Aconcagua Summit!

Congratulations to our buddy Bryan Mannlein on hitting the summit of Aconcagua today!

Argentina's Pata-variety

Note from Hilary: I figured since my fishing pal Chad is in so many of my Patagonia pics, he'd better pull his blog weight and write a post. So...here's his quick rundown of the past two days.

From Fishing Pal Chad:
Yesterday the alarm jarred me awake at 5am, stealing away my strange dream. I hit snooze twelve times and stumbled down the stairs for a great breakfast and another day in paradise-- Cholila Valley, Argentina.

If one had to sum up the waters here in a word (besides beautiful, fishy, perfect...) the word would be variety. Every river has a drastically different character and there is a lake around every bend. Throw in a spring creek or two also.

We kicked the day off yesterday hike-wading to a public spring creek near Murmullos Lodge. The fishing was tough, but unforgettable. Large brookies, browns and rainbows cruised a rod length away in gin-clear water, unimpressed with our efforts. We did manage to net a few, including the most beautiful 18" brookie I have ever seen.

After lunch, we trucked over to Nico's (our groovy Argentinian guide) private lake on Murmullos Lodge property. It was somewhat of an exploratory trip since it hadn't been fished in eight years. We decided collectively on the name Crapshoot Lake. It turns out Nico has a lake full of feisty rainbows with unlimited growth potential. Pretty cool.

Today consisted of a seven mile zodiak trip to the inlet of Cholila Lake. We cruised upstream on foot-to-spot sippers. The rainbows we found were tucked up under the banks under thick mats of Chihue Bamboo; safe as a baby in Jesus's arms, so I thought. Hilary managed to wiggle her way through a bunch of bamboo and hook a rainbow by flipping/dapping a beetle. We later landed another by setting up in a tree twelve feet above the river. Exciting stuff. Those pics from up in the tree are still in the camera at the bottom of all of our nasty gear, so Hil will post them tomorrow. You'll want to check back to see them because it's hard to believe the story without the proof. Oh, also, she will probably post that pic of me sleeping next to a cow pie.

More to come!
Pulling my blog weight, Fishing Pal Chad

Heaven in High Water

I'm told it was a colder-than-normal November here in Patagonia, southern Argentina, which slowed down the end of the spring run-off. And it's been warm and sunny for the past week, so the rivers have suddenly gone up quite a bit. They're pretty clear, but high. Since we're at the base of the mountains, we can actually see the run-off happening in the form of long, plunging waterfalls. The high water added a bit of a challenge, but wasn't at all discouraging. We had a wonderful day chuckin' new MFC streamer patterns like Weise's Love Bunny and Yost's Hot Ass Sculpin. I've never thrown streamers for eight hours non-stop before. Right now I am typing with my left hand only, because my entire right arm hates me. We caught some really nice big rainbows and browns, but we also missed a lot because we got too excited watching the beasts chase tail, and ended up yanking the bunnies way too early. Today we'll be fishing a more technical river, and our amazing Argentine guide and fishing program manager here at Murmullos Lodge, Nico, says we'll be changing flies a lot more often. "I am going to ask you to use your brains," he said. Okey doke then. Hilary