By Adrian Latimer

Valle del Carrileufu Lodge

Winter in the northern hemisphere - time to swap cold, sunless and short days for the endless summer of Patagonia, the flowers, the Andes, the guachos, beef, malbec and, of course, las truchas. Yes, you can flog all the way to the end of the world to grapple with the wind and some large sea-run browns, or fish the fabled trout streams further north, but for me, for the authentic experience with the least crowded waters and most spectacular scenery, you need to go to Chubut. I first did so in 1998.

Cholila: a small town known for its ‘world festival of asado (barbeque)’ and a pretty lake that gives birth to the scenically spectacular Rio Carrileufu which creates a necklace of famed rivers and lakes in the Alerces National Park and, last but not least, for two well-known stars of Hollywood, Newman and Redford, or Butch and Sundance. They really did have a ranch here which you can still see, and my guide’s grandfather was shot dead by fellow gun-toting outlaws Wilson and Evans. Chile is just over the hill. Welcome to the wild west, to Chubut, in deepest Argentine Patagonia.

I’d fished the Rio Rivadavia 20 years ago and had a great time on dries and small nymphs, and I still recall forcing myself to eat lunch whilst a phalanx of 3 and 4lb rainbows idled in the current literally two rod lengths’ away. Eventually I was allowed to down knife and fork and throw some nymphs, to pleasing effect.

But that was back then. In the interim the river has become the ‘must float’ destination featuring in endless books and magazines eulogies. The ‘most beautiful’ fishing in Argentina’, etc. The outfitters poured in, and its reputation became ‘very technical’, a polite way of saying over-fished. Have things improved after all the covid lockdowns?

At eight, the lake glistened in soft blue light, flat calm as we crunched over the gravel beach and launched the inflatable raft. A trout cruised past us, and we had the place to ourselves, the water looking viscous to the oars. The inflow to the river is like a deep canal through the forest, slow, weedy and obvious trout habitat, utterly peaceful with a dense background noise of birdsong echoing all around us. We pulled streamers on a sunk line through the weeds, hoping to break the silence, the creaking of rowlocks and the raucous buzz of avian life. We could see the odd dark shadow moving on the bottom. Solid shapes.

And that was to become the leitmotif of the day. On the bottom. Below the inflow of the main tributary, the Colehual, the river assumed its famed aspect – water of stunning clarity and a greeny-turquoise brilliance with endless golden riffles. But the fish were all glued to the bottom, and if not, would spook at the sight of the raft long before you could even think of a cast. Perhaps the end of January was just a bit too late in the season as the water dropped and warmed up.

In a deep hole Alun found a pod of 5 rainbows, 8 or 10 feet down. We anchored almost on top of them, spookily close to me, but I guess the vertical distance happily removed us from their vision. Was this the fabled ‘La Pecera’ (the Fish Tank)?

‘Let’s change rods. We need to get a small fly in front of them, and I mean in front.’

At a rod’s depth or more? He started to rig up. I winced but needs must. Not the sort of technical fishing I’d usually profess to, but how else to get a size 18 nymph down through a wall of moving water? Above it a large tungsten headed nymph, two split shot and a bubble, er, ‘indicator’. I’ve used the bubble before, but two split shot was a novelty.

A joy to cast, but luckily it was a short lob. Getting the flies down to the right depth, but not hooking the bottom, and engineering the perfect drift across the various currents was not easy, and watching the bubble dance in the flow became mesmerizing. And the fish simply refused to budge; they needed to be spoon fed. But if you kept the belief and persistence, and tightened the moment you imagined the ballerina up top to miss even a step, the improbable became reality. By the time we finished, the little hole was untenanted, an unusual experience on many fronts. In the afternoon we managed a good rainbow on a stonefly nymph and even some action on a dry (which I missed as I was too busy admiring the scenery). But a few trout in the 18-20’’ category is not a bad start in such surroundings.

Up early next morning, we inched around the cliff wall of Lago Verde throwing my favourite big dry so that it bounced off the rock and dropped into the water just like a fat bug falling off one of the conifers that somehow sprouted from barren, vertical stone. A place for a big brown, and that calls for only one fly. Fat Albert. Il Gordo Alberto. Brilliantly ugly.

But not today. As we headed towards the mouth of the Rio Arrayanes, we switched to a streamer, and a brown dogged it out on the bottom until the (barbless) hook fell out. Damn.

