Jurassic Lake, the other side

This year started as it should, great fishing, good people and wild places. After guiding many years with my friends of Loop Adventures I started my own business working sometimes alone and some others with colleagues. Gaston is the head guide from Pecho Blanco Estancia that is located right on the other shore opposite to the Loop Camp on the north margin. Travelling to Jurassic Lake seems to be pretty hard on every side but Pecho Blanco has better routes I have to admit. Anyway, the trip this time was with a crazy gang from Buenos Aires from the AMBA association. Eight of them in our two tracks. I was thinking how the fishing would be without having the Barrancoso River close to me, would it be so exaggerated as the Loop camp, black shadows of schools of fishes covering the bottom?

The trip took us longer than we thought because the Chico river was extremely high, brown and really scary. Gastón was telling me about the floating line of my vehicle, “it´s right close to the window”, and I was staring at him with my worst face and moving my head side to side. “No way we cross alive this river”. So we drove for 3 more hours but safe surrounding the East side of the lake.

These guys were about to jump from the track when they saw this blue mirror inside a volcano of many miles. You really feel tiny in this place. My Nissan X-TERRA was begging to stop! Another season on volcanic rock noooo°!!

First hours from 7pm to 9 pm and landed some chrome fish on a beautiful bay that is sheltered from the wind, anxiety dropped a bit with the first monsters, 4, 5 and 6 kilos jumping everywhere… Taking streamers in the depth. Everyone had sinking lines to start; a deep channel split by a darker blue was the place you have to put the fly to start the fight. Landed about 20 fishes and missed some others. In any place in the world this would have been outstanding fishing but in Strobel lake, let´s say it was “just regular”. Five minutes in my track and back to the lodge. Gaston prepared some pasta while I watched the facilities, internet, sat tv, it was crazy to be in the middle of nowhere watching River Plate playing the local league, thanks to Gastón this was a gift. Then I remember to be sitting on my bed but I can´t recall the moment when my head hit the pillow, completely exhausted.

Next morning, we were blessed with a 0 km wind. So we headed to some bays looking for sight fishing. Sun was really hard, 25° on white shores with sand and rocks, looked more like Greece than Santa Cruz province. Fishing was strangely low, everyone could see the big ones moving from bay to bay but just some of them were following the fly so, suddenly it came to my mind a dejavu of being on Loop camp on a calm day and having the same reaction on the fish, “Throwing the fly and before the line or the fly land on the water the fish were escaping”. The solution was a simple thing that anyone could have done, increasing the leader with a thinner tippet and putting a small nymph with some peacock, the old zug bug. I took one of the gang that seemed to be the most annoyed by the situation and right after convincing him that this was a good strategy, on the first cast he landed a 14 pounder, then the second cast was directed to a huge silver one, took it too, 16 pounds, then another one and another one… Absolutely crazy, you could see how the fish watched the fly land and after a couple of seconds studying it they just swam for it very aggressively.

The day let us have lunch right on the rocks, Gaston prepared some chicken with onions and some other vegetables with white wine “on the Disco” (iron plate), really tasty. Everyone was living the trip they dreamed of for months.

Gaston decided in the afternoon to do some scouting with half of the gang on the following bays and I stood with the lazy ones that were overwhelmed with fishing there. If it could get better it was possibly too much to ask. So some had some more rainbows and relaxed a bit on the closer bays. Then the most funny thing occurred, one of the guys sat down on the rocks and said “this is perfect, just a beer and I´m in heaven”. Right after this words a guy from camp that is in charge of keeping the camp running, called by the gang “Snoopy” appeared with a bag full of beers and some biscuits, we all looked each other and start laughing. Diego, whom by the way had some extra kilos decided to take the beers to the exploration group and I can tell right now that this attitude was the talk of the trip, some miles to take beer to the fishermen, I haven´t seen that before I must confess.

The exploration group came back almost dead of the walking but screaming loudly: “we baptized the AMBA Bay”, Gastón showed me the pictures and some triple hook ups happened in that virgin territory, every time you think you have seen it all this lake surprise you again.

The next day we try the closer bays, some wind blew but nothing crazy as it can be some times. Hooking fish in deep water and some other standing on the rocks, pointing the fish they wanna have, it was a great day too. On the way back we found some Puma footsteps and some birds that are really hard to see like the Pluvianellus socialis with a couple of babies.

In the night we had the pleasant company of Gustavo, who owns the estancia. He made a delicious lamb the patagonic way, what we call “al palo” and right after that shared some Cohiba cigars that one the guys brought from Cuba.

On the way back to make the trip shorter there was an old Mercedes 1114 truck waiting to transport our trucks trough the river, I must admit that crossing this high water was longer than the whole trip but it was really much more secure than it looked.

Some reflections I can make about this place are: Better route than the other places (not a huge difference, but a couple of hours less of rocks. The fishing is crazy, really good, but you need to move to find the schools of fish. You can always find bays were the wind doesn´t bother which is great. The camp has internet and sat tv which are extras cause you are so tired that you almost don´t use them but it´s always a plus to share with family without any costs. There is only one room for the guests with one shared bathroom. It takes up to 8 persons in exceptional cases, but most of the times the max permitted are 6. A trip of 4 days is probably enough for the fishing but I would add a day to fish more relaxed. The best of all is that the price is almost half of the other operations around which make it really affordable for everyone.