Villa Maria Lodge Fishing Report Rio Grande Tierra del Fuego

Fishing the Rio Grande in Tierra del Fuego is often an emotional rollercoaster – it can be exciting, frustrating, humbling, and immensely gratifying all at once. Break off a big fish or have a couple days of poor fishing and one begins to feel despondent and full of self-doubt. Just when things are beginning to look futile, in a blink of an eye a 20 pound sea trout appears out of nowhere and takes your fly on its 500th cast. All of a sudden adrenaline is pulsing through your veins and your heart is beating at 500bpm. You’re simultaneously thrilled yet horrified at the thought of losing what you have worked so hard and traveled so long for. At these moments one ceases to think, and becomes an animal of pure emotion. After several tense minutes, which seem like an eternity, the fish is finally in the net and ecstatic celebration, hugs and high-fives replace what just a few minutes ago was nothing but cold feet and the building mental toll of yet another fish-less cast. These are the impassioned moments that every fisherman seeks to experience at least once in their angling careers, and we go to great lengths to achieve it. Steelheaders, permit fisherman, or anyone who pursues difficult fish can relate well to this.

True to form, the Rio Grande provided these emotional angling moments in spades during my week-long stay at Villa Maria Lodge on the lower river. I was with a great group of guys – Calvin & Jim Fuller from Washington, Trent & Ken from Alaska, and Peter and John from the UK. I couldn’t have asked for a better bunch of chaps (to use Peter’s vocabulary).

Jim, a nuclear physicist and nuclear weapons security specialist, is also an avid fisherman and this was his first trip to Argentina. He probably had one of the most bittersweet weeks in Rio Grande history. Now, Jim is no slouch of a fisherman, and has more than his fair share of big fish under his belt. But everything is relative, and fishing for a week alongside his angling prodigy of a son, Calvin, makes even a seasoned veteran start to doubt himself. I have known and fished with Calvin since college, and he is definitely one of the best casters and fisherman I have had the privilege of knowing. Like the star of a sports team, he seems to make everyone around him fish better, and even the guides start to study what he’s doing to try to glean some sort of insight. He’s just a super fishy dude. Period.

But, if you have to fish with him for a week and everyday he’s hooking fish left and right, while you continually come up empty-handed using the exact same fly and line, it can become pretty frustrating. Such was the case with Jim. After nearly 6 days of fishing, he had lost several very large fish, landed only one decent one, and had a handful of smaller fish to hand. Several sessions were complete skunks. Calvin, meanwhile, was having very consistent action and already had a number big fish in the net. Granted, Jim was quite happy for his son’s success, but the week’s fishing was going to be a personal bust for him. He had entered the humbling and frustrating depths of the Rio Grande, and couldn’t get out.

Game 7, bottom of the 9th. Last day, last session. He needed to hit one out of the park in a big way, and we were all rooting for him. 3rd cast into the last pool of the evening, and BAM, his chartreuse leech gets slammed. It was obviously a nice fish, and Calvin, our guide Ale, and I, were all silently praying to the fish gods that it wouldn’t come unbuttoned. Not a word was uttered. The silence and tension were palpable, much like the crowd when a well-hit ball seems to hang in the air for an eternity before it finally and definitively sails over the fence. The fish was in the net! The crowd goes wild. And, in a bittersweet end to a roller coaster week, it turned out to be the biggest fish of the week. 32 x 23, and 24-25 pounds on the scale. An absolute pig of a brown trout, and one of the fattest and healthiest fish any of us had ever seen. One fish completely changed the entire trip, and made for an unforgettable week. This is the power of the Rio Grande, and why it continues to be one of the most coveted angling destinations in the world.

Ken, our comic relief from Alaska, had an almost identical experience, and also came through with a nice 21 pound chromer on the last day, which coincidentally was caught in the same pool where Jim got his several hours later. Talk about clutch players! Ken got his in the morning, however, so he didn’t have the same urgency as Jim and spent his last evening celebrating on the river by downing more than a few Quilmes. Here are a few pictures from the week: