We got to this river that comes from creeks from the famous Cordillera de los Andes and runs through a valley where there is cattle from the Mapuche indians and sheep and horses.

The Lanin Volcano is an icon of our beloved Patagonia. This cone shaped volcano is located in the border of Argentina and Chile and shared by two national parks, one in each country. The views it offers while you are fishing are majestic. There are no reports of the last time it was active, but is estimated to have been 10,000 years ago! Shortly after our return from the fishing week, the climbing to the Lanin Volcano was closed for two days given some unusual techtonic movements. But nothing to worry about! The area is still waiting for you with the best fishing experience of North Patagonia.

In this valley there’s no big difference in the altitude so the creek is small, no bigger than a road, and even narrower in some parts. In this case, it has clear waters, some algae, rocks, different grass, in most of the riverbed, which makes the fishing very challenging because we knew that after getting the fish it was going to be difficult to hold it because the water was beautiful and clear but the ground on the bottom of the creek had a lot of vegetation. 

The river did not have many trees around, it was an open area, so it was kind of easy to fly cast. But also, we had the problem that the wind affects the sight seeing in the water because the breeze makes the water move making it more difficult to see the fish before casting. On the other hand, there are some short plants, probably knee-length that have the ability to catch your line and make it go round. It’s like having an enemy when you’re doing that beautiful cast, when you’re trying to get that fish your guide told you to catch. So is not difficult because you do not have tall trees behind, but the wind and the brush make things complicated sometimes. The other thing is the approach to the river. It has to be, again, from far away and some parts of the river are very muddy. When you’re wading, suddenly you get like half of a yard down in the water and  it’s complicated to move around.

The scenery of the river could not be better. It was just amazing. You can see it in the videos and photos. We were lucky enough to fish in this river for two days in a row with clear sunny days, with the exception of some hours when it got cloudy and windy and became very difficult to see the fish. We needed to do some line casting with different floating, dry flies for catching fish. We had to use flies a little bigger to make the fish come up.

Let me tell you the story about this day, one of the good news is that I got three amazing fish. In the first battle, the fish won. We put some flies close by it, from a difficult  angle, the fish came up, checked the fly and didn’t take it. He was like, “nah guys, I’m not interested in a fly like this.” So with Sanjua, after throwing like a dozen fly casts with different options, just decided to move away and go to the next spot because we could not make it in that one...

Do you want to know what happened when we changed spot? Stay tunned and read the second part of this report!

Pablo Aguilo

Owner

Pointer Outfitters