Exploring a river in the fjords of Chile

In October of 1989, I was at my desk at the Nestle headquarters in Santiago, Chile were I held an engineering position after graduating from College. The day was particularly smoggy because, according to my own rudimentary scale, I could barely see the building across the street. On good days I could see the buildings, on really bad days, nothing but a gray-brown haze.

It was spring in the Southern Hemisphere, and every year at this time I felt, as we say in Chile "like a caged cat" meaning; like a wild animal longing for the outdoors with no possible escape. Then my brother Marcelo calls me to offer me a job. We had to explore rivers for fly-fishing in the south of Chile. That is not all, we had a helicopter and a float plane, pilots included, at our disposal and there's more! they paid three times what I was making as an engineer!

After meditating this life-changing decision for say, a second or two, I quit my job and headed south where the rivers run clear and the mountains are green, best of all, you can see them every day and in bright colors because the air is fresh and clear.

For two consecutive seasons we fished rivers so remote that quite possible we were the first humans there for hundreds of years and even if we were not, it really did not matter because there were no signs of human activity. In short, we were in a complete pristine wilderness as far as our eyes could see.

If you are a passionate angler nothing can describe the excitement of flying over a wild unknown area, landing by the most beautiful stream you could possibly imagine and setting up your rod to fish the water for the first time. We explored over a hundred rivers. Many times we didn't find any trout, but quite a few times we did, it was fantastic.

One day while having lunch my brother had a Chucao, one of Chile's most emblematic forest birds, perched on his boot. Still to this day if you go to these remote areas, birds and animals are not afraid of humans, last year I was hand feeding crabs to a river Otter.

The compiled information was put into three large volumes; describing each river, including pictures, species of fish, maps, distances and the river's potential as a recreational fishery. This information was given to our employer who wanted it to decide where he was going to build his new fly out Fly-fishing lodge. It was a dream job.

One day flying back to base my brother Marcelo convinced Chris, the float plane pilot, to stop by a great looking river that emptied into the ocean at the end of a remote fjord. Bare with me for a while; this area does not have any roads and is practically uninhabited. Basically all you see are snow-capped mountains coming out of the Ocean and large valleys holding beautiful clear water rivers that no one has ever fished. Is really a spectacular country, true wilderness and to top it off, with out bears or mosquitoes!

This was the first time we had fished so close to the Ocean, an extremely dynamic and productive environment due to the tides. Everything is constantly changing; sometimes the river is flowing one way, then a few hours later is flowing the other way, one minute you are standing by a riffle and twenty minutes later is a deep pool or vice versa. It was rather difficult to figure out at first having always fished inland waters that changed relatively slowly and in a rather predictable manner; according to seasons, rainfall or snow-melt. After 20 years, we are still figuring these rivers out, but one thing was sure, we found big fish and lots of them.

We included this and other similar rivers in our report but for reasons we still cannot figure out our employer, obviously an intelligent man, decided to build his lodge on a location we advised against. To make a long story short, after this lodge came and went, we started our own outfitting company; Rio Azules Ltda.

One of the first trips we did was to organize an exploratory trip to the rivers of the Chilean Fjords, but this time; no helicopters or float planes but on a luxurious and reliable motor yacht that would comfortably take us to places we could hardly imagine...

For the rest of the story about this first exploratory trip, we recommend to get Chris Santella's book; Fifty places to fly fish before you die.

If you haven't done this trip, give us a call. We still have three prime weeks available for January and February, 2011. Summer in the Southern Hemisphere!

TAP image My first fly-caught trout came to a Royal Coachman streamer fly that was sloppily cast and dragged across a stretch of the Saugatuck River just upstream of a parking lot in Westport, Connecticut. That stretch of river flowed through the middle of a corporate park. It was a rather a sickly hatchery brown trout that was as foreign to its environs as the angler on the other end of the line. Needless to say, I ... Fifty Places To Fly Fish Before You Die by Chris Santella