A grebe shared the lake with us, it’s plangent cry a suitable musical backdrop.

A suspension bridge hung in front, the Rio Arrayanes gliding towards the distant mountains, a condor circling on endless wings high, high above. Tourists watched us idly and took pictures, one dropping their camera into the river and desperately begging us to retrieve it. Too deep. The bridge leads to Lago Menendez where for the moment nobody fishes as you are not allowed to take a boat out of the lake. Up at the top of the lake you find the oldest pre-Christian alerce tree that my wife visited 20 years ago. Puts us firmly in our place. Yes, over 3,000 years old. A tree.

The outflow from Lago Menendez rushed in, and, like Rivadavia, there was a profusion of dead tree trunks littering every riffle, a nightmare for snagging sunk flies but creating inviting trout structure everywhere. But not a truchas in sight. We dried, nymphed and streamered until I found myself paying more attention to the scenery and wildlife than the supposed task in hand.

On a branch the competition gloated at us. Sharply crested, dressed in a dark blue dinner jacket with a rusty orange cummerbund, a minnow firmly grasped in its beak. The kingfishers usually chatter reproachfully if you get too close, but this one’s mouth was too full to remonstrate.

‘There’s a small stream that comes in soon, a good place.’

Uh huh? Really? The faith was tattered, but we put up Il Gordo. If anyone could do it…

Splat. A small clear patch in the weed, fresh water bubbling out of the bank. I told myself to pay attention, just in case, trying to summon up some interest.

A rainbow. 24 inches, what, five pounds plus, fat, ruby pink striped and airborne. Funny how one split second can change your whole comportment, your emotions, your contentment for the day.

For the last stretch we were joined by two float-tubers, and whether it was due to the late afternoon light and a slight drop in temperature, a few smaller fish began to follow, assault and even take a streamer, a sort of gratuitous consolation prize.

At the Valle de Carrileufu life is pleasantly relaxed, so instead of the habitual 08.00 breakfast, we dragged the poor staff up an hour early to get afloat hopefully before any crowds. In fact, the crowds were not really there, and the earlier mornings can still be crisply cold, and bugs (and fish?) still warmly wrapped up and asleep. But there is a calm in the which is delicious, as was breakfast.

I think the rooms were converted stables, very comfortably ensconced in wood and coziness, with a door split in two halves onto the verandah, its Adirondak-style chairs and views over the mountains. I could swing open the top half and, log-framed by the half door and the verandah roof I saw our friends the crazy-billed ibis ever probing around and the chimango hawks on every gatepost waiting for any breakfast titbits. In the background the post-dawn light threw orange reflections across the east-facing mountain summits like a warm glow, the eye being led to the Andes by a line of poplars.

Time to head down to the middle river and a serious float. At El Remanso the sun was already burning, not a breath from the Andes. Quail dashed in front of the car, with their Tintin-like quiffs. Carrileufu is a smaller river with the same crystal mountain water, (in Mapuche it is the ‘Green River’) but with good flow and some blissful foam lanes that allow more of a chance for a lengthy drift than on the slower, deeper rivers downstream. We searched with a dry-dropper under every willow, across every riffle, and down every feeding channel, but de nada.

The stream twisted again and gnawed away at a high mud bank, and we had some welcome assistance from the cattle who had visibly chewed all the grass, and probably dislodged a few hoppers at the time. Their mooing was a gentle accompaniment. We found one rainbow that was waiting for its breakfast, but otherwise it was a valley where the scenery and weather made you want to swap rod for camera in search of beauty. Peaks jutted up against a clear blue sky, an old man with three jagged teeth, flecked with snow and guarded by poplars like soldiers standing at attention.

Before lunch Alun spotted a good one parked deep in a riffle. Apparently, you need to look for a streak of grey amidst a million stones - bless guides’ eyesight. Even when I finally spotted it, the changing water surface would continually blur the picture, however hard I stared, and the fish would vanish. We tried a heavy nymph swung deep, and raised a kick of a fin, but no more. Back to ‘the rig’, but despite a series of pattern changes, no dice. Eventually I was getting hungry and asked if we couldn’t just throw something heavy on the sinking line. We tried the stonefly, but this time with white rubber legs that you could clearly see through the water. A couple of swings past did nothing, so I decided to dead drift it on top of its nose and then twitch. I guess it was a Pavlovian moment, but with legs tickling its nose, the fish snapped. At last.

