Dead Drifters Society: A fly fishing podcast
Welcome to The Dead Drifters Society podcast, the ultimate destination for fly fishing addicts like us! I'm Andrew Barany, your host from beautiful Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. Join me as we bring together members of the fly fishing community to share stories, tips, tricks, and inspiration both on and off the water. Fly fishing is a lifelong learning experience that both elevates and humbles us. Let's dive into conversations about how this incredible passion has blessed our lives. Tight lines, my friends! Live on and fish on! For more information, email me at deaddrifterssociety@gmail.com
Incredible artwork by Riverwlkr: https://instagram.com/riverwlkr?igshid=MWI4MTIyMDE=
Dead Drifters Society: A fly fishing podcast
Marin's Tale of Fly Fishing Triumphs and Trials in Patagonia's Wild Waters
Have you ever felt the raw power of nature while holding a fishing rod, battling the winds of Patagonia? Our latest episode takes you on a whirlwind tour with Marin Saide, a fly fishing guide whose life is woven with the rivers and fish of this untamed landscape. From the lush northern territories to the ice-cold southern extremes, Marin's journey of becoming a masterful guide is as much about personal transformation as it is about the thrill of the catch. We traverse the spectrum of fly fishing experiences, understanding the balance between angler and environment, and the camaraderie that's fostered on these remote waters.
Patagonia's rich fishing tapestry is tinged with historical intrigue and modern-day challenges. Listen as we unravel the fascinating introduction of non-native fish species and their impact on local ecosystems, and how they have reshaped fishing practices. The guide's toolbox is crucial in these parts – think Patagonia waders and loop rods to combat illegal fishing practices, and the art of selecting the perfect fly from intruders to Scandinavian types. Marin shares tales of DIY adventures and spey fishing mastery in the relentless Patagonian winds, painting a vivid picture of the life aquatic.
But fly fishing is more than just a sport – it's a communion with nature and a testament to the human spirit. This episode is a reflective journey through the eyes of a guide who has seen the solitude of nature magnified by the pandemic. As we discuss the aspirations and hurdles of guiding across continents, from Chile's vibrant culture to the bureaucratic mazes for an international guide in Canada, one thing remains clear: the transformative power of fly fishing reaches far beyond the rivers it graces. Join us and cast your line into the stories and souls of those who live to fish.
•Martins Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/msaides?igsh=MWNsZHlxMHh1dTRzcw==
•A few other links worth checking out
https://www.instagram.com/magallanesflyfishing?igsh=MTN5ZHpxeGU5dzBrMA==
https://www.instagram.com/andresflyfish?igsh=MWFzNWNobWF1N2wxZg==
https://www.instagram.com/rodandgun.chile?igsh=YXh3Z25ibnBzZHNw
https://www.instagram.com/twinpeakesflyfishing?igsh=MTdyYW5veGVsN3d6Mw==
fishing is good in the north, as I said before better weather, brown trout, rainbow trout, resident fish. You know a lot of rivers, lakes, lagoon. Down south you freeze your ass but you catch big kings, big sea trout, still head. You know, it's, yeah, it's uh, it's uh. But all those places having common is that you're gonna eat amazingly, you're gonna drink amazing wine and amazing spirits and yeah, and you're gonna have an amazing you know experience with people that think like you, fishing wise, but they think completely different to you, life wise, you know, because we come from different places of the world. So, yeah, so you can come and experience that either with anybody in patagonia that offer welcome to the podcast, marin.
Speaker 2:How's it going?
Speaker 1:very good you. Thank you so much for having me here yeah, no worries.
Speaker 2:So, um, I guess you're out in chili.
Speaker 1:You want to explain to me where you're from and kind of how you got into the fly fishing scene well, I I'm from or really from chile, near san diego wine country, the area I got into fly fishing by an ad that I saw in first year of university. I just see an ad that says do you want to be a fishing guy? During the summer I like fishing because my dad used to used to take me fishing and um trolling in the lakes and I would always see the fly fishing man. It's like, oh man, those guys look so, so cool doing their thing and they're, you know, trying to do something. Never actually got to see them catching fish, I would just pass by, but I always, I always want was in it. So in university, when I see this ad, it was a guide school, uh, from a guy, a well-known guide already in chile at its andres gonzalez. And well, I took his guide school and he got me a gig as a host in a lodge. I was like 19 years old at the moment. So I I went on work in this lodge as a host. I ended up guiding the same very same season. You know like I learned a lot with andres, don't get me wrong. But obviously once you get into the lodge you realize that even in three months he was not able to put everything that you need to actually guide, especially somebody who was not into fly fishing at the moment. There's so many other things that you have to learn besides the fishing to be a guide. So, um, I ended up guiding because the guides in that lodge were super, super nice to me. They helped me out a lot and taught me. So I ended up guiding and then I kept guiding in same lodge at the beginning. Then other lodges were actually learned how to row, how to jet boat, and then I ended up moving region from northern paragonia down to southern paragonia and I started working with another company that it's more into spay and they had a helifishing operation at the moment in kthorn. So I ended up, you know, having it.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile I was in university guiding and obviously from the beginning not knowing that much, but then learning a lot, and spent like around five seasons you know, six season working in all these operations. And then life finished university, life took me somewhere else. I lived in the states for a little bit. Then, on covid, everything broke down. We came back to chile and I decided you know that I I was, I wanted to be a guide again. You know it's like it's, it's not able. After you know, when you start reconsidering things, especially after the covid hit, that everybody was isolated or alone in their houses. Um, yeah, I realized I missed this so much in the last five years. Me was I was doing something else professionally.
Speaker 1:I did miss a lot being a guide, so went back at it, came back to mariannes and, obviously with andres, I spoke again. I ended up working with him as well in paragonia and, with the approach of sunday, maybe guiding canada, if the things happen. Paperwork, a lot of paperwork to be done, you know, especially in bc, where you need to not only have a work permit but you also need to be a permanent resident, and that's something that I'm not. So, yeah, we'll see what happens. If it isn't there, it's there, it's somewhere else. It is somewhere else, but with high hopes of actually going into cana. Yeah, that's basically my fishing story in I don't know how many minutes yeah, there we go, I love it.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, so then that was. You know, we've talked about it before and obviously we met on the bull river up in cram, I guess in fernie, kind of between fernie. Anyways, we met on the bull river, um, so that was pretty sweet. So you just went out there to, I guess, kind of work for a guide company, but you weren't guiding, you're doing the shuttles slash, just learning the area. So you were a little more for you. How long? How long were you there for?
Speaker 1:like about three months. Okay, yeah, it was super fun. I learned a lot, especially getting to know all the guys. There's a big community, in difference of what there is in patagonia, you know. So you get to to see a lot of different points of views in the way they fish. You see them, how they behave among themselves.
Speaker 1:Because for me, you know, when I'm guiding in patagonia and I see somebody else, I get like you know, in torres del paino not, but in other places it's like, why is he here? You know, if he's here, should I just go? You know, or ask him why are you doing here? There's so many other places you know, so you don't have to see each other, you know. So in here you see 10 boats going same stretch every day and at the end of the day you still ask all these people, um, how was their day? And mostly it was a good day.
Speaker 1:Everybody, it's sort of, caught fish. Maybe not a lot, maybe, yes, they caught a lot, but you know everybody caught fish, you know. And here, um, it's not that, uh, it happens what I'm gonna tell you, but, like, you feel as a guy that if you see somebody else you're not gonna catch fish, you know, and obviously it you realize after looking in all these other places where you see more boats often, yeah, like it's uh, obviously, comparing the proportions of amount of fish that there is in canada, where the trout is native, and compared to patagonia, where the trout is not native, you know. So obviously there is a minor population of trout in the river for se.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, well, and I guess that kind of leads into the the next question. Uh, what you said, there is a king salmon there. Um, yeah, I think you say brown trout rainbows, is that pretty much sums it up, or?
Speaker 1:yeah, there is brook trout in some parts of cape horn and in other ponds in tierra del fuego and and lakes. But uh, yeah, in argentina they have them in some lakes, uh up in northern area of argentina, northern areas, but uh, here is majority brown trout. I would say rainbow in some parts, but brown trout is everywhere yeah, yeah, that's uh, and I guess that's what you know.
Speaker 2:When I think patagonia, I'm usually thinking brown trout, because that's what most people talk about. Um, anyone that I've known that's gone up there. So, and you said they're not native, do you know when they got introduced?
Speaker 1:yeah, they got introduced first by a, a histogram called isiora venechea, who brought her, her british friends to hang out in her coal mine and they would say like, oh it was, it will be so nice if there was trout, if there was trout. So she introduced the first brown trout from germany in the 1920s and 30s. And then there is this president german riesgo who actually said you know what, we should just have trout everywhere, because in here the fish major majoritarially are like baitfish, are small minnows. So, uh, when they introduced the brown trout it was perfect because the a lot of the people from farms or things like that, they would be able to go fishing and actually get a meal out of it. You know, it was a a good idea to populate other areas as well. You know, when you have something that it's a little bit more interesting in in what you can actually hunt and catch, you know.
Speaker 1:So, until today, people, I think, culturally speaking, here we have an issue, big issue, that is that people kill a lot of fish. They don't cover the quota, like there is not a lot of fiscalization, you know, enforcing of the law, so some people they just go with their backs and they just fill up their backs and they just leave. But still, the fishing is good, you know, and even though, like you can, we would love to have more enforcing, you know the people are taking it because it's culturally something that they have done for not only them but their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents, you know, they least since the 30s and 40s. So what you cannot, you know, yeah, expect them to change from the in one night. You need a lot more work to be done.
Speaker 2:You see the in that area yeah, yeah, I guess, like when it's cultural to be, you know, catching your meals and stuff, it's kind of like it's a lot to ask to like, hey, put those back, you know, don't keep that exactly so.
Speaker 1:That's basically when they were introduced. And then salmon later on is in, particularly Atlantic Salmon. And then on the 80s these Japanese company came here with the idea of putting King Salmon and Chilean rivers and then actually let them be and when they were gonna come back they were gonna put nets and catch them all. And they waited four or five years and nothing actually happened. And they said you know what? It didn't work out, let's just back and go. And then suddenly a few years later they started appearing spontaneously in everywhere you know. So maybe they put the nets in the wrong places, they they went to different rivers. Well, nobody knows, maybe they took a little bit longer to spawn in in this kind of area, but after the fourth and fifth year didn't came and didn't come. So you know they just stayed and the people pretty much own the salmon right now. You know it's part of the ecosystem for nowadays and it's impressive that it was planted in some parts of Chile and now it went all the way down through Cape Horn. It's going through the Rio Grande that has King Salmon, that this river flows into the Atlantic. So they went around and now they're going into the Atlantic where they never been. You know they were never carried to be used to be put in there in the Rio Grande. They're already up in the in the Gallegos and you can see on social media. You know they're catching beautiful kings on Argentina as well. You know, even up one salmon. He was caught in the Paraná River all the way up in the northern part of Argentina where you know it's Dorado territory right. So the salmon have taken South America by storm.
Speaker 1:I would say, and well, I guide in Torres del Paine, that is the National Park. It's a park that Banff in Canada, super, notoriously big, you know. For, like you say, national Park in Canada, a lot of people would say Banff, or at least that's the one that comes to mind for me. And the same way in the States it's like oh, yosemite, well in here it's Torres del Paine is the. When people think about Paragonia they just have one image and it's those beautiful mountains of Torres del Paine and but I want to know just that it's a lot of other places, but obviously that's the one of the most iconic places, yeah, for sure, and the river has an amazing view to the mountains, to the massive. So if you end up catching a king salmon and you have a nice day. You know, you get the picture of a huge salmon, you know, with the most beautiful mountains in the background. So, yeah, it's super epic, I would say 100% the.
