The Stats:

• We caught and landed 1654 fish for 2132 fish hooked;
• Average fish per rod per day: 1,84
• Average weight: 7,3 pounds;
• Biggest fish for the season: 28 pounds in the Rio Grande and 22 pounds in the Menendez river;
• 105 fish over 15 pounds and 16 fish over 20 pounds.

Another season ends at Kau Tapen Lodge, the first lodge built on the Rio Grande River in 1984, soon celebrating its 30th anniversary. It’s been an interesting season with solid overall results in terms of catch, size, and quality of fish despite unusual weather conditions. True story, the fishing was tough at times. But it was also awesome: fresh fish hammering big streamers, great moments at the lodge and on the river, and good laughs with our guests.

The lodge was full almost all season, with sticks from the USA and UK, as well as Spain, New Zealand, Russia, France, Switzerland, South Africa, and more… Many in the mix included familiar faces and we of course saw plenty of new guests primed to discover the Rio Grande for the first time. The river has received a ton of publicity over the years and it’s impossible not to enjoy such an amazing place. Not only for its fishing but for the level of service, tasty cuisine, plush accommodations, and attentive staff.

For 2013 we welcomed our seasoned team of international guides, lead by Max Maemev from Russia, his 16th season; Matthew Solon from Ireland, his 3rd season; and myself for my 6th on the river and my 3rd at Kau Tapen Lodge as fishing manager. Our guide Pelle from Sweden, who’s guided with us for several seasons, went to Villa Maria Lodge this year. In his place we had Max Ramsden from the U.K. Local guides included Fabian, whose experience includes Villa Maria in 2009 and last year on the Rio Irigoyen. Charly, from northern Patagonia had been guiding in the Junin de los Andes area for more than 10 years. Together they formed a great team all season long, and it’s been a real pleasure working with then.

We arrived in late December to scout the river as we do before every season. We found relatively high water levels and ideal in-river temperatures. The river looked to be in perfect shape. We noticed some changes in the pools from last year, and we were excited to start the season right. As dictated by opening week conditions, we fished floating lines with fast sink-tips or full-sinking lines to go deep and cut the fast water. The key was to present the fly low and slow, close to the fish to activate a predatory response. Both techniques were effective depending on the pools, the fish, and water temperatures. Bugs, leeches, and Sunray Shadows were the “working flies.” Little by little water temperatures crept up, the river dropped, and we switched to lighter rigs, using floating lines with slow-sinking to intermediate sink-tips.

Weather was up and down and unstable throughout the season. From cold and high water, to low and warm water. Wind was also an important factor and we had many days where it blew in the wrong direction (upstream from the east), or no wind—which is always challenging. However, by the fourth week the river was “on fire” and all the pools boiled with fresh fish. Catch rates were fantastic—plenty of action and fun! Our group got an extraordinary number of fish per rod, per day and some good fish, too. All fresh! On our best day we landed 51 fish, including some sizeable sea trout. We also had other great days, when the river showed us its full potential. On January 23, for instance, we averaged 7.5 fish per rod with several weighing more than 16 pounds. Our biggest sea run of year was landed by guest Heinz M. from Switzerland. He hooked and landed a beautiful 28-pound buck on a small rubber-leg nymph. His partner also hooked to a nice 15 pounder in the Dead Guanaco pool.

In addition to good numbers of large fish, we witnessed an incredible number of small (1 to 4 pounder) fresh sea trout running the river almost all season long. It was annoying at times catching these “little guys” but it’s proof of the river’s excellent health. Eventually these juvenile sea runs will return as 15 to 20 pounders!

Throughout the season we were forced to regularly check water temperatures and adjust techniques accordingly for success. By adapting on a day-to-day basis we’ve provided our guests with interesting and enjoyable experiences. Top flies included Rio Grande classics, such as rubber leg nymphs and bugs, as well as small nymphs including Princes and Copper Johns. The green machine fished good in low, clear, and warm water. Leeches were great in low-light as usual, or when the water was cold or off-color. We also had success with the Sunray Shadow, a famous Atlantic salmon tube fly that produced aggressive takes in tough conditions.

The Menendez River (main tributary of the Rio Grande) fished great this season and more and more guests are interested in trying it. One of our best trout was caught there. A 22 pounder landed by Jacques from France and our guide Fabian. This amazing fish took a size 14 EMB on a full floating line and a short, fast sinking-tip. This tributary is a jewel and one of the most amazing sea trout rivers available in the area.