Even in the shade, it was too hot. We removed waders, I stood in the water to cool off and Alun stripped down to his shorts and went for a swim. We’d have to wait a couple of hours for the temperature to moderate and, just maybe, the fish to wake up.

As the shadows began to angle, we floated a stretch full of willows, sliding an Adams and size 18 nymph right under them, a white parachute speck sailing through the dark and then shining when it emerged into sunlight. Time for the five weight and 5X. We saw a big rainbow patrolling literally six inches from the bank, but it refused to deviate, and then one stationed under a tree. We anchored and I cast again and again until the fly finally drifted under the branches, and it took. A few minutes later the dry fly simply sank into the darkness and a four- or five-pound rainbow reacted like a missile launch, throwing the hook as heartbeats mounted.

Keep the fly tight, tight into the bank – low sidecasts. One hanked up on a dead branch. I tugged gingerly and it fell into the river like a miniature pebble, inches from the bank. In an adrenalin-pumping second a deep shouldered brown flashed out in anger at this interruption to its siesta but did not take. Too small, it’s not going to come out for a tiny bug. Up went Alberto. Plop, twitch twitch. Surely now? I could see its house, a dark hollow in the tree trunk under the bank.

The willow-clad holes ran out, as did our time, the sun lowering, dazzling like a violent torchlight straight into our eyes, the mountains a serried ridge of dark silhouettes, the water painful to look at, a million reflective diamonds piercing through my sunglassed squint. Swarms of tiny flies rushed around, an inch above the water surface, occasionally coupling together in orgiastic balls. Above them pale mayfly spinners danced in the air, catching the sun with their wings, and everywhere miniscule rainbows the size of sardines rose in split-second splashes of silver. I admired their youthful greed and hoped that we might meet again a bit earlier in the season once they had reached more weighty maturity.

Brook Trout Base Camp

The tent camp. At night it was down to 4C/39F and I walked to my canvas room under the stars of the Southern Cross. In bed I could hear the gentle murmur of the Rio Corcovado hurrying over stones on its way through the Andes and Chile to the Pacific. At six thirty in the morning, I would hear the wood stoves in the individual bathroom tents being stoked to a sauna-like heat and a few minutes later the generator whirred into action and the lights flickered on, all solar powered. Almost sadly, there was also wifi. A short cast from my bed across the grass, white clover beds and wind-stunted, scrubby trees ran the river, and I wondered if the first wanderers from the lake had yet started their lustful journey downstream in search of a mate and spawning beds.

The next morning some cynical Andean God had sieved flour over the cordillera just to remind us of the season, so that the hill tops just above our heads were covered in yet more snow. A buzzard eagle attacked an ibis in flight and struggled to fly off with it hanging from its talons, a very large prey to carry on the wing.

We were aiming higher up into the system of lakes that gives BTBC its name. The most easterly and biggest is Engano, which feeds into Falso Engano which is joined by the outflow stream from the picture-postcard Lago Berta before emptying into Rio Tigre which like the Corcovado then starts its epic journey west.

Falso is the most remote. After forty-five minutes bumping our joints out of their sockets, the ‘road’ softened into a hardened dark mud track through a forest, veined with tree roots like an old man’s hand. We stopped in front of a ramshackled house and a road sign bearing the name of one of the poshest avenues in Buenos Aires, obviously a gaucho with a sense of humour. The washing blew dry on the line (before it froze). We transhipped all the fishing gear, motor, raft, oars, clothes and lunch onto a Polaris all-terrain vehicle which looked like some trendy off road buggy, and off we set.

The lake was small and hiding almost into Chile. Wherever we went on it you could pretty much hit the bottom with the oar, and it was littered with weed beds – perfect bug and trout habitat. As my guide Alun taught me, the brook trout takes were soft, often just a seeming tap-tap and difficult to differentiate from the slow tugs of a thousand weed stems. We did catch a few small fish, but it was a 250g sinking line and outlandish streamers punched time and again against the Antarctic wind. In more of a gesture than an expectation we did throw a big foam dry at the reeds and try to rustle up some interest, but it was of course an effort in futility. Apparently on Falso when it’s nice, the fish will jump out of the water and hit the fly on the way down as you bloop it across the surface like a bass popper.

