On  Wednesday April 17, Hans Aigner fished the Ager River with Jorg Schuft and me. Hans began guiding for Hans Gebetsroither in 1959 when he was just 12 years old, and fished with a large variety of world class anglers over the years, including Joe Brooks. On today’s outing, Hans caught his first fish of the season, a very handsome rainbow that was thick of body and fought with exceptional strength.

When we arrived at the spot the Hans had picked for me to fish, I sat on a big flat rock to adjust my leader and tie on a fly—an orange nymph I tied the previous night. I told Hans that I would sit there and catch one.  On the second cast about 10 feet out, a nice rainbow grabbed the fly. I was using the jigging indicator tactic and Hans was delighted; he had not seen another angler use it, but used it himself. My second fish from the sitting position was a very large European chub—every bit as much a game fish as trout and grayling.

After a couple more fish on the nymph, I switched to a size 2  Silver Leech. Hans thought it was too big, and gave me some small streamers that they use in the Ager. I said thanks, put the flies in my box, and then heaved the big fly into the quiet water between two  current tongues. Almost immediately a very nice male Kamloops grabbed the fly with zeal. It fought well, and Hans was delighted. Then a few minutes later, I hooked another big rainbow that tore off, fighting like an Atlantic salmon, jumping again and again and running hard.  I had to chase it quite a ways downstream before finally landing it. Again Hams was delighted. He had been afraid that the several floods they had over last Christmas season had pushed the fish downstream. Evidently they had not.

Jorge found a huge school of European chubs under a bridge and caught them with great regularity. They were taking a size 12 gray nymph with vigor.         We then went to another section of the Ager that was largely stocked with browns. The sun was very bright, and the browns were all tucked away in hiding; however, I did take a very nice rainbow of about 24 inches on a brownish gray Hen Saddle Matuka. My final count for the day was 11 hooked, 13 landed.

Hans nymphing a deep pocket from which he took his first trout of the season.

My first ever European chub. They take the fly well, and fight like, well, big chubs.

The big Kamloops took the size 2 Silver Leech with robust zeal.

Hans was excited to see me catch the bigger fish , indicating that they has not been washed away by several large floods over the last Christmas season.

Jorg, busily landing one European chub after the other on a gray nymph.

On Tuesday, April 16, we organized at 9 am and got underway to the section of the Ager River managed by Roman Mosier. Roman is a superb fly fisher and fly tyer who taught schools with the late Hans Gebetsroither, who develop the Elliptical casting style in the 1930s. The water in the river is heavy and fast, and the fish were in the Secret River within a few feet of the bank. I lost several nice rainbows in the morning that jumped off or twisted off. The fish in the Ager fight like the devil himself. They are extremely powerful and in superb condition. One broke off on 5X—I fished only 4X afterward. The morning score was 3 landed for 9 hooked.

The other anglers left at noon for a “coffee.” In the afternoon I decided to walk downstream, and I met Roman Mosier coming up. We went to some of his favorite spots, and I fished with an orange nymph that Roman provided. It was a very effective fly and took several nice rainbows. Then I lost it and switched to a pink sparkle egg. It took 5 from a side channel, including one 53 cm (20 ½ inches). The day’s score ended 10l anded  for 16 hooked.

The swift little Ager is an ideal trout stream, with rapid sections, slower waters, and exceptionally strong trout.

The trout of the Ager are powerful of body and fight as if possessed, using the powerful currents to full advantage.

The strength of these fish is due to their superb body condition.

The biggest fish of the day was also the most colorful.

The pink sparkle egg was the fly of choice, and the trout took it with zeal.

Our friend, Theo Bakelaar, was in Africa recently, fishing for trout, when he encountered a very unusual and very fierce strain of browns. He was only able to land the smaller ones, and one look at them shows why. The  bigger of these Croc-A-Browns will take a full dress Gnu or Zebra imitation very strongly. The smaller ones go for an African Hare, Wart Hog, or other smaller imitation.

Theo with a smaller Croc-A-Brown that he took on a gold bead head Wart Hog.

This spring has been a difficult one for the steelhead fishers here in Wisconsin. Too much water. Cold and ugly weather is no problem, but rivers that are ripping at 5000 cfs when they normally flow around 200 cfs are just too much of a challenge. Well, one of our favorite rivers took a brief dip from over 5000 earlier in the season to around 370 cfs. My old fishing buddies, John Beth and Doc Zavadsky, cleared their calendars and got to river early in the day. John got into a red hot female of 32 inches early in the day, and then later hit the fish of a lifetime—a 37 x 19 inch male—on an egg fished with shot and indicator. The calculated weight works out to 17.8 pounds—quite the fish!

