Patagonia, Chile

Our time in Patagonia, Chile was amazing but the rain held us back quite a bit, even though this was a set back, we still had tons of fun and did a lot of cool things.

Once we arrived to Patagonia by plane, we had to take three ferries and drive about two hours to finaly arrive to our destination on lake Yelcho. It was pretty desolate and the closest town was a fourty five minute drive. The place we where we stayed was a cabin that was part of a lodge and it was super nice. Lake Yelcho held some really big fish including big trout and huge salmon so we were determined to catch one of these. On the first day, we fished all day because we had nothing better to do and our cabin was lake front. It was a nice sunny day but we did not land any fish and the second day was similar but a little rainy and nothing that day as well.

The next day we had to change our hotel to a different one, and the new place was also a cabin. We decided to go on a short walk to see a special species of trees called Alerce, which is a type of Cypress only found in the Chilean and Argentinian Andes. These trees can live to be as 3000 years. While on our walk, we found a large pool of water connected to a river and it was filled with about six inch trout. Once we finished the walk we went back to the car and grabbed the fly rod and my mini flys to try and catch these little guys. We casted a dry fly up stream and let it drift down into the zone of where the trouts were and they loved it. Their mouths were so small that it was hard to hook them but even still we landed three small trout, the biggest one being only six inches. We stayed at the new place for two days and fished at a big river next to us but we had no luck.

The next couple of days, we returned to our previous lodge and we hired a guide to go out on a boat to try and catch salmon and trout. We left for our fishing trip around 3:30pm and we started by trolling fish six inch minnows and I got one bite but no fish. We moved spots, my brother and I used fly rods to troll and my dad used a spinning rod and a Dimond Kastmaster jig and after only a few minutes of trolling my dad hooked up to a salmon. We landed it and it was about 13 inches and 2 pounds. Next was me, and I hooked up to a rainbow trout and it was a tank, it was a seven minute fight and it just went back and fourth every time it got close to the boat. We eventually landed it and it was 19 inches and around 4 pounds so a big trout. We had plans to go again the next day but it rained for about 36 hours non stop so that was not an option.

On our last day in Patagonia, we had about two hours of sleep before we had to go on a long trip back to Santiago. The fishing was great and the nature was very nice and remote, I just wished he hadn't rained to much so we could do more fishing.