But not today. We just needed to enjoy the excellent food and wine at dinner and pray for kinder weather, as tomorrow was D Day. Lago Engano, the trophy brook trout lake, a place that would make or break you as a brook trout fisher. As we bounced along that road again, yes there was even more snow, but there was not a leaf-flutter of wind and, believe it or not, a strange yellow thing was rising to the east. Unbelievably, I even peeled off a layer (though not for long).

We had never used a motor, but here we did, slicing a wake through the glassy calm of the lake as we headed for the west, bottom end where there was a narrow deep channel that eventually became the outflow stream to Falso. In it, I was assured, lurked those trophies. It seemed, frankly, a bit unlikely, but when we cut the engine and glided to a gentle stop, I peered into the green waters and flung out a deep streamer. Int the far distance you could just make out the bowl of Falso glimmering in the embrace of the mountains.

‘These are big old brook trout, fat and lazy. They do not move much and sit on the bottom. You have to get down to them.’

Okay, let it sink, and sink. Hooking weed, catching the bottom? Good. We crept around on tentative oar strokes, hardly daring to disturb the surface, easing the boat through the water in search of the channel.

‘There. There! See it? Wooo, that’s a big one.’

What is? Yes, there was a large dark patch of weed on the bottom there, clearly visible in maybe eight feet of water. The bed looked sandy. And yes, there was another clump of weed, about, what, two feet long.

Twenty-four inches? With a thick front tapering to a narrower tail? Interestingly shaped weed… Slowly it dawned on me that right under the boat was a four or five pound fish, and then, like a darkened blur across the flats I saw another one. We had found the channel, and the fish. Twenty yards away there was no gentle tapping, but a hefty heave and a five-pounder dragged me into reality. Once we’d done the photo shoot, the adrenalin began to surge, and a sort of frantic panic took over.

‘There’s one. Oh, and another. God, look at that one!’

I couldn’t just cast as far as I could, wait ten seconds and start a slow retrieve. Not with all these monsters right underneath us.

Ever tried jigging a weighted Christmas tree decoration of a fly in front of a large trout’s nose? You watch it flutter and drift down, the tinsel flashing, the articulated tail wiggling until it hits bottom. Then you give a little tug, tug and wait for a reaction.

It was on the one hand tremendously exciting and on the other felt a bit like dabbling in a stew pond, a sort of exaggerated aquarium. Two big brutes took, but my eye to hand co-ordination at that depth was all wrong, and after a few twists and turns, all watched nervously, they came free and slowly sank back to their bizarre immobility on the bottom.

We went back to more proper fishing, throwing long casts towards the reeds and trying to bump the fly back along the bottom of the infant stream bed. Two more big fish joined the photo gallery and there was a slight feeling of the unreal. A couple of boats joined us (the lakes are public if there is road access) and we left for a bit more peace and ‘the eye’, a small round hole with a dark green weedbed of an iris. It seemed to be a spring, was shallower, only a few feet in diameter and almost turquoise clear. It also had three immovable logs in situ.

We spent a long time with a floating line and long leader trying to hang a fly in front of the fish, indeed at one stage I think I bumped the fly over a fish’s back, but no reaction. Alun commented that there is some parasite or disease here that is affecting the bigger, older fish and leaving them blind in at least one eye.

Rubber legs. You could see them twitching quite clearly as I tried to manoeuvre the fly right in front of a four pounder that seemed asleep. I let it nestle into the weed a sniff away from the trout’s nose and gave a tug. There was a puff, the fish ignored the fly completely, but could be seen chewing, its white inner jaw shining through the pellucid water. Had the fly stirred up some scud? The fish continued to chomp, and we rapidly switched to a scud and nymph, much harder to see, but closer to the hatch.

Eventually we got the fly in the right place, but Alun thought the fish was blind in one eye. Once dropped in front of the good eye, the fish turned on the fly and ate it.

In the afternoon we drifted along the east end of the lake and found a totally different environment – waves crashing onto the shore, churning water and presumably food, and a series of beautiful firm, bright fish around the two-pound mark that fought much harder. A few olives came off and fish rose, and to my slight embarrassment I flung a large muddler at one and discovered that a fish will rise to a ‘dry fly’ on a 250g sinking line. I wish I had put down the streamer rod and fished the skated dry as I am sure we’d have aroused a gymnastic response.

