Patagonian Rhapsody: Gonzo Guiding In Chile

A season in Chile got the author out of a bad situation and made him fall in love with guiding all over again. Photos: Kubie Brown

“Is this the right bus?”

I sometimes have moments in life where I wonder how the hell I got where I am. I think about how if I’d chosen a different major in college, if a job had paid a little better, if a relationship had worked out, or if I’d made a dozen decisions just a little differently, I might not have been standing outside the airport in the dusty streets of Coyhaique, Chile trying to figure out if I was going to the right place.

There was bedlam all around me, with dozens of vehicles picking up the swell of both tourists and locals crammed together on a curb beside the tarmac. Everything was chaos, with people hailing buses and cabs in multiple languages and jockeying for position around me, as I stood there trying to translate my handwritten instructions with two massive duffle bags and fly-fishing gear on my shoulders. I was trying to follow vague directions, had a terrible hangover, and I didn’t speak the language, but somehow, I knew I was eventually going to end up where I needed to be.

Flying South

This whole journey had begun nearly a year before, when I had given up my job, my home, and all my future plans to pursue a relationship which simply hadn’t worked out. Devastated, I had been forced to move back in with my parents, where I simply existed adrift in brokenhearted misery and teetering on the edge of becoming a full-blown alcoholic.

Realizing that I needed a life change or it would be the death of me and knowing that guiding fly fishers was one of the only things that made me happy, I sent out over a hundred emails to various places trying to find a winter guiding gig. I hadn’t had much hope and so was surprised as anybody when an outfitter in Chile replied and offered me a job, asking if I could make it down to Patagonia in two weeks.

Running into other anglers was a rarity, and you’d usually have a river all to yourself.

Which is why right after Christmas, I boarded a plane and endured 20 hours of flights, running the gauntlet on each plane’s cocktail menu as I went, before finally arriving in Coyhaique. From there, I was to board a bus to a specific hotel where the outfitter would pick me up. As I spoke only three words of Spanish, a lot was lost in translation as I slurred what sounded like nonsense at the different bus drivers, and I almost got into the wrong vehicle three times before one driver finally spoke enough English to understand me. He grabbed my bags from my shoulders and tossed them onto the roof of the bus and then ushered me into a seat. I was on my way.

Diving Headfirst

The outfitter, an Australian man named Lucas, picked me up at the hotel and crammed me and my luggage into an already over-stuffed Land Rover. From there, it was a bumpy five-hour ride through the Andes to the ranch where I would be staying. We drove out of town and into the mountains along rocky, winding backroads that made their way deep into the Aysén Region. Along the way, we stopped in a few tiny villages so I could grab food and of course, a couple cases of beer.

For someone who has never been south of the equator, Chile was a revelation. When I arrived, my mind was filled with the images I’d seen in National Geographic. I expected the rough, small shacks and cobbled streets of the villages where we frequently were forced to stop as chickens, dogs, horses, and alpacas wandered across the road. What I wasn’t prepared for though was the seemingly untouched landscape. I was surprised just how much the terrain of Patagonia reminded me of Montana, where I had spent the previous summer—familiar rolling hills and valleys; and clear, pristine rivers; all surrounded by tall, snowcapped peaks that were practically begging me to explore.

I was exhausted by the time we arrived at the ranch. I was shown my quarters, which was essentially a small room with a cot in what was an obviously converted chicken coop. I was also introduced to my fellow North American guides, Cody, David, and Kara, as well as two locals, Andres and Diego, whom I would be sharing clients with over the coming months.

Part of the crew that made the author (far left) feel right at home.

The arrival of the full crew quickly kicked off a gather-round. Before I’d even unpacked my bags, we had torn into the cases of beer, as well as a couple bottles of wine and whiskey, and soon enough I was three sheets to the wind. After spending so long feeling lost, it felt good to be among my people again, and the merrymaking probably would have lasted all night had Lucas not reminded us that clients were coming in the morning. To my relief as the late arrival, Lucas assured me I would have a couple days off to get acclimated to the routine and would be able to sleep in. So, I staggered into my room grateful and excited to be done with the exhaustingly long day. I promptly tripped over my bags, fell facedown on my cot, and passed out.

