There are rivers in Patagonia nobody knows. No lodge, no brochure, no Instagram picture. Just you, cold water coming down from the Cordillera, wild trout almost nobody has ever bothered, and ten days without meeting a soul apart from a gaucho passing far off on his horse. Places where the vastness grabs you by the gut, and where everything that once pushed you to pick up a fly rod finally makes sense.
The bad day
In the north of Neuquén province, fishing tourism barely exists. Nothing like the lodges of the south. Here you feel tiny, and that is exactly what you came for.
That day with David, we got nothing. Ten hours on the water, two fish. Nymphs, dries, droppers, streamers: we tried it all. Nothing. Days like that happen, I know. But when you are the guide, your angler’s bad day is your own. You walk back to camp with that weight in your legs, telling yourself it is fishing, that nobody controls anything, without really believing it.
Around the fire, the others tell their fish. The best of their lives, for some. I am glad for them, sincerely. But the guilt toward David will not let go.
And then the fire does its work. The cordero turning over the embers, a glass of Malbec in hand, stories running one into the next. Those moments hold something close to magic, as if the flames put life back into everything else. We end up laughing. Tired, spirits mended, I crawl into my sleeping bag. Tomorrow is another day.
The next morning
Waking up in the middle of that country is like nothing else. The sun slowly bursting over the snowed summits of the Cordillera, the cold air that grabs you the moment you leave the sleeping bag, the silence. That Patagonian silence that exists nowhere else. You drink your coffee, you look at the river below, and without quite noticing, yesterday fades away.
It is one of the things I love most deeply about fly fishing. It forces you to be there, truly there. To watch, to feel, to read the water before you even pull out a rod. Bad days exist, they are part of the game. But a river at first light has a way of setting everything back to zero, as if it handed you a blank page.
Today I stay with David. We have a score to settle, and I know exactly where we are going.
The rematch
We head for a place I am particularly fond of. It is really more of a spring creek than a river in the strict sense. It rises from a small lake at the heart of a glacial valley, crystal clear and cold all year round, sliding from slow meanders to short pockets of white water under snowed peaks. A place few people know. A place worth the walk.
Don Humberto greets us as always, the emblematic gaucho of the area, his face carved by years of Patagonian sun and wind. He never misses a chance to come over with his wide smile and his stories. Some people belong to a place as much as the place belongs to them.
The sun is with us and, with a little luck, the unnameable has not shown its face yet. That is the name we give the wind here. Local belief says that if you name it three times, it appears. We do not talk about it.
I start showing David the first spots on the meanders. Crystal water, hard light, slow currents: nothing is easy here. You watch, you crouch, you stalk. A few rings open here and there on the surface. The trout are in.
After a few fruitless tries and several fly changes, a small brown CDC pattern, tied by a Breton friend, makes the difference. The first one is in the net. For all my years on these banks, I still marvel at these browns. Real little jewels.
David strings together some fine fish through the morning. And then there is that one: in a churning wave, two centimetres behind a rock, at the exact edge of a tangle of branches on the far side. I see her. David does not. I explain, he doubts. I beef up the tippet. The current is strong and the fish has real shoulders. It has to hold.
First cast: too far left. The trout does not flinch, but I am already shaking. Second cast: right down the feeding lane. She moves. She comes to look. “Stay calm,” I tell David. That sentence was meant for me as much as for him. My heart was pounding.
She follows the fly for a good metre. And refuses it.
We both fall apart. David turns around, eyes wide: “Damn. Beautiful fish.” I laugh without meaning it. I have him switch to what we call here una chancleta, the local nickname for big terrestrials of every kind.
“Schplof.” The chancleta slaps the current a good metre above the fish. There are moments when everything lines up: the right cast, an active fish downstream, that sixth sense fly fishers carry that tells you it is about to happen. The snout rises slowly, takes the enormous fly. Half a second. The line comes tight.
I scream.
David runs the fight like a master. The fish bolts under the branches, rides the current, drops downstream. The rod bends, tips over. Net in hand I move down the bank, terrified of ruining it all. She surges toward me, David turns her at the perfect moment. I stab the net in like a bear swiping a paw.
She is in.
No record. But her dress is extraordinary: a golden belly to shame the finest ceilings of the Vatican. The take, the fight, this setting… That is why we are here. That is why we come back.
The mark it leaves
Those rivers are on no fishing map. They have no famous name, no reputation to defend. They simply exist, cold, wild, indifferent to everything happening elsewhere. And that is exactly why we go back.
Patagonia is lived intensely and leaves a mark that does not fade. You never come home quite the same.
And if these rivers are calling you, everything starts on the fly fishing in Argentine Patagonia page, or with a message: write to me.
Baptiste Conquet
State-certified fly fishing guide and instructor. I guide in Aveyron and Lozère, and design fishing trips to Argentine Patagonia, Jurassic Lake and the golden dorado waters.
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