But, the water is headed back up, and the season is getting late. That may be the only steelies we see this spring.

John with his lifetime best 37 x 19 inch male steelie. Good on you John!

This past weekend, Brian and Colby Trow invited me to participate in an open house celebrating their 10^th year in business. It as a bit of a squeeze between trips to Argentina and Germany, but it was very fun squeeze. My only regret is that I didn’t have time to fish for a few days. Their shop, Mossy Creek Fly Fishing is located in Harrisonburg in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of southwestern Virginia. They have a wide range of fishing opportunities locally—muskies, bass (both LM and SM), and trout in everything from major rivers to spring creeks, to tiny mountain rivulets. They fish everything from Tenkara to “0” weight rods to 12 weight sticks. And their great shop reflects it. For more, go here.

The day opened at 9 with coffee and donuts and plenty of good old fashioned jaw-boning about fish won and lost; there was also some time to show the Nailless Nail Knot and some others, using rope kits to enhance the leaning process. Then at 10 am, I offered a Power Point presentation on “Really Matching the Hatch.” Following a Q & A session, there was book signing and more discussions of fishing. Dusty Wissmath then offered a program on “Fishing the Greater Yellowstone Area.” It was likewise well-attended and offered great info on this Mecca of US fly fishing. Lunch for all at the shop was an informal affair—grab it as you can—with excellent smoked, pulled pork—lots and lots of it—along with potato salad, slaw, drinks, and more.

During my earlier talk, a number of attendees asked about a variety of casting tactics, and so, right after lunch, we were out on the paved area in back of the shop discussing a host of casting and mending tactics from Wrist Casting, through Arm-Assisted Wrist Casting, to Arm Casting and the Elliptical Stroke, and more, with all the nuances and uses of each. Curves, mends, shooting line, the details of Double Haul, and much more followed.

From there we launched into another Power Point discussion on “Presentaion.” Again this was followed with a great Q&A session, book signing, and talking, talking, talking. We finished the day with a fly tying session that ended at 6 pm, offering designs such as the Down and Dirty Sculpin, Elk Hair Skater, Collared Leech with a feather dubbing body, and others.

It was a great day for all involved, and the gracious hosting of Brian and Colby and their families gave the event a very special “down home,” feeling. Thanks guys!

Friday evening before the big event was “all hands on deck” getting shop ready.

The shop has a really fine selection of f tying materials laid out in a very orderly manner.

The other half of the fly tying materials–I told you there were a lot of them.

The new reel case that was built by Brian and Colby’s dad, Tommy. A great display. It was installed during the shop prep on Friday evening.

I had a very nice email from Humberto Zilocchi, one of the participants in the clinic that i offered on Saturday, March 16, through the Mendoza Fly Shop. He noted that he and others in his acquaintance regularly fish for brookies in the area around  Cordoba in central Argentina.

His site features some very nice shots of the country there, the angling, and the fish. Check it out here.

A very lovely brookie from the Cordoba region in Argentina

While I was in Argentina, my friend,Chuck Furimsky, owner and operator of “The Fly Fishing Shows” was fishing just across the border in Chile. The weather was good for Chuck, and he had good fishing, too. Chile is the wet side of the Andes, and there are more trees and more wet days than on the Argentine side of Patagonia.

One thing that you will notice when you fish in the Patagonia–Food, and plenty of it! It’s more an eating trip with some fishing rather than a fishing trip with some eating.

Big brown number one. The big fish came to big buck tails, streamers, and other long flies.

Big brown number two. The browns found their way to the Patagonia via the ships of the British in the late 1800s.

A nice rainbow whose ancestors made their way south from California. There are also rivers in Chile with good runs of king salmon–they’re in right now.

If you’ve never heard the magnificent music that John Beth composed for our collaborative CD, “My Madison,” then you need to go take a listen. It’s available on many electronic music stores, such as iTunes. You can look it up under the album title or by my name or John’s. It’s well worth a listen.

Are you a fly tier? Frankenfly has something for every tier, be they a traditional, dyed in the wool tier, or a experimentalist. In fly tying, as in fly fishing, there’s always something new that one can learn. God have a look here

Frankenfly offers a host of information for tyers of all types.