Rude Awakening

The sudden knocking on my door in the early morning of the next day jolted me out of my sleep. My head was pounding, my mouth was dry, and my stomach felt like I had swallowed a live snake that was trying to crawl back out. I staggered to my door, bleary eyed and shaking, with booze coming out of my pores, and opened it to find a very angry Chilean man staring daggers at me.

“What are you doing?” he shouted in a scored-earth rage. “You have a client!” I leaned out of the doorway and looked over at a bedecked angler sitting beside a UTV holding a rod and looking embarrassed. I looked back at the enraged Chilean.

“Sorry,” I burbled trying to hold down the stomach snake. “Lucas told me I could sleep in and I thought…” The man stomped his foot. “Lucas knows nothing!” He barked. “I am Jose, the owner here. You were supposed to be ready at seven o ‘oclock. It is now 8 o’clock, so I am bringing you your client. It won’t happen again.”

He turned and stomped away back up the road. I nodded at the man in the UTV and then turned around and, terrified of being fired before I even started, I yanked open my duffle and frantically extracted my guide bag and fly boxes. Kicking on a pair of sandals I walked out to my first client and introduced myself.

The author’s guiding skills transferred well from Montana to Aysen.

“Hello there,” the man said in a thick British accent. “My name is Bob. Sorry about the mix up, didn’t mean to get you in trouble. So, what’s on for today?” I got into the UTV beside him and looked around at the mountains and trees surrounding us and decided to come clean.

“Not gonna lie Bob,” I said, still trying to shake the fuzz out of my brain. “I don’t even know where the river is.” Bob chuckled as I put the UTV in gear and pulled out, driving down into the forest.

As it turned out, finding a river wasn’t all that hard, as there was a beautiful, slow flowing stream less than a mile from my hut. We parked at a likely looking spot and with Bob following behind, I approached the water with more than a little apprehension. I had been fishing and guiding for trout for years but still had no idea where the fish were going to be or how they were going to behave in this foreign land. Thankfully, when we got down to the water, I immediately spotted a big trout sitting directly in front of me. Then I saw another, and another, and another and realized that there were lines of rainbows and browns stacked in the river as far as the eye could see. As I watched the fish, an errant grasshopper jumped from beneath Bob’s feet and fell into the water, and no less than six trout hurled themselves upon it like a pack of angry hyenas.

“What fly do you think I should tie on?” Bob asked digging through his fly box. I looked away from the cavalcade of fish and felt my hangover instantly fade. Glancing at my client, I felt my face split into a wide grin.

“I don’t think it matters, Bob,” I said.

Local Motion

As the months of fishing, guiding, and exploration began to unfold, I was introduced to Chile by both my fellow guides and the locals. I would spend my workdays guiding clients to some of the most pristine and glorious trout fishing I had ever experienced, and then in the evening, we’d head to the nearby villages and make some new friends. Though I had been warned about the dangers of traveling to a foreign country and to not trust the local people and to certainly never go off alone with them, I completely ignored all this advice and was better off for it.

The natural beauty of the landscape inspired daily adventures.

Soon, I made friends with gauchos who shoved me onto the saddles of unbroken horses and then brought me to see rare birds and to hunt pheasants, stags, and wild boars. In neighboring villages, folks drew me maps to untouched stretches of river and then danced and sang with me while we guzzled local wine. Everywhere I traveled in Patagonia, the people greeted me with broad and bright smiles, and I was constantly plied with wine, pisco, and rum. Many a night was spent at backyard asados where we’d all gather around roasted lambs and sides of beef, slicing off chunks of meat, slugging beer, and then singing Mylie Cyrus and Taylor Swift karaoke songs in Spanish.