Speaker 2:When those fish were introduced, like the brown trout in the, the salmon, did they affect the rivers in a negative way at all? Or did they kind of just seamlessly, you know, move in and because I know like brown trout out here or like there's rivers a lot in BC that do not have brown trout and they would, you know, I guess they kind of like we have steelhead in our river where I catch brown trout on the island and you know they do probably affect the, the steelhead numbers to a certain degree, since they're obviously a predatory fish eating minnows all the time. Did that kind of play out at all in Patagonia?
Speaker 1:or because, yeah, you know, of course it changed things. You know that the first thing that comes to mind, for me at least, is that the sea lions would start coming up rivers, you know, and you would see them 10, 20 kilometers upriver, you know, and those guys they're eating salmon. Yes, because they they were chasing the salmon run that they saw coming into the river, but then obviously they need to eat 50 kilograms of fish a day and so obviously they're not eating salmon, they're eating whatever they can catch. So obviously they're also destroying the trout population. So, yes, it changed a lot of the, a lot of the things. We've been in that matter. But still, the, the trout population is, is good.
Speaker 1:You see, like all in social media in these dates, because we're in the summer, in here in northern Patagonia, chile, you know having an amazing season beautiful rivers, beautiful days. You know, in here the salmon start coming up the, the, some sea trout as well, in the river and the, at least down south. So, yeah, like the season, the fishing is good. That's why people come here, that's why they enjoy. The fishing is good, it's great. But of course, you know, like it's good in a lot of places, you know, like the same way in Canada. I saw that when I was in the maybe the bull is not the best you know example, but yes, like you have such a healthy population of fish and obviously super fun to catch them on a dryfly different sizes, you can still catch super nice fishing kind of that you know like, yeah, I would love to have in here as well that kind of fishing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yes yeah, that's super cool. So what were the native fish? Um, in the systems, like I know you said, in Argentina there's the Dorados. What's, yeah, like prior. In Chile, before the Browns and the salmon were introduced, was it mostly minnows? I would assume there's some more predatory fish yeah, no, no, there weren't any predatory fish.
Speaker 1:There is one that is. It's called perca. That I would. It would be like a perch, but actually it has some sort of a sucker in it. So it's not actually a perch, it's more like a sort of small catfish, weirdly. Okay. Then you would have that that one was a bigger one, sort of you know, a, I would say actually similar to whitefish. You know, when I was already got whitefish, yeah, but smaller, and then you have pejerrey, that it's silver sized, that the Chilean one gets bigger.
Speaker 1:But they mainly my experience because I don't know before. You know I was born on the 86 when trout it was in their best time. You know, if you see the world records from the 80s, like when they were like lake trout, like a brown trout in the lake, and they were all from Argentina and Chile because, like, they have been feeding on on this, on this small fish, for years, you know, for 40 years and obviously not a lot of people still fishing them. You know, because they were planted through the trade and in people, like I heard stories of people actually bringing the, the eggs and putting them in the in some ponds that they weren't before. But yeah, but not.
Speaker 1:A lot of people were fishing them now actually they they found in in Coyayque, in here in Coyayque there was this, a lagoon that had super big fish like people would see from from the bridge or wherever like massive five to seven kilo, eight kilo fish, right in there on the on the shore, and they realized, like the conservation officers, that that was actually a place where this small toad, or Darwin's toad or Darwin's frog I think Darwin's frog, yeah, that it's a endangered species in Chile that is native to Chile. And this guy said okay, the trout are eating them, so we're gonna kill all the trout from the lagoon. So they just bolted, you know, took all the fish out. I just saw pictures, you know, about a huge eight kilo, nine kilo fish. You know, in there in that the loo, that they have been eating this little frog that is native to Chile.
Speaker 1:That could eventually keep happening. You know, we don't know, but yeah, trout is not a, it's not a native species in Chile. The government, in a way, doesn't have a plan on how to take care of the resource, but today you're able to come over here and fish. You know, fishing is great, yeah yeah, awesome.
Speaker 2:And so when you're saying that you're first getting into fly fishing kind of led me to think that you started with single hand, and then you said that you got introduced to people that were doing the spay fishing. Yes, yeah, so when you were starting with single hand, I mean you got into guiding fairly quick, from going from not being a fly angler to guiding people that are exactly.
Speaker 1:It was just they needed at the lodge at the moment like a saving hand one of the last weeks of the season and I got to guide in like two weeks. You know, I still I assume that they allowed me to guide because the guides told the, the boss, you know that I was sort of ready to take people because they saw that I was. You know, I learned quick I, and that was my idea. I always loved fishing. So when this came on and then I met Andres and Reslon Salas, from Andres, like fish, he made the course and it was super straightforward. He taught me how to gas, he put like in a lot of situations, he took us to the river and in three months we learned a lot.
Speaker 1:Then, obviously, you get to guiding and you have to approach the part of the service. What are you actually doing? You're taking care of people. It's not only about the fishing anymore and of course you need to learn the rivers, but it's the safety you know, is a. How do you handle people? You know, because people are different. Some people are super, super nice and easy to take care of because they take care of themselves, super smart, but some other people, like they, are not that aware of where they're at. You know that you are in a river, accidents could happen, you know they, they believe there, you know how hanging them all so, yes, so of course there are so many things that you have to learn and in a way, obviously probably they could have gotten at that moment a better guide. Yes, but they trust me, you know enough to to be able to to guide those people and everything went all right.
Speaker 1:And in that moment on, you know, when I went back to school a university in that moment and this university, I just a university then the next season I was already ready to go guiding, you know, and, yeah, I never stopped pretty much going down to Baccaonia to fish and guide, you know, because that was the only way to solve my the because, fortunately, a university is not that expensive in Chile compared to the states and cana. My family paid for it, but I, I had to make money for myself during the year, you know. So guiding was perfect because I would make a good amount of money so I could hang out, go out with friends on the weekends or whatever during the school year and move around, but, you know, and actually fish. So in my summer colleagues I guided yeah and that's had an amazing time and it was a win-win situation. It was perfect like, yeah, everything worked nicely nice.
Speaker 2:What were you taking in university?
Speaker 1:I study hospitality management, and then I finished business as well okay.
Speaker 2:So that kind of worked well with what you were wanting, or guiding thing and kind of exactly yeah, yeah, that's awesome. And then so you're. You learned how to single hand cast and all that, and then you got introduced to the spear fishing yes, what was that for hours? Sorry, what was that like? Like a big learning curve, I would assume.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah it was a big learning curve at the beginning because obviously I came to guide the Serrano that it's like you know what you're doing with a spay rod you can cause some damage, catch big King Salmon, but if you don't know what you're doing, you know it's very, very hard. It's a river that you have to get to know well to actually fish it properly, you know. But everyone comes in here and is successful. It's a very, very hard river. Yes, you catch fish, but it pays very, very well. That's why people come here, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's pretty good. A lot of the people that end up coming out there, I would assume, are, you know, either saved up for a while or relatively wealthy enough to go fishing in Patagonia. Where do you find that they come out? You know, very capable of casting and all that. Or do you kind of get it all where people barely know what they're doing, all the way to you know, someone that knows exactly what to do?
Speaker 1:Like it depends on the time and what kind of people we're guiding. When we guide a lot of hotels, because there's a whole lot of hotels in the park that they do their own excursions but obviously they don't do the fishing. So they just called us or the people that actually are staying in there decided to contact us beforehand and we'll be set a fishing tour. You know, we take them to the Serrano River In there, like we have. I bring, when I come with the car, I bring four spare rods, two single-handed rods and two spinning rods.
Speaker 1:Actually, you know, because sometimes there's somebody who doesn't know anything, you know, and they see people that sometimes they see people catching a big king. You know we're talking about a 30-pound king and I want one of those. Okay, go ahead, everything is catching release inside the park and especially as the guides not only me, not only my teammates from Marianas by fishing, but other guides as well they take good care of and force it, you know, and being able to see that the salmons are being returned, yeah, at least in the park, especially because we're taking care of people, that you know. Yeah, they don't have to watch that shit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I get that. It's yeah. If you see people catching fish and you're not, it always starts to play on your mind, which then makes you either you know, try harder, or you start to get kind of in a slump where you're like over it.
Speaker 1:You know I can't do this, it's probably that the indigenous people have different approaches on what they want to fish and actually some people are spinning, spinning fishermen. You know, and you've got to there's already like this part of the park where you can actually catch these kings. It's not that long of a stretch. You know, because then it gets together with another river, that it comes from an ice field. Both rivers come from an ice field but one has already traveled like probably 60 miles or 100 kilometers and the other one, you know just traveled 10 miles. You know 16 kilometers and then they get together. So from that part of catching fish is very hard and besides that it gets just it's huge.
Speaker 1:The Saran River already is a massive amount of water. You know we're using 10 weights, 15 footers, and you know in the parts where you can catch the king someone because you cannot catch him in every single pool but with a spay rod, you know you can catch him with a spinning tackle everywhere. You know, but the spay rod if you want to catch him with a spay rod, there are samples that they have the good current. You know the good depth that you're actually able to bring the fly down there because they're very, very low. You know we're using T20s, t14 to T220s. You know, depending. Yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 2:It's hard. Yeah, I know casting a T20 is just. I mean, I definitely don't fish heavy sink tips like that out here. I have them in my arsenal, but I love just a very like. Pretty much the way I work with sink tips is if I can cast it really well. I'd rather add a little bit of weight to my fly and, you know, make sure that I get the right angle to allow that fly to drop as deep as I need it to go, or at least what I think I'm getting it down to. And then I fish a lot of like.
Speaker 2:Well, the last couple of years, prior to that, it was all tube flies and, I guess, stone flies, really that all swinging. But now I'm kind of getting into like the more of the classic style flies and they're just very lightly dressed so they can drop down a lot easier. So now I'm finding more of an issue of like hooking up on the bottom versus not getting down fast enough. Yeah, I guess that runs me into what's the kind of fly selection for King. So we'll talk about Browns in a bit. But if we're going for Kings, what are people like? Do you, I guess? Do you guys, do you expect people to bring their own gear, or do you guys have everything they need?
Speaker 1:We have everything like in here, like, especially because people are coming sometimes to hotels and, as I was saying, they're staying in a hotel. They came to hike, because people come to hike to tour the vine. But you know, when you come to your family and you're a something to 60, something, you know, that just likes to fish, he doesn't want to go a hike. You know 10 miles, you know. So they rather, you know, go fishing and we provide that. And besides, also we have people that they want to catch King salmon. They come for three days, four days, trying to catch Kings, sometimes if they have the cast, because in here also you have to cast with your left hand in front, because you don't have to forget that we have 20 miles per hour wins. You know, every day, you know all all day long. Wow, like in here, it's all the time 30 to 40 kilometers and then the gust 50 to 60 and on a very shitty day it can be a hundred kilometer gust, you know, and you're fishing on 70 kilometer per hour wind.
Speaker 2:Wow. So I guess that's why you're bumping it up to like 10 weight rods and 15 feet long, kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Exactly, but fortunately the part of the river that we fish it's all with. The wind blows from right to left you know way and towards the other side of the bank. So actually it helps a lot if you know what you're doing, to just like a fishing with the wind and you get amazing distance. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we call that a hero cast out here where you got the wind coming behind you and you just like floats off with the wind, exactly.
Speaker 1:Not only here, like we mainly tell the people.
