ARGENTINA - TIERRA DEL FUEGO - VILLA MARIA FISHING REPORT - HIGH COLOURED WATER IMPACTED AN OTHERWISE GOOD WEEK...

Added: Mon 8th Apr 13

Villa Maria Lodge – Fishing Report

Fishing Report (March  23rd to 28 th, 2013) – By Gastón Guglielminetti

Unfortunately we got to our fishing number thirteen weeks very close to the end of a great fishing season in Rio Grande. This past week we received four fishermen from around the world, they traveled from Japan, New Zealand, Germany and USA for challenging fishing for sea trout.

We started the week with good weather conditions typical of southern Patagonia for this time of year, moderate winds, cloudy and cold. The forecast for Estancia Jose Menendez anticipated 20 mm of rain, but in the Andes was precipitating further. Fishing during the first four days of last week was excellent, we could say that catches beating numbers, comparing same week last summer.

But then in the middle of the week we had heavy rain showers for during a day and night throughout the Andes and the resulting watershed brought about a very sudden rise of particularly muddy water. Villa María Lodge is being affected by the dirty water coming from not only the Menendez River, the main Rio Grande’s tributary, but also the Rama River, Erminita, Ona River, four of them which have their origins in the Andes.  All this resulted in a rise of over twelve inches!!!

Consequently, after studying both the level and muddy, brown color of the river, we were forced to change fishing tactics, big fly, seek shallow water and not very fast and take advantage of sunshine have more chances to catch, we knew that with good numbers of trout in our waters and especially fresh, unfortunately did not have success.                         

All fish landed a total of 45 sea trout and ten were lost in the first four days of fishing, that's why I'm safe to say that was a fantastic week!

The good news, however, is that with high water we should get fresh fish from the sea in no time.

The last one big run of the sea trout of the seasson coming soon , we are looking forward.

Tight Lines  !!

Gastón Guglielminetti, Fishing Manager –Villa María Lodge

For further information please contact Tarquin Millington-Drake on 0845 299 6212 Ext 1 or at tmd@frontierstrvl.co.uk

ARGENTINA - TIERRA DEL FUEGO - VILLA MARIA FISHING REPORT - 1ST TO 8TH MARCH 2013...

Added: Thu 14th Mar 13

Villa Maria Lodge – Fishing Report

Fishing Report (March 1st to 8th, 2013) – By Gastón Guglielminetti

This week at Villa Maria Lodge we welcomed a group composed of returning guests as well as new faces that came to enjoy the Villa María experience. All of them from United Kingdom

Two weeks ago the fishing was excellent. But the last week just ended was brilliant !! at Villa Maria Lodge. Every guest had the time of their life with moments on the Rio Grande that they will never forget.

We had the perfect combination, excellent anglers and river in great shape. This week we focus on the top pools at Villa Maria Lodge, which are many!! even sharing some beats on the best fishing hours, giving very good results. The best evidence was the 123 fish we landed and lost 40 during the week,

The water temperature was good, rounding the 9 to 13 degrees Celsius. The wind was the climatic feature of the week, many days with breeze from the east, northwest and southwest that allowed us to fish comfortably, being that they were the perfect quadrant.

The note of the week was the perfect morning that Paul had last week, Paul came into our hands with a little refined spey technique, but thanks to our team of guides and the help of Jim, he landed two beautiful females of sea trout in a couple of hours,  24 and 26 lbs  Well done friend

We fished with Skaggit lines with T14 and type 8 tips, fishing the traditional swing. Regarding flies, we used mostly small rubber legs, green machines, small nymphs, tube flies and leeches late in the evening.

Anyway I would like to thank all the customers last week for giving us beautiful fish but for the great humor and fun sessions. I hope to share another week again next summer!

Tight Lines  !!

Gastón Guglielminetti, Fishing Manager –Villa María Lodge

For further information please contact Tarquin Millington-Drake on 0845 299 6212 Ext 1 or at tmd@frontierstrvl.co.uk

ARGENTINA - VILLA MARIA LODGE - WEEK 6 - FISHING REPORT - MIZED WEATHER BUT GOOD FISHING...

Added: Tue 12th Feb 13

Villa Maria Lodge – Fishing Report

Fishing Report (February 1 th to 7 th, 2013) – By Gastón Guglielminetti

Our sixth week of fishing just  ended in Villa María Lodge. Always a pleasure to share hours fishing with repeat customers for years to our lodge, such as Wiilli Forstinger , Bernd, Jackob and Gunther from Austria , Karl from Germany and Chatt from USA.  

But the big news of the week is that we had a celebrity in the Lodge,   “Roman Moser “. Roman is very famous angler in Austria, and one of the best known European fly fishing in the United States, as he has developed a lot of fishing techniques for sea trout by designing leaders (progressive leader), loops, tippets rings, flies.

We started the week with low water and as we didn’t have any real rain, the water level kept on dropping which made the fishing conditions difficult. The weather conditions were tough as well with very strong winds, sometimes it was blowing as hard as 47.7 miles an hour. and a cold air temperature. The river is very clear still and now lower than before. After the first day with strong winds, something happened in the Andes Mountains because the river rose to three inches of water, this allowed the fish to put much more active than the last days.

Despite these challenging conditions, we had some great fishing opportunities and most of our guests did really well and caught a good number of nice fish.

We ended the week with a good number of fish and some great fish as well as Villi’s 24 pounder, or Jackob’s 22 pounder for sea run brown. Everyone had a good fish on, or landed a great fish. The top rods this week were Chatt from USA who landed twenty fish.

