Betty and Steve MacKenzie had a tremendous trip to Pategonia to enjoy fly fishing for browns and brookies. Steve and Betty sent me this pictures of their fabulous trip!
In February 2025 we fished the spring fed creeks of southern Pategonia. The trip started with a flight to Atlanta and then an overnight flight to Buenos Aires. Due to arrival times most anglers overnight in BA before catching a flight out to the popular fishing destinations. This trip we traveled to the lakeside town of El Calafate where a representative of Three Amigos Fishing drove us for just over an hour to the rustic sheep farming estancia of Rio Pelke. It is a small operation and currently only takes a maximum of six anglers at a time. We were there for their last week of fishing at Rio Pelke and had the place to ourselves.
In the afternoon one of the owners took us for a walk out behind the estancia to get a bit of fishing in before supper. We immediately started catching nice brown trout on Chernobyl hoppers while the owner sized up our casting and mobility abilities. He would advise our guide that we were good to go on any of their locations.
Our guide for the week was called Juanchi which is Spanish slang for Johnny. He had a wealth of international guiding experience and spoke perfect English. The lodge has many sections of different creeks to fish- (they call them beats) and they fish them on a rotating basis. This allows for minimum fishing pressure and catch and release is practiced.
Both Brown trout and Brook trout are found together throughout their beats. The streams were fairly small but held some dandy fish in the corners and bank channels.
Juanchi knew every spot that might hold fish and a slow and quiet approach was necessary to avoid spooking the fish. Sight fishing to holding fish was often the case and very exciting. It can be very windy on some days so precision casting with five wts was required to get our fly presentation just right. The countryside is one vast glacial moraine and the creeks have many twists and turns so there was always a nice corner just ahead. The only trees in the countryside are those planted around the estancias so we had no worries about our backcasts!! A black foam beetle size 8 and 10 was the fly that produced for the week. I did show the guide how to float a balanced ruby eye leech under an indicator into a deep hole and pulled out two fine browns.
Sheep ranching is the thing down there and the estancias are few and far apart. How dreary it must be during their winters there on those estancias in southern Patagonia. Winters kill a lot of sheep and also the Guanacos which are wild relatives of LLamas. There were intact skeletons all over the place as they don't have large predators to tear them apart. There were lots of rheas running around in groups and you had to be on your guard not to run the truck into these four foot tall ostrich like birds that streaked across the prairie.
The week flew by and we were treated to farm grown produce and fine Argentine cuisine and wine. This trip exceeded our expectations and we highly recommend it. A return trip is a definite possibility.
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