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Saturday, March 16, started with a short horseback ride for Exequiel and me, as we took turns riding to the river directly behind the cottages where we were staying. Pablo went on ahead with Benito, and when Exeqiuel and I arrived, Pablo was fighting a big fish. It turned out to be a 23 inch rainbow; the biggest fish to date on this trip.  It took the pancora fly I tied last night. Pablo assumed the title of king fisher.

Then the day just shut off. I tried big flies in the hope of hitting a big fish, but nothing was happening. Georges Andrieu caught a nice one and then offered me the water. Still nothing. We headed back upstream, and eventually to lunch at 2. On the way, I switched to a Massarta and Prince (tractor/trailer) and indicator. Fishing a deep pool where two channels of the river came together, I took 12 fish in about 15 minutes.

After lunch we headed down to the lower river (below Georges and Nicole’s home) and fished big flies. Nothing. The day was too bright, not dull like yesterday’s overcast. Eventually I switched to a Stimulator, and took several decent fish. I noticed that I got many follows and several fish when I pulled the fly under and stripped it back. I switched to the nymphs and indicator rig, and started fishing them down and across, swinging them with a jigging motion. Fish after fish came to the jigging nymphs. Eventually the score reached 38, but then just as fast as the action had been, it stopped absolutely dead (about 6:30). Time for big flies for big fish.

Just as Exequiel and I were changing flies, a huge flight of big, olive green Argentine Burrowing Parrots swooped down the canyon at just over head height. And then, suddenly, I had a story for my book, Fly Gear (see below).

I rigged up with the biggest articulated sculpin I had and tossed it up into the deep fast throat of the next pool upstream. It was seized immediately by a very hefty 21 inch rainbow. After photos we moved upstream to another deep, likely looking spot, and again, on the first cast, a big trout nailed the fly. It ran down and across and right through the branches of a long-since fallen tree. The fish jumped twice, 25 feet below the tree, and it was obvious that it was not going to come back up. I pointed the rod straight down the line and reeled hard. The fish obliged and followed the pull of the line back through the fallen tree and out into open water. Landed, it taped out at 23 inches. Of course I told Pablo that my fish was 1 mm longer than his. He then complained that his fish had been bent when we measured it. We got a second crown so that both of us could a king fisher.

We had dinner at Georges and Nicole’s from 9 to 11:30. Georges showed us plans for his planned Patagonia Adventures. The estancia is a great place for just such an ecotourism venue. For a look, go here and watch the video.

Breakfast on Sunday was at 8, and we left at 8:30 for the 12 ½ hour drive back to Mendoza. It was a great adventure, and a nice escape from the snows of late winter that awaited me in Wisconsin.

The Legend is in the Rod (This story will appear in my soon forthcoming book, Fly Gear).

Had I not been a first-hand participant in this story, I would find it hard to believe.

At a Fly Fishing Show in Denver, Colorado, I borrowed a 6-weight Zenith from John Shaner, of Hardy/Greys, for my casting demonstrations. It is an impressive rod that throws a long line as straight as an arrow, and makes such demos easy. When I returned the rod, John asked if I had cast their new 10 foot, 3-weight. I had not, and so early the next morning, I sought out John and gave the rod a test run. It felt as if I were casting a 5-weight; the rod easily delivered the line the full distance of the casting pond. I was delighted at its ability to cast at all lengths and manipulate the line through my test series of curves and mends, and I told John so. He graciously offered to provide me with one for upcoming trips to Argentina and Germany. And so the rod was eventually situated in my bags and headed into the southern hemisphere.

After a fully attended and very successful, day-long clinic for the Mendoza Fly Shop, celebrating its twentieth year in business, we headed south to fish. We being Benito Pérez and his son Pablo, Polo Rossi, Exequiel Bustos, and me. Benito published the first angler’s entomology of Argentina (Un Libro de Pesca, La Mosca), and he and Pablo established the shop in 1993. It would be a fast road trip, nearly 600 miles south into the northern reaches of Patagonia. It would also be a time for testing the new Hardy rod.

The first two days were spent fishing Río Tordillo and Río Cobre near the skiing village of Las Leñas, about 6 hour driving time from Mendoza, and half way to our goal of the Río Codihue in the Neuquén Region of Patagonia. The Tordillo is a swift mountain stream that reminded me of a high-speed Madison. About half the volume of the Madison, it none-the-less carried the water along at seemingly twice the velocity. The fishing was totally within the “Secret River”—the pocket water and short flat stretches along the shores (for more information see our second book in this series, Reading Waters).

