In March, southern Chile is heading into fall: Gauchos move cattle to market; firewood trucks are loaded for delivery to surrounding villages; cool air mornings pull fog off the surface of the rivers; large flocks of migratory birds head to lower elevations and big brown trout migrate into thin water to attract a spawning mate.

Because of the consistently mild weather, fishing out of our lodge near Rio Cisnes (River of the Swan) made for long stretches of grasshopper fishing on the riverbanks, dragonfly hatches on the lagunas and a huge Cicada Beetle ‘hatch’ that could scare the average arachnophobe into cardiac arrest.

When this abundant beetle hatch comes around every so many years, browns anchor themselves below “beetle trees” awaiting a meal the size of a charcoal briquette…BIG FOOD!

Guides Day Off: On occasion, one group leaves a few days before another group is due in, and this creates an opportunity for us guides to either sleep and clean our laundry, or go fishing.

We decided to research the very upper-most reaches of a spring creek that flows out of a Chilean temperate rainforest near the lodge, choked with old growth trees, bamboo stands, and large undiscovered and unmolested browns.

To get from one pool to the next sometimes requires one to break rods down, crawl through a tight bamboo stand, and slip down a 10 foot gravel bank over logs and thorn bushes…translation: a real wader killer! The Almighty himself had created a virtual puncture facility for testing my new 8X Cloudveil waders and wading jacket.

This section of “Secret Chile Spring Creek” has very technical casting requirements, and at times, when you are lucky enough to make a decent cast to a brown spotted at the tail of a big gravel pool, the fish swims at the fly, scans the UPC symbol on it, and refuses it, virtually disappearing into a cluster of uprooted tree stumps and flotsam. Damn that brown!

Danny found some great fish rising in what seemed to be the deepest run in the place. I snuck up to his right, and scaled another almost impenetrable bamboo curtain protecting the best aerial view of the fish. There were several big fish holding in the middle of the pool, some smaller fish holding closer to the tail near Danny, but I spotted a spectacular brown leading the pack at the head of the pool.

“Dan, hold on; don’t make a cast yet.” I held up one finger to suggest ‘wait’. “You have a Chihuahua up here to the left of the big log.”

After having a minute of back and forth dialogue to describe sizes and locations of each fish, Danny elected to make a cast to the head, and try to get the big one, knowing that this would most likely spook the other fish in the pool. The next step in the game is to ‘sell the cast’ by seeing how close the false cast appears to be to the target, then…

“Drop it, drop it… Yes, perfect,” I held my breath. “Here he comes…leave it, leave it, leave it, YOU GOT HIM!”

The fish merely sipped the large beetle and was hooked up perfectly. Dan backed up and reeled the slack up to keep the fish tight and moving toward him. I scurried back down the bank and spotted the fish swimming for a subsurface snag of root structure.

“Danny, take him left! He’s heading for the snag!” Dan forced the giant brown back away from the snag, and had the fish directly in front of him. …

“Holy shit, five-pounder Dan!” I yelled.

We wasted no time in tailing the fish, Danny dropping his rod, digging for his camera to snap a quick shot of this fat piglet.

“He’s fine, what a beauty”, I told Dan, and gently cradled this beautiful fish just underwater to keep him going. After finally getting the camera on, we raised the fish for a few quick shots. Dan’s eyes rose from the viewfinder to take a direct gaze at the fish.

“Nice!” Dan added. There is some real magic in seeing one of your best friends catch a perfect fish in a beautiful place; it brings it all a little bit closer to perfect, as if it weren’t already.

After making certain that the fish was recovering from the winch and cable extrication from the pool, I slid him underway and he slowly slithered and sulked his way back under the logs and roots he knew so well. Danny and I stood up, shook the water from our hands, picked up the rods, and just stared at each other for a few minutes grinning.