Jim Craig and I (Kenny) had to get away from the mundane life in the St Louis area – actually it was too cold to fish here – and decided to go with a group of ten to Antarctica! Yes, 21 days traveling from Argentina to Chile by way of Antarctica. Come on, it’s not that cold down there because it’s summertime

The cruise with Holland America started with temperatures in the 70s (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and dropped to the 20s as we got closer to Antarctica and then back up to the 80s (Santiago, Chile) as we finished in Chile. But wait, you guys don’t want to here about our trip – that’s not what this website is about! So, Jim and I took an excursion from the voyage to fish in the waters of the famous Patagonia region. Patagonia gets its name from the first explorers to visit it from Europe who, after seeing huge footprints on the ground, thought the land was inhabited by giant humans with big feet – hence the name. Wonder if Bigfoot started here?

The cruise had many “excursions” that you could sign up for. Jim and I decided it “could” be a once in a lifetime trip to fly fish in Patagonia. So, we signed up for a trip to fly fish in the Chile Patagonia region. The excursion took us to Puerto Chacabuco, Chile and to Los Torreones Lodge. We were met at the port by our guide Rodrigo Bustos who drove us about 30 minutes to the lodge. There were six of us on this excursion and it was obvious that Jim and I were the most experienced of the six. We picked the Rio Simpson (the river Simpson) to fish since they explained that it had big fish but was rather technical fishing. We were up for the challenge!

We started our trip with a little bit of wading in a smaller runoff and caught several small brown trout. I think this was a “test” by Rodrigo to see if we could “walk the talk”. We passed without a word being said and then into the raft to fish downstream. Now the true fishing started as we had to pitch our flies under trees and into deep holes. The fish suddenly got bigger and the laughter and howling (and bragging) got louder. We caught around five very nice sized rainbow trout among others and lost some even bigger ones. I am not sure who had the biggest fish since Jim and I had at least one each over 20 inches. Unfortunately for us this trip was only a four-hour fishing trip, but it was worth it.

We received what I thought was a compliment from Rodrigo but was not sure. He said, “Of all the cruise passengers they get, Jim and I were the best fly fishers!” Hmmmm, not sure if that was good or not, since most that come off the cruises to fish are just wanting to “experience” fly fishing. But we said Thanks and told them that we would like to come back someday and bring some of our FATC guys. Maybe a future trip?

The experience ended with a few more pictures and some wine and Chilean food to taste. Check our Instagram site for some videos! Patagonia – we will be back!!

Kenny Klimes