Revive - A Quarterly Fly Fishing Journal (Volume 1. Issue 2. Fall 2013) | Page 42

Beyond words, I could only mumble incoherently in a language even I didn’t comprehend. The eventual smile said it all. That’s a damn big fish! The Boga Grip bottomed out at 22 pounds before we slipped her back into an eddy to give her time to catch her breath and continue her transient journey. Twenty-two pounds! Are you kidding me? My first fish from the Rio Grande and it’s twenty-two pounds! Do I have to go home now or can I stay and play some more?

I landed two more that morning but after lunch I convinced my guide to teach me how to throw the spey. The expertise of the guides on this remote estancia is nothing short of amazing. Every one of them can make the most effortless casts right into the jaws of that wind. I did mention the wind, didn’t I? With a few quick lessons, I found myself making acceptable casts with the 550 grain line on the spey and my life became much more tolerable.

Over the week, I landed 15 or twenty more fish, almost all of them 8 or 10 pounds or better and chrome bright. Bill landed one big male that had been in the river for some time waiting on the girls. Big, ugly and the color of an old pair of wing tip shoes. The locals actually call these fish an “Old Shoe”. I think I landed one more fish during the week that was larger than my first but I had no opportunity to get a close look. Stream manners way down south are that any fish not properly hooked in the mouth is an embarrassment and, as such, must not be marveled upon and certainly not photographed. “No en la boca, no en la boca!” the guide yells as I run up and he quickly releases the fish. No apologies, that’s just the way it is.