows in the 18-20 inch range with a few 22 inchers. the bigger fish were holding in very shallow water (1-2 feet), and mixed in were some really big browns in the 3-5+ pound range. i went with Katy and Garrett. this was to be our last day of exploratory fishing before Garrett had to head back to Chile.
the big browns were particularly difficult, as almost nobody goes up here where we were fishing. this is truly New Zealand style fishing. a lot of the day was spent sight fishing to these fish. the browns would spook if you looked at them too long, even when we were fully hidden. big wild browns just have a 6th sense, that’s what makes fishing for them so much fun. for the most part of the day, we were fishing small to medium size dry flies (caddis or an attractor mayfly in about #14 average size). i had quite a bit of success trailing a #18-#20 pheasant tail nymph about 12 inches off of a small dry, some big fish were taking it, including this brown pictured here. photos © Joey Lin and Garrett Sullivan 2008.