Anyway, it's never pleasing dismiss great fishermen, but we are sure that the same week next year they can return to live new and intense moments of fishing together again

Tight Lines  !!

Gastón Guglielminetti

Fishing Manager –Villa María Lodge

For further information please contact Tarquin Millington-Drake on 0845 299 6212 Ext 1 or at tmd@frontierstrvl.co.uk

ARGENTINA - TIERRA DEL FUEGO - VILLA MARIA LODGE FISHING REPORT - WATER COMING DOWN AND SMALLER FLIES EFFECTIVE

Added: Fri 8th Feb 13

Villa Maria Lodge – Fishing Report

Fishing Report (January 25 th to 31 th, 2013) – By Gastón Guglielminetti

Another week of nice fishing has ended at Villa Maria Lodge. Our last week of January welcomed a group composed of people from UK, USA and Sweden. All our guests got along very well and enjoyed being with so many different nationalities with different experiences,  for me in particular was very special to share hours of river again with clients and friends of more than seven years as being Steward and Vaughan.

Always to our great team of guides is an enormous challenge to have new clients and also teach them spey casting,  technique not only necessary to cover more water in several pools of the Villa Maria lodge but also because of high winds prospects for many days of the week.

Three of our guests, Robert, David  and Mikael  wanted to learn how to Spey cast, so we gave them lessons throughout the week, teaching them which cast to use depending on the river flow and the wind direction. They learned very quickly, even if the conditions were sometimes difficult because of the wind, but they are now able to use a Spey rod back home.

Robert´s determination and efforts to pick up spey casting were rewarded as he hooked and landed one of  the biggest fish of the week with his Spey rod, a beautiful female sea trout of 22 lbs of weight, as Pat who at eighty-two years old is still fighting with big fish another  22 lbs female

This week was completely different from the previous week, especially with regards to the climate.  The river dropped  during the entire week, not only due to the lack of rain but also three days of strong winds that sometimes blew as hard as 37 miles an hour, pushing water into the estuary. .

With the low, clear water it should come as no surprise that our most successful technique was running lighter sink tips and smaller flies along with long leaders during this week’s fishing. We did however have some good success later in the week with some really big and bright flies fished deep. This technique proved most effective when the air and thus the water temperature dropped. Got to give the fish something big, nasty, and worth their while when they’re laying low and moving slow.

As always, come last light, it was time for the leeches to come out. Casting one of these big flies into the darkness and hearing, feeling, and sometimes seeing that often explosive take is truly something no serious angler should miss.

Finally I would like to thank the group for having a fun and exciting week of fishing in which the total fish landed was 63 and lost 22, wait to see them again next season.

Tight Lines  !!

Gastón Guglielminetti

Fishing Manager –Villa María Lodge

For further information please contact Tarquin Millington-Drake on 0845 299 6212 Ext 1 or at tmd@frontierstrvl.co.uk

ARGENTINA - VILLA MARIA LODGE - FISHING REPORT - A BIT WARM BUT GREAT FISHING ONCE IT COOLED...

Added: Fri 1st Feb 13

Villa Maria Lodge – Fishing Report

Fishing Report (January 18th to 24th, 2013) – By Gastón Guglielminetti

This  fourth week  at Villa Maria lodge , we welcomed a friendly group of six anglers from  Switzerland , returning to our lodge the last seven years.

We finished the week with a very good number of fish despite  the “strange”  weather conditions we had in the week.

Fishing was particularly difficult the first three days of the week, we had high temperatures in the water, as the week before reaching maximum values of 21 degrees celsius.!!!  We only had good opportunity to catch in those days, when it was sunset where the water temperature began its descend.

The special and the good news of the week was that last Wednesday the temperature dropped about 11 degrees Celsius, therefore had a high temperature in water at temperatures ideal for sea trout and where we started to have very good and exciting fishing hours.

I am safe in saying that during my nine years of experience guiding in Rio Grande and Rio Gallegos I had an opportunity of seeing different situations and weather conditions in both rivers, but I never saw something like last week, plenty of fish moving in many of the pools of Villa Maria water even at high temperatures, and not taking the fly, these situations make our much appreciated sea trout, be sure to surprise me and teach me something every summer

We were fishing with floating lines rigged with intermediate to fast sinking tips. We used mostly nymphs and buggers but we started using some tube fly  during the day time especially the sunrise shadow or collie dog fly, which work very well in clear water.  Sometimes the takes were very gentle with the fish just nibbling the fly and then grabbing it. So no striking, just patience and we had to let the fish take it properly to have a good hook up.

Finally I would like to thank our customers for being persistent in keeping the mood high and landed 74 sea trout on days when conditions improved.  Our guides did a great job finding fish by changing pools and rigging all the time to suit the conditions and get fish

River Conditions: Fishing was hard work all week . Some days the water was too hot, especially during the mornings and throughout the afternoon.  Only during the evening would the temperature drop a few degrees. Water temperature: between 10,8 ºC  and  21  ºC. Water clarity: Water very clear even with strong winds Water level: It dropped 3 inches during the week.

Conditions of the fish: Most of the fish this week were very fresh. Only a few fish were turning.

Tight Lines  !!

Gastón Guglielminetti

Fishing Manager –Villa María Lodge

For further information please contact Tarquin Millington-Drake on 0845 299 6212 Ext 1 or at tmd@frontierstrvl.co.uk