This year we welcomed several world-class photographers and filmmakers to the lodge. Tim Romano and Kirk Deeter from Field & Stream Magazine joined us. More from their trip, here: http://www.fieldandstream.com/articles/hunting/2013/04/hunting-fishing-tips-ultimate-cast-and-blast. Later we hosted Matt Harris, a professional photographer from London, who also writes for Trout and Salmon. You can find his amazing pictures, here: http://www.mattharrisflyfishing.com. At the end of the season, Nick Reygaert from New Zealand filmed at Kau Tapen. You can find his website and DVD work, here: http://gin-clear.com/.

In closing, I’d like to thank all our staff for their hard work this season—their comment cards have been full of praise. I would like also to thank our guests for joining us at Kau Tapen Lodge. We hope to see you again in 2014.

Have a great 2013 fishing season worldwide and tight lines!

Jean Baptiste Vidal
Kau Tapen Lodge Fishing manager

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Blue Skies, Moderate Winds and Lots and Lots of Bone Fish! April is one of the best months to fish South Andros, one of the World’s premier Bone Fish areas. April proved to be one of the best ever. Even though an occasional storm passed through South Andros in April, most of the days were bright skies, moderate wind and enumerable Bone Fish. Every one of our fishing options not only produced lots of fish, but there were many quality fish five to seven pounds caught. And even better, there were over twenty big fish, seven to ten-plus pounds landed. Deep Creek, just to the north of the lodge doesn’t get fished as often as some of our other locations, but there were still many stellar days on this water.

Little Creek is one of our main-stays just south of Bair’s Lodge. It is a large area that allows the boats to spread out and find lots of quality fish.

Grassy Creek is a little farther south down the island (about 30 minutes), but it is a great treat to fish up to the back of Grassy, cross the island middle, and then take a smooth ride back down Little Creek as you return to the lodge.

The South remains one of the most beautiful Bone Fishing areas on the planet with white-sand flats, ocean-side breezes and lots and lots of schools of fish.

The Middle Ground is where waters from Little Creek, Grassy Creek, Rock Creek, Krall Creek and others mix. This is a great hunting ground for big fish.

And the West maintains its fame for large Bone Fish. April was a heck of a good month to Bone Fish South Andros from Bair’s Lodge, and May is promising to be the same.

Tight Lines,

Ray and Ann Shewnack
Bair’s Lodge Managers

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The month of April brought us warmer temperatures by both land and water, which in turn brought increased sightings of bonefish and many other interesting marine species such as blue crabs, stingrays, parrot fish, baby tarpon, barracuda and sharks. We’ve seen an increase in schooling fish around the marls so we’ve officially hit spring and the marls have sprung to life with sightings of baby bonnet head sharks, baby cudas and other familiar nursery species.

Guests have enjoyed great days of bonefishing, actually hooking up with some previously tagged fish which tells us that our friends have stayed close to home over these past many months and continue to thrive here.

Lodge visitors have experienced some widely varying weather days this April, which is typically a very stable weather month for us here. Although weather did affect a few days of bonefishing here and there, overall, April yielded some of the best bonefishing yet this season, with many reports of 12+ hookups per day.

The energy is high around the marls and we are expecting May to bring back a normal island weather pattern of warm temps, fair skies and light winds, perfect conditions to take advantage of our abundant fishery, teeming with hungry new life!

Anne and Ken Perkinson
Abaco Lodge Managers

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Pira Lodge saw big swings during the 2013 dorado fishing season. Rain events flooded the marsh early and water levels remained up for much of the year. Fishing was challenging but it steadily improved, leading to an optimistic outlook for 2014. Just as an example, in 2003 the Ibera Marshland received similar amounts of precipitation. The rain events bolstered habitat, provided ideal spawning conditions, and enhanced the overall health of both fish populations and the marsh. The following season, in 2004, was our best in recent memory. During a “normal” year we anticipate good fishing by December. Rains typically decrease toward the end of spring, giving the marsh and river headwaters a chance to settle into optimal conditions. Dorado acclimate accordingly, becoming more concentrated, and sight-fishing opportunities come into view in the skinny-water environments. High water, on the other hand, means difficult fishing in the short-term—because dorado are spread thin throughout the system—but it’s certainly the ideal situation for the near future, when the water starts dropping.