Speaker 1:You know, especially because you're using a 15 footer, obviously you do the cast with your left hand up, you know, you do your good snap tea, then you bring it back, maybe a Peri poke, it will help a lot, you know, especially extended that big T20 or that T16, t14, you know, and then once you pop, you go up, you know and just keep it high up. You know, and it's perfect because they actually understand immediately that the biggest issue is that nobody, the people, don't load the rod. You know, they just bring it forward. They keep their rod tip right in front of them, you know, without generating any power, they just bring it because the line is heavy, but not because they're putting that you know, rod tip in use and it helps a lot because they realize that the wind is their friend and that line goes above and beyond and you can get those 40, 50 meter no, no, 30 to 40 meter casts that sometimes you need, yeah, you know, between 25 to 40 meters, I would say is the cast. Wow, yeah, and you see them, you know.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, All right, and then going back to fly selection. What's the kind of bread and butter Truders?
Speaker 1:Truders are the ones that work the best, then other. You know Norwegian patterns. I can send it to you. I don't know the names exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 1:Let me see.
Speaker 2:You find a lot of people bring. I mean, if they're planning a fishing trip out there, let's assume they're not just going there to hike. Do you find that they bring their own gear usually, or no?
Speaker 1:no, they call us and we provide gear. Like in here we have Patagonia waders, loop rods, loop reels. So we're like in Spain, you know, in single handed, the same loop rods. You know super good equipment and, yeah, Patagonia boots. What else Like Yeti pullers, everything like big nets for the teams.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can see that. I can see the boats Got. You see a lot on our boats out here on commercial fishing or not commercial fishing. But yeah, trolling for salmon Is that a big thing out there trolling for salmon in the ocean?
Speaker 1:No, not that big. It's getting bigger nowadays because that's something that it didn't do before. Yeah, here the King Salmon always made another economy. You know people, and there's actually people who illegally put nets in some rivers up north and they catch King Salmon. They sell it. Actually, they say that like around between 70 to 80% of the salmon sold in Chile it was illegally. It was an illegal salmon. It was not part of the commercial established market. Oh, yeah, it was.
Speaker 2:So yeah, like it happens, yeah, I guess it probably happens out here too. We might not hear about it, maybe not to that extent, but yeah.
Speaker 1:You know there is more illegal market. There is a legal market, still the salmon legal market. You know these companies. They do all right because they sell it to everything abroad. You know, like you a lot of people. You hear from Chilean salmon. You know, you go into the supermarket and you have, of course, in Canada is different because you have the Canadian, the Alaskan, you know and everything. But if you go to Europe there is a part that they say salmon and you have the Alaskan, you have the Chilean salmon. You know, and exactly in Asia, everywhere, you know, it's one part of the world where they produce salmon. Some it is wild, like the ones that are caught and sold in the States and in Canada. Here it's not wild, it comes from a cage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting. And then when we're talking you know intruders and stuff like that, I would imagine like so big flies with a you know dumbbell eyes and all that Are you guys, do you guys?
Speaker 1:I don't realize like all these intruders in. Let me see.
Speaker 2:You want to show.
Speaker 1:The intruders or other patterns that are more of a Scandinavian type. They were super good. I don't know all the names you know.
Speaker 2:Let's see what we have in here, but I guess probably you know some in Spanish. And oh, yeah, yeah, oh, you got the jungle cock. Though Life's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, jungle cock these things is you know? Yeah, Inche troops, I don't know how you call this.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, the sonic cones right on. Yeah See, that's what I was fishing for many years out here you got your predator wrap, in there you got your sonic cone with some jungle cock. I mean, that's just a recipe for catching fish for sure.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. This is the colors are pink, black, purple. They can go much out to truce, but they don't go much out of that. You know it's the flies that, yeah, work the best.
Speaker 2:Have you guys ever done some? Have you swung any kind of more traditional flies?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, like I cannot tell you that they don't work, because they do, but obviously these patterns, we learned a lot, not only me, but with the same guys that are actually in the screen right now. There are these guys from Scotland, will Pick and I haven't met Al Pick, that is his brother. They're from Twin Peaks Flight Fishing in Scotland and they come in here and with us we do a program of a camp, you know, for people who are Scottish, mainly because they really they are excellent casters and they bring them over here to come catch kings. I worked with them last season. This season, unfortunately, I have different plans, but maybe next season I'll be back with them in those weeks. But, yeah, so these guys, obviously Scottish, they know how to play cast perfectly, so I knew how to cast, I knew how to fish it, but I was not very good at it and since I met them, you know, I considerably evolved, and obviously not only me but my co-workers as well, you know. So, yeah, these are a lot of the patterns that they use and, yeah, what we have been taught in a lot of things. And obviously there are other fishermen, not only these guys that we see in the river, because there are people like you don't have to be rich to come to Patagonia to fish.
Speaker 1:You just have to have the knowledge of where you can fish. For example, the King Salmon in Torre del Paine. If you stay in the camp, you can walk every day to the river. You don't need to stay with us. That's obviously understandable.
Speaker 1:But obviously you have to bring your equipment. You have to bring your waders, you have to bring your. You know, you have to do everything on yourself. You have to rent a car, you have to do everything. Obviously, what you're paying, you're paying for everything to be set up. You don't have to think about anything. You come, you just bring your person one bag. You know just a couple changes for, you know, first lady years, because then we have waders, we have boots, we have the brats, we have nets, we have the flies, we provide everything. So it's super easy, super simple, you know. But people can come and fish the same rivers and have their same experiences and they already have the knowledge of where to look, how to catch. And we see people like that. We see people from Letonia. There is this guy five days, six days, and then they go back. You know.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, add a little bit. Oh, there we go, we're back. We could hear you, but it was. The video was getting a little fuzzy, but it seems to be good now. Okay, awesome, yeah, yeah, that's so.
Speaker 2:Some people do go down there and do DIY, like do it yourself, fishing, yes, but of course, obviously traveling, like I know. Even when I went to Mexico and I brought my rods the first time I did it, they tried to take my rod. They were like you can't travel with this. And then I was like, yeah, you can, for sure you can, but they let me take it. But, long story short, you know, when you're packing up your boots and your waders and all your fly gear, that's like a suitcase on its own, so it's a lot of stuff to bring. That is definitely a nice feature, yeah, and then you know knowledge. Showing up to a new river and not being told anything about it would be a challenge. I mean, you can do so much research on online, but once you actually get there and you see the distance of, you, know such a big river and how to fish it. You've never seen it at low water. There's so much as far as the wind, is that because it's coming off of the mountains Cold and hot air.
Speaker 1:It's because it's coming from the ice field.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's like super cold wind.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's very cold wind. It's like leaving the biggest radiator door open. Yeah, because it just blows cold air all the time. It's rarely, it's a rare day when it's not windy. You know, it's super rare. It doesn't happen very often because usually there's so many microweathers generating inside the ice field that, yeah, it blows out all the time. Right now it's super calm, but there's still, I would say, 20 kilometers per hour wind. Maybe the gust is 35, 40. That's a normal day, you know, super normal day, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's like, yeah, that's a challenge. I mean, casting in wind is usually not great. It's nice if it's going with you with your cast, but you know, when you see people fishing on the flats and you see their clothes just flapping in the wind and they're making these casts, you obviously need that bigger rod and all that. As far as you said loop rods and loop reels, what lines are you using out there generally? Are you using like long belly lines using a 15 foot rod?
Speaker 1:For kins you're using the Feast Airflow Feast. Okay, that's the best line, because it really really gets those flies down there. Yeah, you know, I would say that's our.
Speaker 2:I don't even know. Oh, it's Dun-da-da-da yeah.
Speaker 1:I love the best. Yeah, it's a very good line. And then when you really the other line that we use, that it's more of a trolling line, that scientific angler cells, that is called the deep water express. Okay, so it's 850 grains, 850 grains of power. Wow, it's a beautiful line. It's 30 feet, 9 meters. So you just use it as a line, you don't put a tip, you just use that thing. Yeah, and with that like, it's still like you can cut it. So you can, because, like, when you're using the FIS, you have 720, you know, especially for those roads, it's the FIS 720, you know, plus the T20 or plus the. So it's a lot of weight that you're casting out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We're casting the rods and that's why you need a good rod as well. You know, because in here if you come with a butter stick you know you're not going to go anywhere. You need a fast action rod that's going to take that line out there. And from people that we cast like that I guided that they fished the Pacific Northwest, where it still hit from Oregon or people from BC they learned super quick with the left hand because they realized they just have to get in it. You know. But the thing that they believe, even when they come for a day that they believe that they got better, is that they never realized that they could get so much distance. You know, and obviously the wind helps a lot with it. You know. But you know you develop. You know the necessity of getting distance, because not only the distance you needed so you can get it out there is because when you're swinging for a King's Sound, you know it's different that from a steelhead or for a SeaTrap. You know, because you what you really want is that thing to go as slow as possible. You know, and they're swing to be almost like a straight line, you know, coming into. So it just, you know, very, very slow and the only way to do it is mending, mending, mending, mending, mending. And how many times you meant for a King's Sound? And probably five, six, seven, eight times a lot of the times, because you just want that flight to go super slow and to get that.
Speaker 1:So you cannot really tell how much of the channel where the fish are. You know how much part of the channel you're, you're, you're, you're actually fishing it. You know, you can tell that at some point your fly started working, because you can feel that on your line, on your line, in your fingers, but especially when you're using this heavy line and these flies that are almost scratching bottom. But you can actually, you cannot actually say, okay, I started swinging it properly on the other side, on the other back, yeah, because, yeah, because you're casting a little bit of river, you're mending, you're mending. So, yeah, you cannot know for certain where you're starting to.
Speaker 1:So is he? Having a super long cast helps, but like there is people who don't know how to cast well, and sometimes they get to fish the last, I don't know three, four meters of the channel and they catch a King's Sound, because the King's Sound were close to that shore, you know they got lucky pool King's Sound on beautiful picture, 30 pounder. And then you see this guy that casts all the way on the other side of the river and he's getting skunked. You know, yeah, yeah, king's Sound, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah it's. I don't know. You never really know where they are, unless it's like sight fishing. Yeah, it's just got to keep casting, I guess. Right, keep trying, I guess. So you're saying the speed of your fly is a pretty big impact. I mean, that's definitely for salmon as well out here, and for steelhead especially, from my knowledge. And then so they cast out generally across the river and just do a big men to read kind of angle it almost straight down, so when it goes through its swing it's as slow as possible and then yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, but you want your line almost straight down on the river, you know, and obviously the furthest away to be just as the line straight down, you know.
Speaker 1:So when it comes, it comes so slow that I'm obviously working below, you know that's also what you want. So because, yeah, that's how it works, that's how you get them, and obviously having a super long cast helps to fish the whole channel but doesn't warranty a fish. You know, last year when we were with these guys from Scotland, the guys from Twin Peaks, you know, there was this guy who casted beautifully, you know, and he caught a salmon only one salmon the last day of the fishing, in the last hour, you know, in a whole week, you know, and he was the best castor out of all and all of the other guys had fished. You know a salmon already, yeah, but you know, and it's, yeah, it's that's how you know migratory fish works, you know, and if you don't like it, go fish. You know cutthroat and little rainbows, you know, in a river or in a lagoon somewhere else, you know it's not for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and like that's the one thing, like I guess expectations for people that have never been out there can sometimes be pretty high because they've watched, you know, youtube videos of it happening and stuff like that. Do you find people that are going for the spring salmon, or the king salmon we call them springs out here, the king salmon? Do they usually come with pretty high expectations? Or do you guys, before they come, kind of explain like, hey, this is what it's like, you know?