The sun was out, throwing lovely shadows across the lake. As I looked back to Chile, a blue boat was drifting on a sea of glass. Behind it a first layer of hills rolled in a semi-circle, and behind the Andes rose in all their majesty, the light filtered through layers of cloud and shimmered across the surface of the lake in flecks of silver-white. I took off a layer again and Alun reminded me that we had to get to home for dinner and time had run out.

One last cast. The line landed with a slight splash, cutting quickly into the clear water a couple of yards from the bank. I let it merge into the depths, but not for too long. A caddis skittered across the surface like a kid running and kicking puddles, reminding me that I should have fished a proper dry. For the last time I stripped the line back slowly, raising the rod as it approached the boat to squeeze every inch out of the retrieve.

The line and my arm ran out. Done. The heavy streamer hung in the surface as I began to reel in.

Behind the fly I saw a camouflaged green back sliding just under the surface, its dorsal just about out like a submarine periscope. When the fly stopped moving, the fish must have refocussed and seen the boat.

It turned and in a flash of pinky-orange dived back into the unknown.

I felt a pale sun warming my cheeks.

El Encuentro Lodge

El Encuentro. The Meeting Place. I’ve been here many years and made lifelong friends. It is the most authentic lodge, family run (the boss now, Benjamin, used to be my trainee guide), small, intimate, and truly local – the guides, the helpers, the wine and food (much of it from the impressive kitchen garden). It’s situated in a historic valley (where they voted to be Argentine not Chilean) of truly spectacular beauty, From your bedroom you look over a broad turquoise river to the National Park (further south from Carrileufu) and 7000 feet of The Throne in the Clouds. And if you want to pop over to Chile, it’s just downriver.

My wife Kathy hadn’t been in too long, so she joined me though she doesn’t fish, but she was busy with birdwatching (with another member of the Beale family), a trip to the local museum, and a couple of wineries (Casa Yague is the second most southerly vineyard in the world, is almost opposite the lodge with glorious views to the Andes and pretty decent wine, and I speak as a wine snob who’s lived in France for 30 years). She also went for a short trek into the Park, simply an abundance of Nature and scenery to swamp your social media accounts. Others went on horseback. Above them, the odd puma roams in the mountain forests.

I could write pages on days spent floating the various beats of the Rio Futaleufu - the Rio Grande that curves down under your bedroom, or throwing hoppers in the Rio Corrintos, a smaller freestone river in an idyllic environment. Or, the most adrenalin-pumping of all, hunting the monster browns in the small lagunas in the Park, browns that will literally tow your raft and then break brand new 1X leader as if it was gossamer spider’s web; fish that, just occasionally, you can sight fish on dries. But that’s for another time, and I suspect your patience is running out and you were not expecting endless pages. Go see it for yourself, I cannot hope to do justice in words.

So let me finish with a day on Nant y Fall, a pretty tourist waterfall site and a creek that flows out of Lago Rosario perched up on a high plateau surrounded by mountains. Your private Andean amphitheatre. As company you might have flamingos and condors, and, if conditions are good, a very nice size of rainbows that are happy to rise.

It was just a blissful morning, but I soon remembered the local challenges of the foliage. The grass cuts your fingers like steel wire and the delicate white flowers that make the riverbanks so pretty (and hide the holes that wait to twist your ankle) grab your fly line as you strip it in, and then you have to dismember the flower heads piece by piece, floret by floret. How something that looks so fragile can be so strong, who knows.

The stream is muddy and slow, hiding its treasure well, so that you could think it uninspiring. Further upstream it narrows, speeds up and the riverbed hardens into stones, a more encouraging prospect, though still full of weed. But the weed, as always, provides the hidey holes for the big rainbows and home to all the bugs they like to eat. And in between, in those deep, dark looking spaces, impenetrable to the eye, lie the fish. You need to be ready. Get lazy, or lose the belief, and one of those large visitors from the lake will make you rue your lack of faith.

But the morning was slow. I spotted one interesting hole tucked into the far bank, got the Irresistible into the right place and a large rainbow suddenly appeared and ate it. I’d done all the hard part – guessed the lie, managed to cast the fly right in there but then as too often didn’t really believe in my own conclusions, was slow on the strike and missed the fish. And they won’t come again, not here. My conscience gnawed at my own stupidity.