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The Rio Grande fishery had its beginnings in the years 1935 to 1937—in the interest of Mr. Menendez and executed by John Goodall. Those hundreds of thousands of brown trout eggs, released in rivers such as the Candelaria, Herminita, Ona, and Menendez back in the 1900, have led to the best sea trout season we’ve seen in the last four years.

For the most part, fishing fluctuated through the summer. Some weeks were great, while others fished slow. From my point of view, climatic variations were the main factors influencing fish activity: from extremely warm temperatures in January to cool waters—approximately 6 degrees C—over the past two weeks.

Winds during the months of January and February varied from the prevailing westerly typical of southwest Patagonia. We encountered nine high water events that significantly altered fish activity, as well. And our guide team was forced to be on its toes, constantly experimenting with different fly patterns and techniques.

One need look no further than the numbers to see how good our season was. Average weekly weights for sea trout were higher—at 9 pounds—during 72 percent of season, reaching a maximum value of 11.24 lbs. We landed 1,124 sea trout and lost a total of 431 fish. Large sea trout totals were lower this summer than last summer, but we caught over 20 pounds every week. The great news this season is that Mark Riley entered Villa Maria’s Hall of Fame, with his beautiful female sea trout of 26.5 lbs.

I feel doubly blessed to have had the chance to finish the season with such a fantastic group of fellow guides and lodge staff. Anyone who spent time with these folks will attest to the professionalism and dedication exhibited by everyone at the lodge and on the river. Thank you all for your hard work!

Tight Lines !!
Gastón Guglielminetti
Fishing Manager – Villa María Lodge

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Fishing wise, the week was slowish despite a few fresh fish combined with sea runs already in the river preparing to spawn. We fished hard, using fast-sinking tips and full-sinking lines paired with both single- and two-handed rods.

Over the years our Argentinean friends have discovered the advantages of Spey rods on the Rio Grande—especially when the river is cold and the fish close to the bottom. Our guide team has taught them new casting techniques annually, and by now these guys are all experts. Spey rods make long casts, mending, and line control more efficient under an array of circumstances. We mostly fished leeches, as well as the Sunray Shadow. The best colors were chartreuse and orange.

Fishing consisted of deep, slow swings, getting into the prime zone when water temperatures drop below 6°C. Everyone got nice fish, including Mariano’s 20 pounder—the biggest fish of the week. Mariano enjoyed a lot of action on a chartreuse leech in the Polo Pool.

As usual everyone had a great time. They enjoyed the lodge and staff and for sure the company of our great team of guides. These guys deserve a round of applause for their hard work all season.

Now that the year is over, the Rio Grande’s incredible sea trout population will soon be spawning. This year we saw a significant number of smaller fresh fish in the river in addition to the big boys. It means that the fishery is healthy and it’s a good sign for the future.

I wish you great fishing for the remainder of 2013, which is just beginning in the northern hemisphere. And I hope to have most of you back next season to experience all the wonders of the Rio Grande and Kau Tapen Lodge.

Tight lines and best regards,

By Jean Baptiste Vidal
Fishing Manager
Kau Tapen lodge

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The last week of the season at Villa Maria lodge has just come to an end. Wrapping up our last week, we welcomed our first group of Argentine fishermen.

We had a total of 8 people staying at the lodge. Many of the fishermen in our country love fishing with single hand rods and by using this technique, they prove to be great fishermen. This was definitely the case for Mr. Hector Leoni, Roman, Coco, Luis and Ruben, whereas the others: Rony, Alex and Alberto proved to be good at the spey casting technique.

Mr. Hector Leoni was the man who created one of the most famous Argentine flies in the world. The Leoni’s Barbarous, the fly that made its successful premiere at the mouth of the Correntoso river and later on went on to be used with similar results in the mouth of the Chimehuín river, the Rio Grande Tierra del Fuego, and also with salmon in Alaska.

The fishing has been tough due to water level changing almost every day. We had rain and the water went between murky at times and clear at others. The water level rose and dropped several times, and we had, in general terms, high, fast and murky water for the whole week with some days becoming clearer with better visibility and others with very little visibility due to the wind.