Speaker 1:I think that a lot of people come with any experience. A lot of people they don't know what they're coming to like. Okay, they told me that I was going to come fishing. You know, some people actually know like that and they actually know how to spay, you know. So that's been awesome, yeah, and you get everyone.
Speaker 1:Now, the people that come in here, especially the groups that come from with the look camp, with the people from Scotland, they know, because these are people from Twin Peaks, clients from Twin Peaks, that they already manage in Scotland. So when they bring them over here, obviously like they don't want to sell them something that is not, you know, so they thought they know how to sell it, you know. So expectations are met, yeah, so, yeah, that's why they keep coming, that's why that thing continues going and we continue with the business, you know, because we're able to put that thing in mind. You know, and obviously the king salmon in here as well they jump out of the water and out of the time, just out of nowhere. So that helps a lot because people, when they get into the river, they see, you know these 20 pounder, 30 pounder, jumping out of the water and just making a big splash. Oh, look at the size of those fish. Yeah, go, go, go, try to catch them. So they're super excited. Yeah, exactly so. So, yeah, I would say that, yeah, I have been with people that have gotten, you know, felt disappointed. Yes, one or two, but the majority of the people love it.
Speaker 1:You know, the place is majestic. You know, it's just the mountains in the back, even if you're not catching fish. You know, or you see, when I see that somebody is casting, he's not casting properly because he's tired or whatever. You know, when you cast these big lines, all the time it gets tiring us after. So you know it's like, okay, chill out, let's go out, let's get out of the water. You know, look at those mountains, look at this, and they in the place that you're at. You know like, okay, you know you want coffee, you want something to eat? No, nothing, how are you feel better? You know just. You know, take care. You know, watch the mountains. They go out it back again. They improve.
Speaker 1:You know, they just needed to get out of the of the zone. But obviously, when you're in the zone and you're doing great, I, if you need coffee, I'll bring it inside the water because I want you to catch a fish. You know I, yeah, I want you to be in there as much as you can, but it's still hard because this is water that comes from the nice field as well more travel but from the ice field, so it's still in the four degrees Celsius. You know, low forties, so yeah, so yeah, it's. It's very cold river. The kings are there, you see them.
Speaker 1:You're catching the spear, you're casting the spear out and if you're doing right, you're in your zone, you're, you're having fun and, yeah, people enjoy it, people love it. I love it in particular. Just to do that, I don't really care. Of course I want to catch a king salmon, but if I don't catch it, I can go to that place every day, you know. Meanwhile, I hang out. Look at the mountains. You know you work those pools, try to do the best swings that you can. You know that's what it's all about. I guided this guy. He told me that in the States, or in Canada as well, they say that people who stick their head, they say everything is fine. Meanwhile you're fishing good water. Well, you know, if you know that, where the good water is and you're fishing it, well, everything is all right by me, you know, and yeah, I think it's the same motto over here, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can definitely vouch for that, like I've. I think I've been out eight times a season for steelhead, basically every weekend, except for this weekend I'm taking a break just because one of my reels blew up because it was so cold, it got so frozen and then, like everything was good and all of a sudden my reel, the drag system, was gone. So yeah, it can be a lot on gear when it's so cold out. But you know, like you said, if you're fishing good water and you're doing the best you can and you think that you know you're getting your fly down where it should, that's like the recipe for a good day for me.
Speaker 2:Now it used to be like I'd get, you know, kind of sad if I didn't catch a fish or, you know, hook into a steelhead. But it was so often that you wouldn't that you know after, like, my first steelhead was three months of fishing before I got them and you know, next year it was, you know, at least a month before I hooked into one. So yeah, used to not go or used to going out and not catching a fish. You start to appreciate, you know the things around you. You see a nice waterfall or you see this beautiful run with the beautiful steelhead green water and that all kind of makes up for the day. And if you do happen to catch a fish, then you're just ecstatic, you know, let alone land it. If you just hook into it, you're happy. If you land it, well then you're calling some friends after your day and, you know, telling some stories. But as far as fly shops out there is it, do you buy mostly online or are there starting to be more and more fly shops?
Speaker 1:Well, there is a pretty well established market already, with the representation of most brands, I would say the majority. I work with one shop in particular, that is Rotten Gun. I used to when I was guiding. Then I started working with them during the I mean, I was in university. I would go to university and I would work with them in the fly shop because they rented a skis for the ski season as well.
Speaker 1:Obviously, fly fishing is prohibited, all the fishing is prohibited during the winter, and here the season is very well established from October 15th all the way to April 15th in this area, and up north it's to the first Sunday of May. Were you able to fish? Yes, you can't fish anymore. Okay, yes, then people, usually in here there is not a big hunting scene People go hunting for dogs, erled dogs, I don't know how you guys, I think erled dogs is the name in English, I'll show it to you later.
Speaker 1:Okay, but it's the same thing that people go shooting in Argentina, at their play, you know, and they just kill three thousand in a day between a couple of friends. That's normal in Argentina. In here, no, it's not that much, but obviously some people it's getting lost, though not a lot of people hunt anymore in Chile. Then you have wild pigs in some parts of Chile, in the southern part, and yeah, like we have a deer but we're not allowed to hunt it because it's the national animal with the conifer. So those animals, you cannot touch them. And the humul is already an endangered species because actually probably the natives and people have hunted it for years and even as the coat of arms probably some people still killed it. So yeah, that's why it's endangered.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. I would have thought that hunting was a little bit bigger out there than you're saying, but I guess there's resources for food and all that out there. Yeah, yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there are some islands. There are some islands where there are people who have their hunting lodges and they have red deer, they have different species, boars, and yeah, they do a business out of it because these are big animals caught in the wild. But yeah, they're feeding them, they're everything. So, yeah, it's not the same hunting that you do in Canada or for what I understood that, I didn't have the chance to do it. But the thing that I find amazing, that is the tax system, because even if you get the tag, maybe you win, you're super lucky, you get the tag for a moose or whatever. Then you have to go out and walk the shit out of the mountain to just to try to see the moose, and then you can see it, but if it's not close to the car or you may not be able to take it out, then what's the point of shooting it? So, yeah, maybe this guy got a tag for moose, but maybe he's not gonna actually hunt the moose because he needs to do a lot of work for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on my island we got a Roosevelt elk and I believe I'm not a hunter so I might not know anything or know much about it, but I know it's a tag system and I know several people that have put in their name for the tag since they were young and they're older men and they've never got it so like, and then they get it, or one of their friends got the tag, so they go out on a hunt together and, yeah, then you have to find the animal and, like you said, then can you even shoot it. Is it even ethical to take a shot? Is it close enough? There's so many variants that, yeah, it makes for tough hunting. For sure, like you, I guess you were staying in Ferney, right? Yes, yeah, so Ferney, bc, beautiful area, but I guess the forest there is pretty dense. But, like here on Vancouver Island, you know, if you're bushwhacking you're probably going to be going through like tight stuff where it's hard. So you're doing that, trying to climb up a mountain just to look out, just to see if you can find, you know, a bit of a clearing to find an animal, and yeah, chances are tough.
Speaker 2:So I know like even people that hunt deer out here, put in a lot of work on the off season to track the animals. And then hunting season comes around and these animals know, like, don't go in these areas. All of a sudden you know they're smart enough to be like, yeah, we go over there, we get killed. So we go over here. It's tougher to find them. But so yeah, we covered. So just to be very clear for everyone when is the King salmon season? When can you get there and start fishing for them and when does it kind of taper out and is they're done spawning? When they're done spawning, do they go back to the ocean or do they just die? They die.
Speaker 1:So is it the same King salmon that you guys have over there? Yeah, it's double checking, exactly. They get pretty big because they have a lot of food. I'm not, don't get me wrong, I know that they get pretty big in Alaska and in Canada as well. These are big animals, you know, but here they have plenty of food. And it happens the same with the sea trout, you know. They go out because there is more food on the oceans that there is in the rivers a lot of the times. So that's the reason why they're out, they're, they're already here, you know, they're out out there.
Speaker 1:So I would say that if they start coming in, sometimes in November, but to see a good amount of number in the rivers is December, january, you know, and in February it's already. Yes, there are there, but a lot of them they already spawned, they're in between spawning. Some of them are arriving late. So, yeah, yeah, I would say in December, january, february, those not only here, but everywhere in Chile. You know, because this is the experience in Torres del Paine. You know you are going to Chile for some other reason, because you have a family trip to another area of Chile. You know, meanwhile it's in the south and where is the fishing area that comes from, the, where Patagonia is, and a little bit up north of that, the Lake District, yeah, and there you can also catch a game salmon. You know different rivers, different areas, but they're out. They're out there, yeah, so yeah. And the same months December, january, February, yeah, now for Citroen, march and.
Speaker 2:April, and the Citroen, those would be Browns. Yeah, you see, browns, browns. Okay, yes, browns.
Speaker 1:In some other rivers you can find a stickhead, but the amount of them it's very little and it's way early in the season. So either the season is not open yet or it's about to open, and it's about to open like October 15th. Sometimes I go fishing on October 15th and I've seen the not the stickhead but rainbow trout. You know that they're starting to spawn. You know so even if you go still heading like they're already in their, in their thing. You know you might catch one. But it's not like, like you guys, that you go in the winter, right now, before the spawn. Right, yeah, about to spawn. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting, it's pretty. Uh, yeah, it's a sweet fishery. You guys got out there. I mean the fact that they were introduced and they did so well enough to like cruise around and make it to the other side and stuff. Obviously there's. There's enough food. I guess we should cover a little bit about brown trout now. Have you done quite a bit of brown trout fishing there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, of course that's what I. When I went to the first lot where I worked, they had an amazing spring creek, a world known spring creek for big browns, and I learned a lot in there, with the big browns in there. And then obviously the Simpson River, the Maniwales, all the rivers in the northern Koyake area are an amazing place to to learn. You know, like the Maniwales, and the more of the Simpson than the Maniwales is a classic fishing experience. You know, like you can be in the same, or used to be used to be at least like that a few years ago. Maybe today's a little bit harder because fishing are getting smart, but in Koyake you, it's where you can use, you know, the dry flies, droppers, and if somebody's not catching fish with a dropper this size, you just put a little bit longer dropper in the same pool and you can be catching fish all day. You know there's so many fish in so many different areas, obviously not all of them big, but in there, in those pools, you can still catch up. You know 16, 17, maybe 18, you know, maybe, if you're very lucky, you know maybe there is a 20. Yeah, so, yeah, the fish are, the fish are in there, you know, like, you know, like you know, in the river, I don't think you're going to catch anything bigger than 20, 22, maybe if you're very, very lucky. But in the oons and in lakes, yeah you, you have 28, you know some 30s not many, but there are, there, are there. You know, that's in Northern Patagonia and in Southern Patagonia, where I'm guiding right now in here.
Speaker 1:The 13th century is a very good possibility because they're all sea trout. They're like the rivers are very short. They go from the ice filling to the ocean in 30 kilometers. So, like all the fish are coming in and out. You know of the system. So all of them, they're getting big because they go to the ocean to eat shrimp and other things and then they come back up. They come back up, you know, and they're monster. They just chase the salmon trying to eat the eggs. So you can still see big sea trout every day. You know you catch those five, six kilo and they're there, they're in there. Maybe you're not going to catch a king, maybe you're going to catch a sea trout in the same part. It's crazy but it happens.
Speaker 2:Are people doing much streamer fishing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, like here we don't do beats Like besides, like how are you going to get that beat that low? You know, like I don't know, like I don't, I don't imagine, I don't imagine to be possible for streamer fishing. For a spade, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, I know that's what you mean, right.