Polo took first turn on the 10 foot 3-weight, and found it to be an exceptional tool for pocket water nymphing. I fished it for a few hours and noted that sometimes the tip would over flex and hit the water when I made strong throws into the oncoming Argentine wind. Only a minor adjustment was necessary to overcome this tendency on my part. It played fish of a variety of sizes from 6 inches to 16 with equal ease.

The next day, on Río Cobre, found Exequiel using the Hardy to handle a big two kilo brown with equal aplomb. Unlike the Tordillo, the Cobre is a meadow stream with long pools, side channels, and swift riffles. And always, the wind. We fished bead head nymphs with a variety of indicators. The rod punched out the needed casts without strain.

Polo left us at Malargüe on his way to Buenos Aires to drive in a nationally sanctioned auto race. And then it was on to the “El Halcon” estancia of George and Nichole Andrieu. They hold the upper 26 miles of the Río Codihue, and had graciously offered it to us for our Patagonian excursion. The river proved most welcoming, and the Hardy enjoyed its daily performance in the hands of the anglers of our party. There were many fish of all sizes, the largest coming in at 23 inches and 5 pounds.

On the last day, the Hardy was in again in the hands of Exequiel as we fished the canyon reaches of the river, taking small fish with alarming regularity. Alarming because we could not connect to anything over 14 inches. We knew the big fish were there, because the day before we had found then with regularity. Suddenly at 6:30 pm, as the sun dropped to the western horizon and shadows sought out every nook and cranny of the canyon, the small fish stopped hitting the fly. It was not a gradual tapering off, it was instantaneous.

We both immediately began re-rigging—the big fish had come out. I cut the leader back to 0X and knotted on a huge, 6-inch long articulated Down and Dirty Sculpin. I was after big fish, and I wanted the biggest fly I had. Exequiel, likewise began to change his leader and fly. We are fishing a large, deep pool occupied at its center by two enormous, room-sized boulders that had obviously calved off the canyon walls above, sometime in the dim, distant past. Exequiel stood  downstream of the massive chunks of canyon wall, and in line with the space between them, the Hardy held upright as he worked to tie on a very large black Zonker.

Suddenly, the canyon walls came alive with the coarse, squawking cry of the Argentine Burrowing Parrot. And equally suddenly a flight of about 50 of the high velocity birds came rocketing down river, barely head height, guided in their flight by the constraining, tortuous walls of the canyon. Some crested the big boulders at river center, but others flew swiftly between them. In an instant, one of the birds that swept between the bulders smashed directly into the Hardy rod. It jerked around violently, and broke just below the center ferrule. The startled bird, tangled in the leader, struggled to stay on the wing. Croaking hoarsely in distress, it flapped uncontrolled toward mid-river, driving the size 2 Zonker deep into the tip of Exequiel’s right hand middle finger, and jerking the leader free. The pain was evident on his face, and so was the dismay at seeing the top half of the rod shoot down the line and leader toward the bird, now dropping dangerously close to the water. Then, the bird was free, and raced off after its quickly disappearing companions. The top half of the rod dove head first into the deep, swift currents of mid river, and was gone.

Using a heavy piece of mono we jerked the fly out of Exequiel’s finger, but it was small consolation to him for the loss of the top half of the broken rod. There was nothing to do, but to stand in disbelief for a few moments, before finishing the evening with two large rainbows that he had to watch me catch. And so ends this bizarre story; another truly unusual adventure that is a part of the legend of the rods of the House of Hardy.

In all my nearly six decades of fly fishing, I have never heard of such an improbable happening. But it’s not the only strange story that I have about broken rods.

Exequiel and I went riding, sharing a horse between us.

It’s easy to see why we wanted to ride a bit on this day.

When we got to the Codihue, Pablo was landing the biggest fish of the trip, to date.

The big trout are very healthy from their diet of pancora

Georges with a fine rainbow from his “secret” spot that always yields a fish.

In Georges’ case the fish took a big black stonefly nymph fished with action.

Late in the evening I tied on a huge articulated sculpin and was immediately into the big fish.

The first big fish was a 21 inch rainbow in very healthy condition.

The second big fish of the evening was 23 inches (+ 1mm), and earned me a shared crown with Pablo.

Benito make this sketch of Exequiel’s painful encounter with the Argentine Burrowing Parrot.