King salmon Patagonia – our guides report
A new and consistent season has just ended in Southern Patagonia with a lot of activity and good catches.
This new program from Tres Amigos Outfitters has managed to establish a program consisting of the middle waters of the Guanaco River with privileged accommodation located at Estancia La Sofia.
Santi, Federico and Tomas, our guides, have sent us notes of catches and activity from this season to share with you.
The best week of the season happened in early January having a total of 35 catches on both one-handed and two-handed rods. Although the catch rate seems high, it is even more impressive when we see the rate of kings that cannot be landed and this doubles and almost triples it. This has several reasons: among them the strength of these animals that in this part of the season arrive with impressive force and silver looking added to the structure of boulders and rapids that this river has and its current and generally shallow depth mean that many bites are lost downstream.
The largest fish reached 60 pounds and the testimony of David, a North American client with a lot of experience in king salmon in the northern hemisphere, commented that it was not the largest he had hooked during his stay here in Río Guanaco.
The weeks with different numbers of fishermen ranged from 15 to 30 catches with an average of 6 fishermen, also with weeks of only two. Some groups that performed spinning managed to far exceed the number of 50 catches per week.
The most convenient equipment for this river continues to be spey rods and skagit lines with different densities, with t14 predominating. We use short rods as much as possible that do not exceed 12 feet since the river is small and the casting angles improve. One-handed rods work very well (#8 and #10) but the long, strong fights give the salmon a better chance of breaking free.
The best fly was the chartreuse and blue intruder.
By Tres Amigos Outfitters