Speaker 2:Um, well, no streamers to me. I don't know if I have one. Oh yeah, for me these are streamers Like yeah, I mean, you know we'll be fishing. Uh, I don't know. Yeah, you know things like this. So more like a sculpin. Do you guys have sculpin out there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we, we use it. It helps, like in other parts of Chile up north. They work very well in here in in southern Patagonia. I would say that for King Salmon and for for a lot of those things, we use these patterns like we were talking before. Intruders, you know the Patacorba, you know style of the, the Scandinavian flights, but for brown trout, you know, I would say streamers, yes, but super easy. Yacht bugs with rubber legs, like uh, uh, woolly butters with rubber legs, like the yacht bug, for example, let me, these are a little bit ugly, but right now, but oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that thing works so nice, then maybe. Then look, it's a little bit too big, but the Fed Albert's yep, always handy, they work, can't go. Yeah, exactly, I mean a super nice day when you see that there is a lot of action going. You can use something like this like a, a bomber.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, cool yeah. That's what a lot of people use for your summer steel head out here.
Speaker 1:Exactly it, it works. It doesn't work every day but it works. And then also, for example, in here, look like this thing, like the fish tacos. You know this flies the fish, okay, cool, yeah, yeah, fish tacos. So even with a floating line, you don't even need a sinking line, you just need a floating line, just let them, you know, swing on the surface and like almost on the surface because obviously it's a streamer but it's not going to. You're almost going to see the the waves of it. Yeah, you know when it's swinging and it works.
Speaker 1:And in some other pools, obviously it's nice when you have a sinking tip but, like, you can catch a sea trout on a single hand in in. In some parts you can catch sea trout single hand on a six way, no problem. But then it's super nice when you have the spay rod and you have maybe a 13 foot, a six weight or between a six and an eight footer. Yeah, that is super nice for the Rio Grande, especially when the Rio Grande is big. It's the perfect size of a rod to catch one of those babies.
Speaker 2:That's funny. My, my Chilean buddy is calling me right now. We have a bit of a joke at work. We always call him the Guadalajara. I don't know why, how it started, but yeah, he's, he's a good guy. You know the the brand, lippi.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, he was working for them when he came out here and yeah, so he brought us back a bunch of Lippi stuff and it was cool to kind of see, you know, the gear that they're using. I was like that's basically the same type of like hiking gear and stuff out here. But he does it all. He goes snowboarding, he goes like ice wall climbing I don't even really know what to say about it, but it was cool when he started explaining it because I didn't like I knew Chile was a very long country, but then he was explaining how it's like you know, desert here, crazy snow, mountains over here, tropical area here, you know, like you guys early got it all. But I guess back to the brown trout. Are you still dealing with that high wind scenarios when you're going for the brown trout, or are they more so a little bit away from those ice fields and in kind of a warmer temperature?
Speaker 1:so the the result of that? You can catch some trout, but it's not. It's decent. You know, if you want to catch where I guide in Tierra del Fuego, it's different from Tierra del Fuego in Argentina, like, as I told you, in Coyayque in northern Patagonia, where I started working at the beginning of my career. In there there is brown trout in the rivers everywhere all year round. That's what they fish. You know it's traditional fishing in a boat. Maybe you know because you float a lot in those rivers. They do take you all the operations to different lakes or lagoon, but mainly rivers. The fishing is amazing and you're doing it similar to Ferney, because the weather is super nice. Maybe you can still get a shitty day, you know, maybe a cold day, but it's nothing crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So Rosalpina, where the kings are, it's tough because it's the wind, it's the mountains, it's the prettiest place on earth, but it's freaking hell when it wants to be. You know Like you can. You know the wind can make it very, very, very annoying.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then in Tierra del Fuego there is a lot of wind, it's cold, super cold, but, like in there, is one of the places that I love the most because it's where nowadays you can fish by yourself the most. You know, because there's not many people. It's very, very hard to get there, you know, because it's not only that you get into the southernmost city in Chile, that is, punta Arenas, but then you have to cross to an island in front, on the other side of the Magellan Strait, you know, and obviously this place, argentina, has a little bit more developed, with bigger cities, cities with, you know, hundreds of thousands of people. Punta Arenas, the biggest city in Patagonia, it's a hundred thousand people, you know. And then in the island, the biggest place, has maybe one thousand. Then there is another place with 300 people, and then you know people that live in the farms and between all these farms is just beautiful rivers, beautiful mountains, you know, and great fishing.
Speaker 1:So also other things happened. You know that, for example, in Tierra del Fuego, the beaver was introduced, not because we wanted it, but because Argentinians thought it was going to be a super, super nice business. You know belts and everything. When they went broke, they just released them instead of killing them. And it's a, it's mayhem because it obviously flooded a lot of land and these guys have done beaver ponds. But because, the same way, because we don't enforce on a lot of things on fishing, we don't enforce in a lot of things of other things, like this mess with the beavers and the beavers, they have done amazing, you know, spas for the trout, like the trout used to be living in a cold river with not a lot of food and now the beaver made a pond around him. The trout got sort of landlocked like sort like locked in the pond and then a lot of scots starting appearing and a lot of other food sources and yeah, they grew super, super big, you know, and you go into these ponds where you can see that they don't have more than maybe a meter in depth and you see 28 inch browns. You know, just through the sink, you know like that. So yeah, that happened in the Chilean side more than in the Argentinian side.
Speaker 1:In the Argentinian side, obviously, you have the sea trout, sea trout. You know best sea trout fishing ever in. I don't know the world because I haven't been in more other places fishing for sea trout. But of course the Argentinians know how to sell it and they're fully booked all the time. I can figure out ways to get to fishing in the Argentinian side, because in the Argentinian side if you're not Argentinian, you cannot fish it by yourself. You need to be guided. Oh, okay, exactly, you cannot do DIY the Tierra del Fuego. You can do it in the Chilean side. That is where the river is born.
Speaker 1:So we have good sea trout fishing in that river, but it's not Argentina, because in Argentina they have the outlet into the ocean, so obviously there is much better water in those pools. It's like fishing in the ocean. It's full of fish. You know, that's why people go over there. So we sell, but we sell more. It's a mix of sea trout that you can catch in the Chilean side. Don't get me wrong. The fishing is good, but obviously I cannot be sure that they're going to be in the pool, because obviously not all of them are all the way up in that part of the river and also they don't come as a. They're not a school of fish. Maybe five or six here and there in one pool, five or six in another pool, but it's not like a school of 50 fish coming up to spawn in the Argentinian part, that some of them spawn in the Argentinian part. Some of them spawn, a lot of them spawn in Chile. But yeah, but the fishing is good but it's not great. Yeah, that's the difference. So we offer Maybe, if you decide to come in March to fish in Tierra del Fuego with us, we fish maybe two days of the Rio Grande, we fish two days of these lagoons and pond, beaver ponds that we have, that All this is private water a lot of the times, and not private water, because water cannot be private, but private land access.
Speaker 1:So you're already super far away. Very, very unfortunate would be to see somebody else. Besides of that, we go so far away from the bridges that, yes, we can pretty much warranty we're not going to see another soul. Then we do a trip that we take. We travel for two hours in our car and then we take an hour boat, if the conditions are met. Obviously, we need not that much wind for that to happen and we can recognize that ahead of time. Now, fortunately, the weather forecast sort of works and when we see that there is low wind, we program this so we can go.
Speaker 1:Try to do to another river that it's even further. We can do it in the helicopter, but obviously the helicopter is much more extensive, so people prefer just to take the boat and we go for the day to fish this other outlet that, if you make it happen that we have a river rising tide, you can have amazing fishing, not only of sea trout, steelhead, because in there they're coming and going, all the species are coming and going. You can catch salted brooks, salmon, silver salmon. In March, april you can catch the Cojo Salmon Run. That's an amazing place to catch it. So yeah, it's exciting. So obviously in Argentina when people go to the Rio Grande they go for six days of the Rio Grande and here we may go one, we may go on two. But we have so many other options of catching brown trout, resident and migratory. So yeah, it's fun. We have boats, so if it's a nice day we can still go to a lake, catch in there rainbows and browns. There are some lakes so we can float them.
Speaker 1:Because in Tierra del Fuego in particular, we're going to sweat your ass, you're going to walk a lot, like every day. I'm going to make you walk five kilometers or more. You're not going to walk less than five kilometers a day. So if you're having issues with your knees or whatever, yeah, we can do the boat, maybe two days or whatever, but maybe it's not the place we can fish the Rio Grande. The Rio Grande is easy for somebody that has issues, because the Rio Grande you can have the car right next to the river. But on these lagoons, where you have like, if you want a five kilo resident brown not a sea trout, but a five kilo we have those. There are places, but you have to walk and I'm going to make you work the mat. You're going to be into mat up to your knee sometimes. Yeah, it's rugged, it's a tough place to be and maybe not canola cold but cold.
Speaker 2:Cold. Yeah, cold is cold. Yeah, I mean it's humid out there, I would assume. So when it gets cold it kind of penetrates anyways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say it's the wind, you know, at the end of the day but you have six Celsius then during the day, maybe, you know on like the worst last year on April was minus six Celsius during the night, you know. So we went fishing and we saw a lagoon first that I wanted to check out and the lagoon was frozen, you know, like fishing or solver for the lagoon, for in that in those days, you know, okay, no more fishing in this lagoon until next year. Yeah, and it happened with one night, you know, at minus six. So so you get the rivers. You have to fit with the rivers, the bigger lakes, the fishing is still there, the Cojo Salmon are coming up, so yeah, there is interesting things to do in tierra del fuego in those days, and even now you can go and fish the beaver ponds, you can still go fish the rivers and you're still going to catch a lot of resident browns, nice browns, you know. Big chance of catching 20 plus fish. 20 plus fish, Love it, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's pretty sweet. And then I know for you, know, you said for the Kings, the Kingsam, and it was February. Sorry, november, december, february, what's the season for brown trout? Is it still low?
Speaker 1:It's the whole year. Now, obviously, if you the sea trout is better marching, silver salmons are March, april, you know. So, yeah, like, the more you get closer to the winter, the better the, the, how do you say the silver? Yeah, because, like it's when the silver salmon are coming in, our seasons are developed. But these guys, they just want it. They they're not like we don't have a bunch of biologists, you know, on the government trying to decide when is the better time to finish the, the season. You know they just decides like that and it's like that. You know there's not much study on it. You know they just want it over. Okay, no more fishermen in the river Period Run. You know. So, like if we had maybe, you know like a season for silvers, you know, because silvers they still coming up on May and on May here you cannot fish them anymore. So we just actually if fish the first runs and then it's over.
Speaker 1:But on a good day, if you're lucky and you're taking the boat out there where the king, where the silver salmon come in, and you're like on the ocean outlet, you know, and the Delta waiting, you know for the rising tide and you just start casting in there when you know, and when it happens it's magic. You know, like everybody catches 10, 15, you know it's yeah, you, you throw that thing out there, whatever. Whatever you throw, you can throw a figure, but some they're going to get eaten. You know, like it's that kind of days. But it can happen as well. As well as you can go, and it can be super tough. The silver salmon, they may be already in the river and you have to go into the pools that are not very, very big. So you can, you don't swing them. You actually just throw big pink things or very flashy things and strip them very, very hard and they they attack.
