Last year with the pandemic we have decided as Pointer Outfitters to expand our horizons,  and one of the things we evaluated and made the decision to go, was Southern Bariloche area, what it means Parque Nacional Los Alerces and all the scale and regions for Fly Fishing, so with my brother Juan we did a trip to Carrileufu River Lodge and we believe is an amazing place for most of our guest to enjoy Trout Fly Fishing. 

The Carrileufu River Lodge place is located about 200 km (160 miles) from Bariloche, where the airport to connect to this lodge is, or it could be even through the scale, that could be another opportunity to land in the area, that's going to be about 70 miles to get to the lodge.

This lodge is pretty amazing, it has been build 80 years ago and his owner, the guy in charge, Pancho Pancer has been in the business for a long time, he has been a guide for many years, since he was 18 years old he was involved in the Fly Fishing industry guiding and working in different lodges. 

Pancho had the opportunity to start by his own thanks to his friend, Juanito he called him, but his name is John, he’s from the USA, he was the one helping him and supporting him to start Carrileufu River Lodge. This place ended up being amazing, the view and the surrounding from the lodge its outstanding. From the main room and from the living room you can see the Andes of Argentina, and the peaks are still snowy.  Also you can see the forest on the first area of mountains. It's such an amazing place and we have the luck to have good weather, temperatures around 20 degrees and this area there is also large farms that produce wood and there are also some beautiful houses from people that came to spend the summer there.

The options for Fly Fishing when you are here are pretty big; you got access to Carrileufu River Lodge especially, they got it divided in three different areas where you can fly fishing everyday, then you got access to fish the Cholila Lake which is very amazing and also you can fish the Tigre River, another river behind the Cholila Lake. 

Also they got an option in Los Alerces National Park to access fish in the Rivadavia Lake and the Rivadavia River, there are also some strings in the Rivadavia river that are very beautiful to do some Fly Fishing. 

From here they can also take you to the Futaleufu River, to the Arrayanes and Arroyo Verde River. That's pretty much the area in the parks. They can also take you to the Chubut River and do a floating of three days in the river which is an amazing and completely different experience because you are getting into the flats of Patagonia and that river goes through the flatlands of patagonia your not anymore in the big island of gigantes. So they got pretty much amazing water to spend one or two weeks in this lodge.

We arrive from Bariloche one evening and Pancho was there for welcome us with a drink, some of his guides, Javier and Negro Segovia, who he is his head guide, were also there at the lodge with a few friends from Argentina that also Fly Fish. 

 After a beautiful welcome, we had a great dinner at the lodge. We had the chance to rest and be ready for the first day of Fly Fishing at Carrileufu River Lodge.

Our first experience at the Carrileufu River was in the second part, or the middle part of the river. It's very easy to go, we go by pickup truck with a boat and it’s a 10, no more than 15 minutes drive, and it's probably the best location from the lodge because also the way back was another 10-15 minutes. We spend all day long in the water with Negro Segovia, who was our guides that day. The first thing that was very impressive and I remembered this from my trips before, was the clear water at this river, it's probably one of the clearest rivers we can talk about in Patagonia, is such a beautiful river, it's not that wide and big, it's not a river for wading, it's mostly a river floating and Fly Fishing from the boat. 

The action at the beginning of the morning was kind of slow, because the weather was kind of cold in the morning and we had to be patient at the beginning but we were able to see the fish, that was pretty amazing. 

The first part of the morning we were on the boat just chilling with the sun over our heads and around 10 in the morning fish started moving and started going up to the flies, we started with some dry flies and worked on them,  but fishes ignored it, a very few of them were going up. 

It was a matter of time, when the place got warm, the action started, what we can say is that the fish were not going crazy to the flies, or desperate like there was nothing else in the world to eat, they were going very slowly, smoothly up, some of them if they feel they were losing the food they would become aggressive and trying to eat it, and those were the ones we hooked, but the one that had the times to go and see what was that food on the water they were refusing the flies so we have some dry flies that been refused.

Before lunch we decided to also try with some Nyphs and like Negro told us, the Nymphs were much more effective but we decided to try with dry flies in the beginning. Once we get into the Nymphs, fishes started to come up, they were getting more to the Nymphs than the dry fly on the top and we have more than enough fish in the morning to have an amazing time. They were mostly Rainbow Trout, probably around 16 18, the most beautiful one was around 20 inches but were very nice fish and the conditions to Fly Fish were so nice with those fish, viewing those fish that we can say that experience was top, we highly recommend it. 

We had a nice camp at the side of the river for lunch, like most of their outfitters do, with some drinks, chilling out on the shade of a tree and we had some appetizers, typically you know cheese, olives and salami from Argentina with some beer, maybe a glass of wine and then we tried some meat with salad. That was pretty amazing.

We had time for a nap and then we started to get back in business to get back in busines. We continued fishing, Juan got some fish too and we did mostly dry flies with a Nymph, then about 5:00pm we tried with some Leech and it was a very good answer for getting trout. There was an area on a big loop in the river where Leech was doing disasters. We think we got five fish in that area in about an hour. It was pretty amazing we didn't move much on the river, It was not like running trying to cover water, it was more like very slow choosing our places, taking time and when you realize you probably did 5 km of river Fly Fishing.

For this game we used only number #5 fly rods and is what we recommend bout it would be also possible to take maybe a number #4 or even a #3 if somebody is really good Fly Fishing with small rods. The morning is probably the best time to use smaller rods because there is no wind but once we get into we wind about 2pm things will change and the number five rod was perfect for that time so if you're thinking about what's the recommended rod, bring your number #5  that will be exactly what you need. Probably 90% or in my case 100% you're going to use floating lines, leaders should go to three to four eggs in some cases if you want to go thinner and you want to try like a little bit more aggressive and trying to use some #5 eggs, you can do it but guides will recommend you #4 eggs. You're going to occasionally use the wader at Carrileufu and boots or you can also stay dry on the boat with some comfortable pants, those that get dry very quick, be sure you got some block, repellent was not needed but it would be good to have it just in case.

We would love to get back to that river again but in our menus for Fishing on the next days there are few surprises and we wanna see different waters. We are sure we are going to come back to the Carrileufu River, we loved the place. The scenario it's amazing and we know some of our friends will be very happy to come fishing with us. 

We love to know that we have more options to fly fishing here in Patagonia. The people that run the lodge are amazing. We should talk about Rodrigo, the chef. He has surprises with some beautiful provoleta, surprises under the arm. He also prepares amazing meat for us, he prepares the first night with pork but what we got more surprised is that he prepared us a roquefort’s ice cream with higos. It was probably the most amazing thing we tried while we were here.

The flies we will be using in this river we got three different types of main flies; 

Hooks #16 #19 mostly.

May Flies Bighead #16

- Tight Lines, Pablo Aguiló.