I had come to this part of the world with my 8-weight and a brand new 7 wt. Sage European Spey rod that I had not yet learned to cast. This is windy country. I was warned that winds could be around 50 miles per hour, constantly. I took it as hyperbole but had enough anxiety to invest in the spey just in case. As we unpacked, Bill and I talked ourselves into running across the pasture in front of the lodge to work out the kinks of traveling on a small feeder stream. My first fish on the 8-weight was a solid 9-inch brown.
Dinner that evening was a portent of what life would be like over the coming week. Estancia Despedida books 6 anglers at a time and they treat you as if you were actually someone important. Our host Ozzie made us feel right at home and the jokes flew back and forth between him and the three returning anglers. The food was beyond good. Grass fed beef and lamb prepared by a gourmet chef and served up with the best wine you’ll ever experience. Every evening found me doing the bobble head in one of the overstuffed den chairs as the regulars tied flies for the coming day and continued their jokes. It may have been the only trip like this I’ll ever get to experience but at that point life was good, better than I could have imagined.
Mornings found us at the table again. As we ate, the day’s scenario began to play out. Head out to the river, two anglers per guide, fish until lunch then come back to the lodge for a meal and much-needed siesta. Back out to the river for the afternoon session before returning for another world-class meal and more Malbec followed by me drooling as I again nod off in the big chair.
The first morning I fished with the 8-weight single hand rod. As the wind began to pick up from a breezy 25 knots to a sustained 45 (that’s 52 mph!), I’m confident our guide had already made the assumption that I didn’t know jack about flyfishing as I repeatedly hit myself in the back of my head with the fly and was genuinely ecstatic when it all came together in a nice 25 foot cast. Standing on the bank, 5 feet above the non-descript river speeding across the final few kilometers to the Atlantic Ocean, I would cast, drift, pick up, cast, drift, pick up. The oversized white Zonker swimming down and across relentlessly as I anticipated a strike. This isn’t a numbers game. An angler can land 4, 5 or 6 fish in a day or they may get skunked. The fishing gods were with me that morning as I suddenly felt a heavy “thump” on the line. Pure D dumb luck had placed me in the path of a migrating monster that saw my fly and attacked it. With much yelling (in north Georgia English) and much excited coaching (in Argentine Spanish), the great fish came to the net. The white bunny hair fly fell from his lip. Just in time, just in time.