December was a wash ( literally ). If there where fish in Patagonia in December, there was no way to get at them as the rivers swelled with heavy rain. Even the best whitewater rafting companies in the World had to hang their paddles and wait out the rain in Patagonia. Magically, around the new year the weather turned hot and sunny and the rivers retreated.

In terms of what is happening. We have reports that the typical suspects such as the Rio Espolon, the Futaleufu river, and the Palena rivers are showing fish. We should warn, that although the map of southern Chile shows perhaps hundreds of rivers and tributaries, not all hold trout for all kinds of reasons. Some are simply too cold as we discovered on the Rio Frio along the Austral Highway in Patagonia. Also many of the small tributaries are simply to clean to produce sufficient food for fish to make a living. Add to the fact that the flood waters cleaned out the food in the upper parts of the bigger rivers, your best bet is to go down river a bit to find some action.

You also should keep in mind when fly fishing in Patagonia that there is no reason to get up at the crack of dawn to go fishing in Southern Chile. Like southern Chileans themselves, they do not open shop until at least 9-10 a.m. when the sun warms the water. Even then, the fish will be deep for most of the day. We expect this to change a bit as the temperatures rise through January and February. We are still keeping an eye open for the first Salmon to make their way up the rivers around places like Futaleufu. The rest of January and February should yield the best fly fishing of the year in Patagonia.