In those tough conditions we managed to hook 56 fish and ultimately catch 45 fish. The biggest fish of the week is a beautiful 23-pounder female sea trout caught by Alberto Uzandisaga from Argentina. It doesn’t happen very often that we have two top rods like we did last week, Roman and Ruben, catching 11 sea trout each!

While fishing had good days and slow days, the week was very nice not only for the experiences and stories told by many of them but also because of Mr. Enrique Lombardini or “Coco’s” humor, who didn’t fish all week. Their stories and jokes all together made for a great, entertaining atmosphere throughout the entire week.

Thanks for coming Argentinos and we hope to see you again next summer.

Tight Lines !!
Gastón Guglielminetti
Fishing Manager – Villa María Lodge

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Kirk Deeter, Field & Stream editor, together with photographer Tim Romano came to Argentina on a cast and blast spectacular adventure. The result of their trip was tons of fantastic pictures and a report of their trip in Field and Stream blog, with 15 tips for Trout-Fishing and Dove-Hunting.

Click here to read the full article, which was divided into 2 parts including the photo gallery:

First part:

http://www.fieldandstream.com/articles/hunting/2013/04/hunting-fishing-tips-ultimate-cast-and-blast?src=SOC&dom=fb

Second part:

http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/flytalk/2013/03/argentina-cast-and-blast-part-ii

Brian McGeehan is an outfitter and owner of Montana Angler Fly Fishing based in Bozeman, MT. Brian is also an avid international angler and leads annual trips to Argentina, Chile and the Bahamas. Last season we had the pleasure to host him at Futa Lodge and this time he came to Pira for a Dorado fly fishing experience.

His trip was published in Filson’s blog. Take a look at it, you’ll enjoy reading the trip report.

http://www.filson.com/filson-life/2013/02/golden-dorado-brian-mcgeehan-fly-fishing/

We had a good week at Kau Tapen lodge for our 14th week. We are in April now and at this time of the year the water is getting quite cold, but with that in mind, there are a lot of fish in our pools and stretch of river, which offer the best spawning ground for sea run brown. We had some very nice fish this last week and the Menendez gave us some nice surprise!

For our 14th week, we had a group of Argentine friends, Peter from Austria who stayed for another week, as well as Johanes from New Zealand who spent 2 days at Kau tapen lodge after spending a week at Villa Maria lodge.

It was a very nice group of people who came with Fernando, father of Santiago Seeber (Nervous Waters sales manager). All of them have been fishing for a long time aiming mostly for dorado and trout. They all paid us a visit to have a nice time with their mutual friend, Fernando. The atmosphere at the lodge was great and we had a ball as the easy-going and festive nature of the Argentine people proved not to be a myth. They all really like to have fun and they all really enjoyed being here between friends and sharing this experience together at Kau Tapen lodge.

The river had a great water level and was clear this last week. The water temperature is slowly dropping little by little, averaging about 7°C/45ºF. We fished in those conditions with very fast sink tips for the Double handed rod fisherman and with teeny 300 to 350 or Rio Outbond Type 6 for the single-handed rod fisherman to reach the deep part of the pools where the fish are hanging out.

The fish are close to the bottom because of the low water temperatures making the leeches the most productive pattern to catch our sea run browns. The chartreuse or orange leeches have been our favorite to use in the morning as well as the black and silver for later in the day.

We fished slow and deep so as to put the fly as close as possible to the fish mouths to try and get them to take the bait. It worked well even with the wind posing as quite a challenge.

We caught some very nice fish during the week, the Menendez producing some great action with Jorge’s 20-pounder and Fernando’s 17-pounder both caught on a Sunray shadow fly!

The biggest fish was caught by Jorge who was ecstatic catching this fish with a single-handed rod.

Some other good fish were caught on the Rio Grande as well. We still have some very fresh fish coming up and still a lot of “small guys” from 2 to 5 pounds throughout practically the entire river!

Once again with all these clear but windy conditions, we had beautiful sunsets which always help to remind us how special this place really is.

The condors have been very active and were flying over our heads almost everyday while our guests where enjoying their fishing.

We are now ending the season with our last group of returning guests from Argentina and we hope to have a great finish and, who knows, maybe we will catch the biggest fish of the season!

Best regards,

By Jean Baptiste Vidal
Fishing Manager
Kau Tapen lodge

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