After a sweet night at the Lodge we woke up and had breakfast with Juan, Roberto, and Marcelo the Monkey Whitman, who Juan baptized Biguá Withman, it would be Cormoran in English. 

Mr Biguá is such a good guide on Fly Fish that his nickname Monkey is not proper for him and we decided to swap his nickname to the Cormoran Withman.

Today after breakfast after having some coffee and some bread with butter and marmalade, around 8, 9:30, we get our things in the pick up truck, roads, waders, boots, we get our boat, and everything ready to go fishing.

In our calendar today was Lake 3 in the Pico Area, we got 5 different Lakes with one number each, that comes from the militaries that were in this area, instead of getting names to the lakes, they used numbers. There are some other smaller lakes in the area with names that had been named after the militaries, and they’re also good for fishing. For example Lake Leon. Regarding Rivers in this area we got the famous Rio Pico and Rio Las Pampas that is one of the tributaries of the Rio Pico and the Rio Neilsen who also is a tributary of the Rio Pico. The amazing thing about this is that all this waters goes to Chile and ends up in the Pacífic Ocean. Rico Pico is a town in Chubut that really shows how Patagonia is. Around 1000 people live there. In this fishing zone, you can forget about the world, because the basin of the river has one big river and five lakes, they are rich in salmon, brown trout and rainbow fish. Rio Pico and Rio Nilson are small and beautiful rivers with a very abundant population of fish and slow and fast currents. 

We drove like 30 minutes and the area was changing a lot. to very desertic, to hilly mountains, to forest, everything. We crossed by the entrance of Lake 1 and Lake 2 and we got into Lake 3. We drove by some nice cabins to spend the night and a nice access to drop the boat and be ready to fish. The good thing about Lake 3 is that you got that system of flat area and reeds, and in that area, where the reeds are, most o the fish get together, there's a system, let’s call it Resident Fish that are always in that area, but also when the wind blows in that direction, some of the fish that are on the lake come to that shallow waters and also stop fighting for the same food, they stop trying to get the food faster than the other ones. 

We did a 20 minutes drive with the motor of the boat to get to that area, and by the time we got there there was a guy from Argentina and there was two other boats, one in each area, one in the left and one in the right, very very far away so Mr Withman and Roberto decided that they were going to be close by the bellyboard guy and the other two guys. The day was beautiful, March seems to be amazing, the weather was such a cool thing you know, it was around 75ºF to 80ºF, no wind, a little breeze. Juan was just in front of us, making some photos and videos, meanwhile myself and Mr Withman started fishing together. The water was very calm. The guide said this time of the year the trout in that Lake hardly come up to a dry flie, so normally what they use is a dry fly as a dropper and they tied a Nymph. They got the Copper John, they used it in black and then they got a red Copper John, and the nymphs worked very very well. By the time we got there, the guy in the belly boat said, man this is tough, and that he got nothing yet. By that time, around 10:30 he said he had been in the water for like 2 hours and couldn’t get a thing. He was using some streamers, trying to get a fish from the boat. 

Once we get there we thought okay let’s see what happens and the guy is not telling us good news, but wewere still sitting there, and you know we put some flies in the water and five minutes later Juan goes very excited and says “There’s a fish there under the boat!” and it was the second fish we saw, we saw one before crossing and got away, but this one, we saw it and me and Withman we got the flies very close to the fish, and Juan said “No no, is moving over here!” so we moved it and then we saw the fish moving so we put the flie close by and one minute later we got a beautiful trout around 19 inches in our end of line. It was pretty amazing, surprising and fun. Ten minutes after we arrived we got a fish and the guy that was there said “no fish in here” so, that was kind of a surprise. 

We kept an eye in the other guys to see if they got any fish and nothing, and we said okay guys we got already one fish, we made some photos, we made some videos, we enjoyed it, you know we shake our hands, we made some jokes, we said the fish come to our fly as desperate as Paris gets to the cheese, that was the famous story in Patagonia. We keep fishing and then Marcelo and the Cormoran got another beautiful fish, he saw it jumping the water, get the line very quick, and put the fly no more than a yard away and a couple of seconds later, the flies started to sink, sink, sink, and when he got the rod up, we got another fish in the line, and this was 30 minutes later that one guy told us that the fishing was not good, it seems like our guides were doing a great job and they knew exactly what to do, what flies to use and how to use it. So we always say, why go fishing by yourself when you don’t know about the waters, when you can go with a good guy that has been fishing the area for a long time and knows exactly how to make it happen, that is very helpful, you know the knowledge it’s not something we get from one day to other so it’s always good to learn from our guides. 

But that was not enough, after a few minutes Pablo got another one, we were having fun you know, talking about where to do the good footages and suddenly Roberto said, i saw a fish there, so he gets his line and BOOM, he put his fly close by to the area were we saw the water kind of moving and it was amazing, one hour after being in that area, we got a double, the first double of this trip, and by that time we got Pablo and Roberto, having fun with to fishes at the end of the line. Mr Withman was crazy saying “We got two fish!” so we got one on the net and without getting the release, just a few seconds later we get to use the same net with one fish in to get the second fish inside the net. We moved a little close by to the reeds and we took a couple of photos with Roberto , we had fun and we said, this was more than we were expecting! 

We moved a little bit from the area, kept fishing, most of the fish were between 17 and to 20 inches, beautiful, we got one or two that were a little bit over 20 inches, all fresh fish, very active, very aggressive. 

Like I said, the weather was cool, the wind starter blowing a little bit. We got a few beers in the boat, we decided not to make a picnic on the shore, just got a sandwich on the boat so we could keep fishing and we had a long drive that evening, so we decided to keep fishing and make it all in one session. Around 3pm we decided we got enough, it was enough fish for everybody, Juan got fish too when we switched off the camera, so it was an exciting day.

Beautiful weather, a lot of jokes, nice company and a lot of experiences. 

You know we got I believe a one bag full of amazing memories right now about this area, and now we're both looking forward to come back, because now in our bucket list is the Rio Pico, the Rico Nilsen and the River Las Pampas, we both wanna go and learn that waters, fish that waters, and that’s why we already talked to the guides and we already have something in our calendar.

So I hope you enjoyed this short report about Lake 3 in the Rio Pico Area and we hope you will join us soon!

You should be the next one!