Speaker 1:Because for, in my personal opinion, you know, for what I see, because obviously the king salmon, we fish it with a spay rod from super far, far away from me and with a sink tip. I don't see them attack. You know, I see that I'm swinging, and probably me, because passing this thing right in front of their faces, my imagination say that if it passes right in the nose, obviously they're going to bite it. You just like get out of here, boom reaction, right. But the silver salmon are aggressive, you know, you throw that fly, they chase it. Sometimes they bite, you lose it. You change the fly, you put another one. You do a good job and they keep coming. You know they're not. They don't have a problem with the feeling of the steel or or whatever they're. They're super aggressive fish. Yeah, and I love that. Yeah, I love that about the silver.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, coho are a really fun one to catch. I guess it's kind of the same. They're quite spooky out here, especially like when you're in an estuary or whatever. Sometimes you got to go extremely long leader, but generally, if you, you know, cast out and rip it back pretty hard, we're probably going to see a silver come grab it. So, yeah, pretty thrilling. I'd love to, uh love to experience that out there. I think that would be super cool. And then, um, yeah, so we covered, um, the King salmon and the little bit of silver coho and, uh, brown trout. I guess we might as well. Do you tie your own flies?
Speaker 1:I tie, but I'm not a master tire. I I, when I when I'm hanging out with the boys in here, when we're in the middle of the season we'll see tie a bunch of things. But I am a very, very, very lucky person that has very good uh flight tire that are friends of mine uh here in particular. So, for example, this bag in here. You know that I show you, the other day I talked to my body and I told him, like I don't have any more flights, I need flights to guide man, I I run out. I had a lot of people that they, they uh lost them and obviously I lost as well. Everybody loses flight. You know it's part of the thing. You know what are you going to do about it? You know you gotta, you gotta cry for flights.
Speaker 1:No you know something that you cannot do as a fly fisherman. And? But I cried to my buddy for flights. I was like, okay, here you go, boom, big bag full of flies, all the patterns that I need. Because these guys, they, they are at home, they don't get to fish that much, but they love flight tying and they tie for them and they keep tying because they, they, they do every day, you know, every day. They just sit in their, in their you know space, they tie a couple of flies.
Speaker 1:So when I ask him for it, you know, obviously they give it to me. Then I pay back with other things, you know, might be beer, might be barbecue, might be, whatever, you know. But so I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm a blessed guide. You know, I've been blessed by all the fishing gods because I have friends who tie amazing flies and give it to me. I get to learn from them as well to tie a lot of these flights. So I know how to tie them. You know, if I have the materials, I have everything, I know how to tie them. Uh, but yeah, but the guys who are getting the trend of what works and whatnot are these guys. You know Tomás, felipe and Roberto, three bodies of mine, all of them from Punta Arenas. Uh yeah, like they are amazing. Flight tires Amazing.
Speaker 1:So you're working in life to have those good friends you know for sure, for sure, Um, I would love to be able to, to have that much time, but obviously, uh, it's either when you guide, and in places like this imagine I'm in Porto Natales right now I have to pick up somebody at the hotel, uh, eight in the morning, around eight, 30 in the morning, maybe, um, I have to leave home at six, 30 or two, seven, because it's an hour 30 minutes to the park. You guide until five PM, you drop them off, you're not home until seven PM, eight PM, so you leave six PM in the six AM, seven AM in the morning. You're coming back in here, eight PM, back to the guide house, and then you know, take care of your cooler again, washing the car, doing everything that you need to do so you can guide the next day. So it's, it's, it's tough. You know the distances are very long and and you have, of course, it's hard because, as well, because you have people that you're not today you guide people from a hotel, but tomorrow you're guiding these people from another hotel and they, of course, they expect a clean car. You know, the same way, the other guys did so and you have to provide it. So, and it's not like you arrive at eight PM and it's something open.
Speaker 1:This is freaking Patagonia. They it's a town of 35,000, but there is nothing 24 hours, seven in here, and here at lunch everything closes. Like you go to downtown, between one and three PM, everything is closed, wow, the only thing that is not closed is restaurants. Yeah, you know, but downtown is a ghost town. And this is here, this is in Punta Reina, this is in Piaque, this is everywhere in Patagonia. You know, here it's very strict the lunchtime, lunchtime period, everything closed. And then they don't open until very, very long after six PM, maybe seven PM stops, wow, so everything closed very early. So, yeah, so you have to arrive and do the same thing again and again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, I know what you mean, man. It's I have to drive about an hour to get into the river and then, you know, I have to set up the boat, drop it in and then the guests meet me there. But we've already done the shuttle, so the truck is down at the bottom where we're pulling out, and you know, and then you got to go drop them off. So same kind of thing. I mean, you got a little bit more of a distance to travel, but yeah, it can make for long days, you know. And then you get into. Like you said, you want to have a clean truck. You are a vehicle. I don't have to do my meals, which is huge for me, but there's a lot of steps to make one person's day happen, and then you're doing it every day for the next foreseeable future in a sense. So yeah, it can get busy. So it's one of those things though I mean, obviously you love it and you know it's a no brainer. You're going to show up the next day and provide that experience for them.
Speaker 1:Exactly no. Besides, when you have exciting things like this river, in particular, king Salmon are in there, at least for me. You know I want to go over there. I don't care, like, for example, when I'm guiding people who are with the spinning, you know, I always still set up a spade rod, you know it's like, and I show them to say, hey, do you want to try this? Look at this Boom, and maybe they want to learn, you know. So it's a cool thing because the experience every day you go over there with people that you don't have a clue who they are, you don't have a clue what they know or what they want. You know there is people who have finished for the morning, but then when I set up lunch, I gave them some wine and they're like oh, do you have more wine? Yeah, exactly so it's an experience and I think that's something that, as a guide, it's key.
Speaker 1:You know to realize that maybe I can be a super good fisherman or maybe I'm not a great fisherman, but that doesn't mean that you are a good or a bad guide. You know, because you can be the best fisherman in the world. You know you can cast the furthest away from. You know, you had world record champion, you know. And you catch your fish casting. Okay, you catch your fish casting. You know 35 meter, you know, but okay, you catch a 35 meter. Maybe I cannot catch on 35 meter but I can catch it at three meter, you know, and that's what the client needs needs because you have to believe every day that you have the worst client ever, that that person is not going to be able to cast 10 feet, because maybe it's not true all the time, but 1% of the time there is true that these guys they don't know, or they think they know, but they don't know anything, and you have to make them feel yeah, so, about the experience you give them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and I know from just talking with my couple of my friends, we've actually had two Chileans work with us on the construction site and both just you know, and then I met. So I've met now in my life three Chileans and they've all been the same temperament, just like happy, go lucky, like you know, smiling all the time, cracking jokes, funny guys. But I was talking to my one buddy and he was like, yeah, you know, we're very big on like sharing and making people feel welcome, and you know, whether it's just friends and family or if it's people we've never met, it's always that same vibe where you guys want to like share a good time. And I think that's pretty special because I know, like you know, I've talked to people about some places in the US or in Canada and, and you know, the guide, like you said, is a really good angler, but maybe they're not necessarily a people person. We've got to be a people person, you know, because even me, if I have, maybe what I would consider not the greatest day fishing you know it's not irrelevant, but you still have to provide a good day where the person's happy, you know, making sure they're comfortable.
Speaker 2:Are you cold here's hand warmers. Are you? You know you want to take off your jacket. Are you hungry? You need some water? I always remind people. I'm like, hey, you haven't drank water in like two hours. Like, get some water going. And so, yeah, there's a lot of steps to pleasing people, especially if they, you know, come out from a long distance. I mean for you, you're obviously getting people traveling around the world, so you know, the fish is one thing, that's what they're there for, for sure, but everything leading up to that has to be a good time as well. You know it's an adventure. You want to make sure that they're feeling good, that they're happy. You know all these things I was going to ask because I just got introduced to it not too long ago and now I absolutely love it. But, mate, are you a big mate?
Speaker 1:Mate. Yeah, I get a lot of new things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's a part of the culture. In Patagonia I, where I grew up in one country, people don't drink mate as often. Now it's more popular everywhere. Yeah, but I would say in Chile it was very, very common until the mid-50s when coffee, you know, started being a little bit bigger. But in Argentina mate kept to be insane. In Paraguay and the south of Brazil and Uruguay. In Chile, here in Patagonia, until today, you drink mate.
Speaker 1:I don't personally drink when I'm alone, but when I'm with my goucho friends or people who drink, it's like mate, mate, okay, mate, mate, no problem, you know, it's just a sharing time, or it's an excuse, you know, an excuse to talk, to stop. Either you're working, you're drinking mate now, okay, let's drink mate, let's chat up, let's chat, chat, sorry, let's chat and, yeah, talk things you know and it's about whatever you know or nothing serious. Yeah, and that's the way I would say Latin American people are in different aspects, because I would say that the northern of South America you go, the more party people there are, and the southern, as you move throughout South America, they start relaxing. Chilean were very good at getting together or whatever. We can be loud, but never as loud as the Caribbean's, the people from the Caribbean, or, you know, colombia, venezuela, brazil, yeah, they're louder, they're way louder, way louder. But yeah, we love to share, especially with barbecues.
Speaker 1:We do that, that kind of thing, more than you know bigger parties, but it's about sharing and everybody here is as well as everybody in South America, you see, you know, latinos are more like we said, we call it like hot blooded, in a way where, like you, need to touch people and you need to show affection. You know, if I like you, you know, when I see you know, hey, buddy, how are you? You know I'm going to hug you, I'm going to, you know, give you the hand. You know, look at it, even grab your cheeks. It's good to see you. Good, you know, I know you. It doesn't mean that I've known you from your whole life, but if I like you, you're a good person, you have been good to me. I'll behave that way. Because, yeah, it's people, especially in Patagonia. You know, they live in farms for so much time and without seeing many people. So when you see people, you are always you want to talk to somebody, you want to. You know, you got one of that.
Speaker 2:I agree, I'll touch for that as well. I mean my two buddies. You know, when we see each other it's always big smiles, big hugs, and you know it's very homie. From what I've heard and then also a little bit of what I've experienced, meaning you know the three people that I've met from today, that it's yeah, it's good. I mean, that's the way I am when I see my friends, my whether they're close friends or a new friend, it's they're getting a hug and we're going to have some good conversation.
Speaker 2:But back on the mate. It was funny. You said that because, like when we're working, especially now that it's cold, it's like, oh, it's 11, 12 o'clock, mate time. Everyone stops what we're doing. We sit around, we boil some water and set up the mate and drink that. I really like it. It was. My buddy was like oh it's, it's bitter, not everyone likes it and I I tasted it. I was like, dude, that's good and I like it because I don't always want to drink coffee halfway through the day but I still want, you know, that caffeine to get me through the rest of the day. So I've really grown to enjoy it. So when I come out there, eventually we'll have some mate, so we're sure you expect that I'll get some beers too. But what mate?
Speaker 1:That's no monkey, for sure. And then the other thing is that we drink in here it's Pisco, and in Argentina, and in Patagonia as well, a lot of fernet, yeah, so the thing that people drink the most in here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going to. Actually I'm going, we're having a late Christmas party tonight just because my one, our one buddy, was back in Chile for a month or so. But yeah, we're, we're trying to get some Pisco, so I'm pretty sure there'll be some there too as well. I love, I love the culture out there. You know Pisco is is a good one.