Welcome to Paradise

I knew when I came to Patagonia I would be working in a completely wild trout fishery, yet I never could have fathomed just how wild. I guided, fished, and hiked miles upon miles of pristine and practically untouched rivers and lakes, filled to the brim with aggressive and beautiful trout. Every river that flowed through the Aysén Region was cold and clear, with deep blue holes and small, fast pockets. Spring creeks and jungle lagoons were practically everywhere, with the slow and still water surrounded by high grass and drifting insects, the glassy surface broken only by rising fish. Similar creeks and sloughs like that in my adopted home of Montana are places where anglers would have to pay as much as $150 a day to fish. Yet in Chile, they were just there, some right alongside the road, free and open to the public. In fact, all waters in Chile are free and open to the public to use as they wish. It’s Chilean law, and a beautiful law at that.

Not only were the waters amazing, but the insects and flies we used to catch trout were equally epic. I had arrived during a year of the beetle when massive Cantaria Stag Beetles were at the peak of their breeding cycle. These colossal, horned insects were the size of saltshakers and hit the water like miniature coconuts, drawing the largest trout to the surface. In addition to the beetles, there were also grasshoppers the size of matchbooks, absolute legions of ants, and immense schools of baitfish that all made the Chilean trout into complete carnivores.

The Cantaria beetle and an imitation.

We’d have clients smack the water with massive foam dry-fly patterns, resulting in epic days full of 12- to 16-inch rainbows and browns. In the evenings and on days off, we’d all go and wade through muddy lagoons in the moonlight and gigantic rivers during the day, chucking big streamers and splashing down mice to catch brown trout of some truly heroic proportions. Very soon after my introduction to all this, I came to realize that the trout were different here.

One day, while fishing a spring creek, I spent the better part of an hour just watching dozens of trout leap from the water to snatch dragonflies out of mid-air. Another day I was standing on top of a bank overlooking a small slough, watching a big brown swim toward me. He was moving in small half-circles, swinging to the right and left, getting closer and closer to the bank. It was only when I saw the small splashes and gleams in the shallow, sandy water that I realized the brown was herding baitfish. The fish was driving dozens of small trout and salmon fry into the shallows at my feet, and just as I figured out what he was doing, the big fellow shot straight up onto the sand like a killer whale after a seal and devoured a half dozen at once. “What the hell?” I said with a grin, as the brown awkwardly backed himself into deep water and started his circles again.

Fly fishing in Chile just worked. No matter where I went and no matter what fly I cast, I caught fish. In the lagoons, I had some of the best nights of mousing of my life, only to discover that mice worked just as well on rivers during the day. I would fish tiny emergers to rising rainbows in trickling, slow foamy creeks one day and then throw some of the biggest, ugliest streamers I could possibly create on mile-wide rivers the next day, catching some of the biggest, most beautiful trout I had ever seen. It felt about as close to angling heaven as I was likely to get, and every day, I felt the restoration of my soul.

The trout in Chile were wild, gorgeous, and aggressive.

Homeward Bound

After five long months of exuberant fly fishing adventures, we finally came to our final night in Chile. We gathered guides, clients, and owners alike for an asado of epic proportions. For half the night, we feasted, drank, and made merry, dancing and singing with the band and then we staggered home to pack and pass out. I laid down in my cot that night, full, drunk, and happy and had just started to close my eyes when there was a frantic knocking at the door. I opened it to find one of the locals gesturing for me to follow him next door, where I found everyone, from the other guides to the gauchos wishing to say goodbye. They had a fire going, drinks poured, and two whole stags roasting and I realized my night had only just begun.

In the early morning hours, I returned to my hut and found I was so full of Chilean cheer I’d forgotten how to open my door. So, I passed out on the porch on top of my already packed bags and a few hours later, I was awakened by a car coming to bring me to the airport. My time in Chile was over and though I was leaving in the same condition that I arrived in, something inside me felt changed. Though I was still hungover, as the plane took off to carry me home, I somehow felt refreshed, renewed, and happy in the knowledge that I was once again exactly where I was supposed to be.