How Now Brown Trout

The next day after our long volcano trek John, Michelle, Henry and Axel went for a hike while Chris convinced me to head out on a guided fly fishing trip with him. We drove two hours south to the seven lakes region near a place called Panguipulli (pronounced pang-ee-poo-wee). I hope you laughed as much as us when you first said that name. 

We went out with this guy by the name of Jack Trout. I thought Chris was making a joke but apparently Trout really is his last name. 

 

We climbed in Jack's boat and headed down the river for our full day float. I had thrown no more than two casts when I hear Chris yell "I got one on!" So I pulled in my line and grabbed my camera. 

The Brown Trout was about 26" and around 9 pounds! He put up a pretty good fight and it was the biggest Brown Chris had ever caught. He was using his favorite 'big fish' fly - a purple woolly bugger. 

Now the only problem as Chris said that if you catch a fish on the first cast, it's bad luck. Well this was on his third cast a bit too early for his liking, but after all he said he can't complain being his biggest trout ever.

We floated down through the beautiful landscape not disturbed by a thing except for the tabanos - which are humongous Chilean flies. They love the summer weather - and three humans in a small boat in the middle of nowhere. We were the main attraction. See the one in this photo that resembles a bird in the distance? And in the photo above this one can you spot the two of them to the left and right of our guide?

About an hour and half later I hooked a rainbow trout which put up quite a fight. Granted I was also afraid he would snap the line so I let him take as much as he wanted to tire him out. I thought my arm was going to fall off but I landed it just in time. I was so excited! The biggest Rainbow Trout I have ever caught! 

We were setting records for ourselves with our first two catches. Here is my 20" Rainbow Trout - in castellano they call them Trucha Arcoiris. The colors were just beautiful.

I caught the "bow" (as the true fly fishermen say) on this polar fiber minnow fly. It was actually a saltwater fly that Chris tied but it proved to be rather popular in the agua dulce in northern Patagonia. 

It turned out to be an exceptionally hot day which made for a rather uneventful afternoon - the fish don't like it when it's too hot. We were continually switching flies and doing some wading out of the boat. I took a minor spill and almost filled up my waders while trying to swat at a tabano so I decided staying back on shore or in the boat was better for me.

We enjoyed a delicious lunch on the rivers edge complete with delicious Chilean wine and American yellow mustard. (Notice my wet sleeve - that was right after I took a dive)

You can see Chris' famed purple woolly bugger on his visor that he caught his brown on. 

 Chris was able to land a few more after lunch - I got a few hits but didn't net anything else. It was either the hot weather or the superstition of catching your biggest fish within the first few casts. Either way we still had a blast and both caught our biggest fish. 

 For not wetting a line for over a year I thought I did pretty well. I only hooked Chris three times while casting. Woops! Thankfully he's tough - no major injuries and he still loves me.  

   

We drove pack to Pucon happy with fish stories to tell.