Speaker 2:And then, mate, and yeah, the experience you get, aside from just fishing, from what I hear is is you know it's a special place out there where you're at, exciting. You know there's a lot of special places around the world and all that. But I think going out there and, like you said, being in the mountains and seeing what you see is like nothing you've seen before. I mean, we got obviously beautiful country in British Columbia and then you know you go into Alberta and it's flat kind of, not a ton of trees, and then East Coast is all different and out there you got such a diverse landscape being so long and then going into the mountains as you go, eastbound, kind of thing. So yeah, I've I've talked with a lot of people and that's like almost number one in the on their bucket list is is going to Patagonia and experiencing hopefully experiencing the King's Ammon or or even the Brown trout.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, like I would say that, if you're, my advice to people traveling, you know, over here to Patagonia is even either, to fish. You know, because you bought a package to come six days to fish with us, with somebody else. They matter. You know, because, like there is a lot of people who do the things right, you know that they do the, they, they commit and they give an amazing service. You know, and quality fishing there, those is the same as in Canada. There is a lot of people who do the things. Okay, that's what they. They are in business, you know, otherwise they wouldn't be.
Speaker 1:But is that you take it with like amazing fishing? But this is not not even close to a place where you're going to catch 80 fish a day. You know, maybe you're going to go to a river where you're going to catch 80 things. Yes, maybe you can get that experience, but you don't. You don't come in here thinking that you're going to catch the most amount of fish of your life. You have a super good chance of catching a super nice fish, you know. But if you came in here because you can also catch a super nice fish in Canada, you can also catch a super nice fish in the States, you know, is because you want to either fish with less people that it's super nice to do when you have the river to yourself is because you want to. You know experience different people, different culture, different food. You want to drink wine up to your neck, you know. Those are the reasons to come to Patagonia.
Speaker 1:You know either Argentina or Chile. You know both places. Fishing is good in the north, as I said before better weather, brown trout, rainbow trout, resident fish. You know a lot of rivers, lakes, lagoon. Down south you freeze your ass but you catch big kings, big sea trout, still head. You know it's, yeah, it's a, it's a, but all those places have in common is that you're going to eat amazingly, you're going to drink amazing wine and amazing spirits and, yeah, and you're going to have an amazing you know experience with people that think like you, fishing wise, but they think completely different to you life wise. You know, because we come from different places of the world.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so you can come and experience that either with anybody in Patagonia that offer fishing, you know, and if you're just coming here to hang out, you know, as you said before, chile is super long and narrow. If you want to go to a desert to see the stars, because those are the clear skies in the world, that's an option. If you want to drink wine in one country, amazing option. If you want to, you know, hike in Torres del Paño National Park or another park available in Patagonia. You know it's. There's so many things to do. I'm so little time in life to experience them all. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because when I was here you summed it up pretty, pretty amazingly there. I think the last thing I would like to kind of cover is you know, let's say, let's say me, I'm planning on coming out for, for spring salmon, or, sorry, king salmon, same thing, but anyways, coming out for King salmon, what gear would I need? Because I know you said you guys got all the rods, all the flies, you know. So for myself I would be thinking base layers, thermals, just because we're fishing in some cold areas, high wind, wind will wind will chill you out very quickly. I guess you guys probably have a bit of a list for people to go off of once they've took the trip. Now they're coming, so you tell them like, okay, this is what to expect weather wise, bring your base layers, make sure you bring some wet pants and stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly Like in here, important things, you know good pair of socks always. You know a couple of those because they go out pretty easily, you know inside. So yeah, like depends on how many days good pair of socks, good pair of base layer. You know important that if you bring feather jackets, feather down jackets, like in there, you have to have a rain jacket every day, all day, because in here like just one, like the wind is moving so much weather all the time that sometimes it's sunny but it's cold because it's windy. But then a big cloud came in with a lot of rain and you have pouring rain five minutes. Then it comes out, you have the sun, then it's cloudy, like in the sky. You can see like three different types of clouds. You know one showing rain, like the lenticular clouds, and then you have all these other clouds that are all completely spread out and it's super, pretty, amazingly pretty. But that's a sign of you know how many microweathers are being generated by the wind and the ice field.
Speaker 2:Wow, you know yeah, so you'll see it all. You'll see it all and hopefully it's better primal off.
Speaker 1:Primal off I would say better for for. But I want to know, because you can get wet. You're not going to lose the cold like you're going to lose the heat of your body, so it's better primal off and yeah. But rain jacket I would say for for fishing. It's amassed everywhere at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:But yeah, yeah, I won't get home without it, even if it's even when I go out. And it's like somewhat like I went when I was in Cranbrook. I brought my rain jacket because you know that off chance the one actually I had to have my rain jacket sent to me because I forgot it. I folded it up, had it ready to pack and then it just didn't get packed for whatever reason. But I was already getting some things sent to me from my wife and yeah.
Speaker 2:So one day that it rained hard, the hardest, I didn't have my rain jacket, but I had like a half decent run breaker. I was soaked but I just kept a smile on. It was warm still, but I was soaked and I was like never again. Like bringing a rain jacket is always a must and I obviously planned for it, but then somehow it didn't get packed up. But it for me. I'm sure, like you, you know, even if you're looking at what flies to bring, it's like I'm bringing all these, but you don't know what the day is going to be like, what you're going to, how many you'll lose, what not. So overpacking is is pretty easy for me. I also hate when I get out to somewhere and I'm like oh man, why did I not bring those flies? Or why did I not bring you know this or that? So yeah, base layers, that's a good one, because you know, when I think Patagonia, I thinking warm, I'm not really thinking rain and stuff, but obviously with all those microweathers you got to prove.
Speaker 1:Southern Patagonia, where I'm at right now. You know, northern Patagonia, better weather, lake District, amazing weather. You know Lake District and the same area of Pune in the Los Andes, in Argentina, and all those area. You go with flip flops and a swimsuit. You know, yeah, fishing. Well, you can fish shirtless, no problem. Yeah, because super nice. You don't need, you don't need that way there.
Speaker 1:No, no, but as soon as you start moving down is where it starts getting. You know you start need layering and need, you know, obviously, better equipment and better tackle. And and I mean the southern most point. You know, and we used to do this operation in Cape Horn for a long time, where in there was the shittiest weather of it all. You know like it can snow in the middle in February. It's snow, it has snow to me in February, you know, and you're, you know you went out in the morning with a helicopter. They drop you off amazing day. And in the Coal Island, everything is amazing. But where you're at, you know, you just have like this huge cloud that looks like it's not gonna, is it not? It's gonna start a storm for days, wow, you know. And then you start calling, you know, to get you picked up because otherwise you know you're not gonna get anywhere. And, yeah, you're gonna have to spend the night in the rain, in the storm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think we covered pretty much everything I I wanted to, but I guess I we should wrap it up with your experience in in BC. What kind of got you to come out there and what were you kind of it was?
Speaker 1:andress. It was andress from andress, like fish and res Gonzalez. He operates in Ferney. He also is Chilean, he I, I work with him because when I decided to go back to guiding, I talked to him. I told him that I needed to if I was gonna go all the then in guiding. I couldn't do, you know, one season. I needed to do two seasons because otherwise it wouldn't work money wise, you know, economically speaking. And besides, what are you gonna do the rest of the year? You know, like I don't want to, I don't, I like a skin, but I'm not as key A healthy teacher, like a lot of guys, that they do fly fishing in the summer, they do skin the winter and obviously I believe that I have a decent English to be able to, to show what I know in the river, in a ass, you know, working in in in North America.
Speaker 1:So I want to give it a try. Obviously we're still in process of doing that, still hasn't been achieved, but who knows, maybe this season, maybe next season, but obviously I need to to make it. You know I need to have another season of fishing to make this possible. Otherwise, even if you love it, even if you, if it is your passion. It's undoable because a guy in in Patagonia is not very well paid, you know it's different. The payment that you get as a Canadian guide or an Alaskan guide, you know, or a guide in the States, you know, because obviously here in the payments are different. You know, our basic salaries are others, you know, and and we're not, obviously we're not getting basic salaries. But to be leaving out of this, you have to have a third season or other source of income. Yeah, you know. So that's what I was trying to, to figure it out, andres.
Speaker 1:He taught me fly fishing when I didn't know anything, when I was 19 years old. Today I'm 37. So, yeah, I, I fish for a long time already kind of my life almost. So I talked to him. He told me that he was going to see a check if this was a possibility. So I went to Ferney to check it out, to see if this is a possibility to and if it is a possibility to already know the river, you know to, and I got to fish the elk a lot. And my buddy, parker and Tanner, two guys that work with Andres amazing guides and amazing guys as well they took me everywhere fishing. They taught me a lot.
Speaker 1:I I learned how to, to, to grow a drift boat properly, and here we use cataract, mainly because the rivers are very rocky and it's much more safe in a way that we believe that the cataracts for the kind of waters that we fish around Even though there is some, some guys that they have drift boats, they're not that many mainly here rafts and cataract is what you see in water, yeah, mainly. Okay, so, yeah, so it was an amazing opportunity to be there and to learn from Andres, from Parker, from Tanner and obviously from the guys from Elk River and and couldn't fly shop as well. They were super, super nice with me. So, and in the same, and San Marie, and we shop as well. When I went over there the owner super nice that's. Then we realized we knew which, like you guys were working with him.
Speaker 1:Everybody in Canada in the fly fishing world treat me amazingly and in gratitude, you know, for for everything, for the, for the way they treated me and and, yeah, no, like super happy, super amazing experience and I hope it can stick, it can be done, so I can go, I can go back and and try to be there and compete with the best, because at the end of the day, bc, for what I see, is the place with the amount, biggest amount of professional guys at work. You know, like, not only in Ferdinand, but as well, like in all other places of BC, all the way from still heading in from Vancouver Island. Right, that's the, that's the further, further, most west fishing fishery, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess. So I mean including Alaska. Obviously, as you get up towards Alaska we're getting over there west. But yeah, I mean, I guess technically we're pretty darn west of the rest.
Speaker 1:We stick out so the thing is that they were saying that Canada produces, like the fishing, or the fishing in BC, it's like I don't know how many billions of dollars, you know, like it's not fair, like it's an important thing. So when you're talking about the guys in this industry, you know, in Canada it's, these are guys who fucking know what they're doing, you know. So, being in there and to be able to go with guys who are good guys and realize that, okay, a lot of them, they know a lot, you know, but maybe it's not that I'm a freaking ignorant, you know, as you realize, and that's also when I was talking to these guys, I realized that I knew more than I thought and I learned more than I expected.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's beautiful. It's one of the things I love about fishing. I mean, all around, you're always learning. It's not like, oh, I'm here at the top, no more information can be absorbed. It's like Everything is constantly evolving. You're starting to learn more. You're starting to understand more, read water better, all these things finding new holes. So it's you know, it's very engaging, from day one all the way till you know you pass on or whatever. But yeah, are you going back to cram or to a for any this year?
Speaker 1:I want to. We have to figure out with address. We are working on it because we have to work on the work permit, and not only the work permit but also the the work permit for this year, and we will have to talk to the fishing me Ministry. It is to see if I can get a guiding license, because the guiding license says that you have to be permanent resident or Canadian citizen. Right, gonna see if there is a way of but it may be talking to the ministry and explain them the situation that you know that if they would allow me to, maybe it's not gonna be possible and maybe I won't be guiding in Canada. That's a possibility.
Speaker 1:You know we're trying, yeah, we're trying to make it happen because obviously it, I really I want being in Ferney with all the people over there realize that it's a Place that is worth guiding in, not only because the fishing is fun or whatever, but because the community it's a super nice community.
Speaker 1:You know, I think that's super important when in this, because at the end of the day, you're already a fishing guide it's clear that you you're not it said you're guiding because or at least for me in particular, personally it's because it's something that I love to do and I love to be in places that I love being. You know like I don't like to be in cities, so I'm not gonna go get a job in the city because I don't like to be there. I'm, I feel awful in those places. I don't want to get out of my home. I get depression, you know, when I'm in a big city, you know. So why would I put myself into those situations? For me it's an amazing place. Anybody would love would kill to get a guiding opportunity in a place like that. Why wouldn't I want that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I hope to see you out there. I know when we we met On the bowl river there we we talked about trying to get out fishing, but course Always always a tough thing, especially with, like you know, it's not a short season, but it's not a long season, it's an average season, let's say. But yeah, if you're out there again this year, we're going to make it happen. I'll take a day off to to go down the river with you.