It was only when the ladies joined us for lunch (after birdwatching and a trek to the falls), that the big rainbows, very politely, decided to put in an appearance. Good timing. The river, previously empty and quiet, seemed to come alive as if someone had delivered an electric shock. A cast into a clear strip that looked rather shallow and weed infested had a twenty-inch rainbow charge out from under the bank and hit the dry fly with such greed that it kindly hooked itself.

Lunch was a very pleasant affair, good food, nice wine, great company, laughter and that incredible foreground, mountains basking in the sun. Afterwards, the river and its denizens added their contribution to our glowing bonhomie.

This is spring creek/chalkstream fishing but in a grander and more savage environment, and on an altogether different scale, massive raptors overhead, some of the world’s more dramatic peaks in front. Though the riverbed is muddier and the deeper water cloudy, it’s the same paradigm, a mixture of sight fishing and blind casting to where you think the big fish should be, in the open spaces between the weed beds where the current channels the food lane and, best of all, in those inviting dark channels on the far side between the weeds and the bank where few dare to cast. Shade, depth and flow, the real estate mantra for a wary, hungry fish. Naturally, the weed, the calafate bush waving its thorny embrace at you, the impenetrable weeds under your feet and that gentle zephyr of a Patagonian breeze do their best to conspire against you, but that’s the whole fun of it. And then you need to decide on the length and thickness of the leader, mindful of the luxuriance of the weed and the fact that these feisty fish can weigh in at three to five pounds. Better not to leave your broken leader flapping hopelessly in the wind. The endless enigma, the joyous challenge of the creek.

I spotted a deep bend under my bank where the river suddenly dog-legged to the right. Surely a likely hideout? By now the land had warmed up and sucked in the perennial wind from the Andes, straight across the river from my right, into my bank which was perfectly protected by one solitary bush, a calafate in all its prickliness. A thousand thorns. But there had to be a big fish in there?

The first cast was pathetically wimpy and landed midstream on top of the weed. Okay wind, let’s aim just a little bit more left. I fell straight into the trap. The wind doubtless laughed, blew me a friendly kiss and the fly straight into the sharp thicket. I am sure my Irresistible dived deep into the branches and then wound itself around them multiple times.

Alun stepped forward to risk his fingers and then stopped dead.

‘Ooh. Wait, Break off the fly, we can look for it later, look.’

I stepped forward and looked. On the bottom, just about illuminated by the piercing light, an elongated shadow.

Remade leader, new fly, heart beating just a tad faster now. First cast, again, too cautious. Second one better, but still a good yard off target.

The fish, from all its depth, saw my inaccurate cast and went at it as if it was manna from heaven.

I was mentally thinking that was a pretty useless cast and planning how to combat the wind and do better in a few seconds.

Too late, too late all round. Yet again.

But the fish was untouched, at least we thought so. And still on station, tummy doubtless rumbling. Weird that your lunchtime delivery should suddenly fly off just as you opened your mouth.

A second chance? Why not? New fly, new hope. For once, not a hopper, nor Alberto, today the fish wanted proper ephemeroptera and we were delightfully purist. A delicate cast and a dead drift, no twitching this time.

Tightish loop and the fly found the runway gently. Nice.

And then a carbon copy, an exact repeat, a perfect replica. How, I do not know. And three times lucky really is not going to happen. Dream on.

We left, though I mentally noted down the spot, perhaps spiteful thoughts of revenge could soften my self-recrimination?

Without a cloud, the sun was a white headlight piercing the brilliance of the sky. You had to squint at the stark relief of the cordillera as the sun moved behind it, the snow dazzling as much as the river sparkled in the slanting light of the late afternoon. My cheeks felt warm as we squelched across a muddy side stream looking for the spot where the cattle crossed, an old gaucho tip to save you from sinking knee deep into the foul-smelling goo. On our way back, the clock sadly ticking towards dinner, the stream meandered across the plateau as we searched for that sharp right-angled bend where we hoped our eager trout still resided. Third time lucky? An immodest hope.

There aren’t many ninety-degree turns in a stream, so it was easy to find. The sun was dropping, but still hot, and I kept stopping to retake the same photograph, the beauty was addictive.

Still there. Unbelievable. How much luck can you have in an afternoon?

The cast wasn’t great, but sort of landed on the edge of the zone and this time I was razor alert. The perfect end to a perfect day, or almost.

Adrian Latimer, Paris, August 2024.

Author of “Fly Fishing in Argentine Patagonia” republished in 2023

Available from The Medlar Press