Lago Strobel (Jurassic Lake) Argentina
I returned last week from fishing 2 weeks at the above. I hesitate to post because I don't want to sound like I am bragging but here goes.
Dennis, Paul and I returned from Argentina on Monday morning. We fished 14 days. Greg fished the first 6 days and he hit the best weather of the trip. The first week was amazing and the second week less so. We still caught fish but it was windier. We stayed at Estancia Laguna Verde and fished Lago Strobel (Jurassic Lake). I really like EVL because we had access to several miles of lake shore, including some bays where we could get out of the wind, many lagunas on the estancia, and the Barancoso River. The lodge staff and guides treated us very well and took care of pretty much every need. The food was great and the wine plentiful.
What can I say about the fishing? Week one was incredible. It was maybe one of the best fishing weeks of my life, not necessarily for numbers of fish but size and the fact that we caught huge rainbows on dry flies. My biggest fish of the week was 22#. I think Greg had 2 that big and Dennis one. Not to be left out, Paul caught a 20# fish. We also had many other fish hooked, and a few (about 20) landed in the 15-20# range and many, many fish of 10-15#. We lost count of the "dinks" (fish of 3-6#). The mornings were slower than the afternoons but we caught lots of cruising fish off the rocks and cliffs on nymphs, scuds, small leeches and woolly buggers. In the afternoons after lunch when the lake would warm up a bit (it go so warm we would fish in t-shirts) we fished large schools of fish near some of the beaches. We used large foam dry flies as indicators with a trailing nymph or scud. The fish would mostly hit the trailing fly, but we caught or missed lots on the dries. There is nothing quite as exciting as seeing a huge head come up behind the dry and see its mouth slowly open. Often times we would pull the fly out of its mouth because we could not wait, but occasionally we could wait and we hooked big fish. I think my biggest was 15#. One afternoon in about 3 hours, Dennis, Paul and I must have hooked more than 35 fish. We broke a large number off on the hook set. I even got one on a mouse.
Week two was windier and the last day was cold with light rain. Some days the winds were 35-45 mph. The good thing about EVL, is that they can take you to a few small bays where your back is the the wind and you can make a cast. We still caught fish on the windy days. Typically we would catch 3-8 fish each on the bad days. Sounds pretty sparse but when you consider the size of the fish it is amazing.
The only downside of fishing here is how long it takes to travel. Our flight times down and back from Anchorage were about 23 hours with layovers in Phoenix, Houston, and Buenos Aires. We are thinking seriously of going back and if we do we might spend a few nights in BA at the beginning of the trip and maybe a night in El Calafate at the end. We are thinking of 10 -14 days at EVL followed by a week at the Rio Grande chasing sea run browns. We were all pretty exhausted after 14 days of fishing but I think we would do it again in a heartbeat. After all, life is short.
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