Speaker 1:We can schedule it. You know, like once, if everything goes on and everything goes in the mall, that I'm traveling to Canada, on on your guys summer. I'll let you know, of course, and we can figure out earlier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, that would be amazing because, yeah, there is that one day where we were talking and You're like, oh, I got a couple days off and I like had a day off and then last minute got booked and so I wasn't able to meet up with you. But, yeah, I would love to fish with you. It's obviously something we love and we obviously get along. So, yeah, hope to see you out there. Yeah, I, I always have my spay rod with me. Now this year I'm going to do a lot more trout spay and and really focus on on doing a lot of what are you using for the trout spay?
Speaker 1:are you using an OPST or using a spay light?
Speaker 2:Currently I do not have a trout spay. I got, I guess I got, a single hand with an OPST groove head on it and then Actually an eight weight two handed OPST groove as well, and then, but my favorite line is the fist. That is our flow it you can't eat it. Obviously, if we're, if we're doing you know top water dry fly fishing, then we're going to go into a floating line. So I do have a long belly, but I don't really have like. My longest rod is a 12, six, so it's a little short, it can handle it, but it's. You know I'm looking at getting a 13, 13, 6 and start getting into the long belly.
Speaker 2:I'm, you know I've only been fly fishing for, I guess, six, seven years, I think seven years so, and like Vancouver Island, you can fly fish all year round, nice. But you've got to be adapting to the next season, to what's coming out. So, like we got our, let's just start with salmon. You know salmon start coming in, I guess, like June, july, further up Island, and then it slowly trickles down. So we'll still see at the lower end of the island in November, you'll still see salmon in our river, the river that I guide on, and then December they're pretty much all dead, might see some jacks and whatnot.
Speaker 2:Then it's egg season for trout. You know that can be phenomenal fishing and steelhead will start to come in December All the way into I guess into April is when they start spawning. Then they head out. But we also got our spring runs steelhead in our winter summer run steelhead. So there's technically steelhead in a system on the island all year round basically, and of course, like the winter runs, they come up and they go spawn fairly quickly and they head back out, whereas the summer runs they come in and they could spend up to a year in that system. Yeah, but it's all timing with the water levels.
Speaker 2:You know, I can't tell you how many times I've gone out fishing and the water levels aren't good. Or was planning a trip and not enough rain. So we were definitely always watching our water levels, waiting for that big rain to come. Water bumps up, fish move around, you know, go to their next.
Speaker 1:That's what we need to happen right now in February. The river, the river is very, very low. We're waiting to get a couple, a couple rains that will bring it up so the sea trout can come all the way up that happening. You know, we have an amazing season in March, april. So we're looking at it, we're looking forward for that weather of February that's going to make the key decision if we have a good sea trout fishing or not. Still, fortunately, we have other options.
Speaker 1:So the fishing in the river, remind you are right to the Rio Grande and the river is blown up. You know, and you already paid for a week, and the only freaking river these guys have to fish is the Rio Grande, you know. So, yes, when the conditions are good, you can. You go to the river and then you catch sea trout, amazing sea trout, and they have done studies that they stay up to two years, three years sometimes. They go to the ocean. They come to stay three years and then they go to the ocean back again. They don't go every year, they don't behave like a salmon or they just go down because there is good food source, but then when they come up, they stay, they eat. I don't know other fish, resident fish, I wouldn't know really, but they, they move around and sometimes they spend more time or more other time in the river that what you would think.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah that's. It's cool, man, and like the fact that you know these fish can find their spawning ground and stuff. It's so unique, super cool. But yeah, anyways, I got to get ready for my Christmas party and you've given me quite a bit of your time, so I really appreciate you coming on. I want to call on Romania.
Speaker 1:It has been a pleasure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I wish you the best in making it out to Canada and guiding. I hope that our government lets you in the fisheries, lets you in, so I think that would be super cool for you. Yeah, we covered a lot of good stuff today so, yeah, I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge.
Speaker 1:No, thank you for inviting me, you know, for giving me the opportunity to tell a little bit of my story and a little bit of what we fish in Patagonia, you know, at the end it's not only for me but all for all the people to be informed and for people who don't know anything about Patagonia, you know, can learn a little bit and realize if it is for them. Maybe they have been dreaming of coming to Patagonia and after hearing this, they don't want to travel. Maybe, or maybe they never thought about coming to Patagonia and now they want to come to Patagonia and that's a place that I love, that I changed my life entirely just to be closer to these places, you know, and to be fishing in places like Torres del Paine and Tierra del Fuego, because, at least personally for me, are, you know, those places that they really, really, you know, fill your soul, you know, so it's worth being around here. Yeah, so if you guys come, whoever you know, just no, torres del Paine or Tierra del Fuego are just the most amazing place for me.
Speaker 2:After a couple hours of talking to you, it's, it's definitely going to happen for me. There's no doubt in my mind that I want to go, go on that journey and see what there is to see out there. So, yeah, you convinced me. I'm sure there's a few other people out there that will hear this podcast and think the same thing. So, yeah, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:No problem, no problem, man. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 2:Right on, man. Well, you have yourself a good day. I'm going to stop the recording, but I would like to keep talking for a minute. But yeah, I really appreciate it, and what we'll keep chatting.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure, man, like if it doesn't happen anything in Canada, I still we can figure it out. Early season, late season. In here in Patagonia I have more days, you know. Particularly I try to sell For me, in particular December, january, february, march, april I try to sell it, you know. So either the last weeks of April is that in Patagonia, in Seat routes, not good, but October, november I have a lot of time. And now between December and January that is the King's Island that you want in there.
Speaker 1:If you want to come by yourself and be in the camp, you know you bring your equipment. I help you out with the, with the things that you need and how to make it cheaper. You can go and fish by yourself, you know. If you know how to cast it, you know how to do the you can go out and try to catch a King's Island. And if you want to make a trail, because you're coming with a wife or girlfriend I don't know friends and you guys want to do a trail, I'll show you how to make it easy, cheap.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like Torres del Paine National Park, you can spend 50 bucks a day or you can spend $2000 a day, it's up to you? Yeah, you know you have. You have all the options. But it's full of Chilean kids that they don't go fishing but they go hang out in the park, they do their things, they stay right next to the river. They don't fish but they go drink during the weekend to these campsites. You know, it's not rocket science, you know. And it's not super far away. You can take a bus. You don't even need a car to get into the park. Imagine that you can take a bus with your fishing rod, with everything, and just appear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there we go. So yeah, any price range you get that plane ticket, you can make it out there.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and I'll probably be guiding, and if I'm not guiding I can hang out. But if I'm guiding, you know you're going to see me in the pool and I'm going to tell you, put yourself in there right next to me where I put in my dude, and yeah, because it's public water. So when you go over there and you see there's more people fishing, you're not alone in Torres del Paine. So when I see more people who are spay casting, I tell them okay, come with me, let's do carousel. This part is the good part, but let's carousel it. And we carousel Okay, you cast, you do one swing, two swings, three swings. Okay, two steps down. Everybody does two steps down. And when you finish the part that I think that this is not good enough, not good anymore, just go around, you know, because you cannot forbid anybody to be in the park. The park is public, yeah, you know, but if everybody works the thing, everybody can catch. King Salmon Beauty.
Speaker 2:You know? Yeah, I guess actually, just before we end it, if I show up by myself and I just want a DIY, am I needing to get a fishing license? And like what should I expect?
Speaker 1:Fishing license. So where it's done right, okay, you know it's done the show right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh no, I guess we're still on a little bit. Yeah, we're still recording.
Speaker 1:If you need that, if you want to be, if you want to do it by yourself, diy it. Sure, you need to. You need to take a bus. You got a right to Porto Natales from Porto Natales. Take a bus. You can take a bus to the park. From the entrance of the park, you just walk to the Serrano Camp. But you have to have a how to say a booking, a booking In the campsite. Yes, once you get a booking in the campsite, you can stay in the campsite for four or five days and go fishing every day.
Speaker 2:But do you need to pay for a fishing license like out here? You need to have a.
Speaker 1:It's not like classified licenses, okay, okay, you know it's. You just pay once a Chilean license. That for a week is like 40 bucks. Okay, it's 30,000 Chilean pesos. Right now has like 35 bucks. Okay, 35 bucks American For a week license. If it is a whole week, maybe it's going to be 50 bucks.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Not more than that, yeah, and then you have to figure out your food. That it's price wise is very similar to kind of the states. What you can expect don't expect because you're in Latin America is going to be any cheaper. Yeah, it's as expensive, and food wise and price wise between the states and Canada, I would say, all right, there's no difference. You know, like, if you go to Argentina, yes, different things because they have so many, like I said, like the country has given subsidies to a lot of industries to make it cheaper food and other things. But in Chile, in Chile now, the prices are very, very high, everything is elevated, and especially in Patagonia, because in here bringing anything in here is hard. You know it's a land of old yards, you know ice fields, it's rugged, there's not a lot of roads. Yeah, it's that you travel by plane, right? Yeah, to get here, everything, to get here, it's by plane. So even fruit and vegetables Expensive.
Speaker 2:Exactly. No, it's good. That's definitely what a lot of people want to know about is what to expect. So I think we really covered that, I guess. One more, last but not least just plug yourself your Instagram and and who you work for and stuff, just so if someone wants to look at and it'll be in the description as well.
Speaker 1:Sorry, sorry.
Speaker 2:Plug yourself so like what's your Instagram and then what's your, the business that you work for?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll send it to you, or you want me to show it?
Speaker 2:in here. Oh, you could just say it, and then I'll also.
Speaker 1:Handle. It's M, s, a, I, d, e, s, m side side of the S, my name and but you can look me Martin side of my same name and it will appear right away. Then I work for my goodness like fishing for and dress like fish and from the people of run and gun. Chile Is the flash shop up in Santiago that provides me with a time material with the with lines, scientific anger lines, you know, especially for the one handed. I tried the spotlight as well. That it's amazing is the competition with the OPSC, but they have data and amazing work with the, at least with the one that I have. That is the Scandi Super nice to fish a, you know, single hand spay with a with a spotlight. You know from scientific anglers, yes, the, those are, yeah, those are the people. Yeah, maybe between pigs, like fishing from Scotland.
Speaker 1:Those guys taught me everything about, not everything, but a lot about fishing and about King, someone. I learned so much with them. They're amazing people and I'm very good fishermen. If you don't have them in your Instagram, you should follow them because amazing, you know Scottish. You know if you fish a spay, spay rods or switch rods, they have in there actually in their channel as well, a lot of casting techniques and how to do it properly, and obviously this is like a classic Teachings. You know, these guys have a complete different game of what we know about how to teach and that you can be a spay master. It's a sort of a degree you know so. Yeah, so obviously you know I believe I'm proud of have learned a lot with them that it's so traditional, you know, so classic. Yeah, you know so. Of course, amazing people as well.
Speaker 2:Well, let's wrap it up, martin. Once again, thank you so much and, yeah, I hope for the best for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, man, for you as well. Have a great rest of the winter, you know, and maybe, who knows, maybe next summer we can see each other either here or maybe earlier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would love it. I would love it. All right, right on, man. Well, you have yourself a good day and I will. Well, we'll keep chatting a little bit after this, all right, cheers, man, cheers.