Ale can’t come given the condition of the vehicles that Tom returned, but Ciru, another guide named Jose Antonio Caparros, his dude, Jeff Robinson, a retired engineer from California, and I all pull into a clearing and stop at a long white-washed building with a full-length veranda. Thirty years ago this was a schoolhouse for the village of San Fernando, population 1,000, a logging town until there were no more trees and everything went bust. An heir to the Campbell Soup fortune, John Dorrance, III, bought every last one of the houses, razed everything but the schoolhouse and let nature back in. Doing so gave him 52,000 acres of prime deer-hunting grounds with access to three dorado streams, including the Rio Dorado. Ale rents the schoolhouse and the fishing rights. I dump my things in an old classroom and head out. “We are going to see some dorado today!” Ciru booms as we jounce down a tight jungle track. This road is a rollercoaster of white-knuckle ups followed by oh-shit downs that the truck sometimes just slides down. A day later, the pit that gave Tom his epic is still monster truck worthy but now just firm enough to (barely) blast through. We park in the shade of a citrus tree and Jose and Jeff hike upstream while Ciru and I head down. We pass beats like ESPN, where the network filmed a segment a few years ago, and another called Dead Tapir. Close to a third called Behind Tom’s Friend I stomp clumsily into a pool and watch as a streaked prochilod, a sábalo and the dorado’s favorite food, twitches in the shallows. These are the river’s early warning system. “Spook them and you lose the pool,” says Ciru. From then on we stalk around like commandos and communicate a lot with our hands. Around 3 p.m. we see that first dorado, when I misjudge the distance and shoot a streamer into the brush. Ciru makes a circle with his finger to try again. Somehow I free the fly cleanly and place it just upstream of the lie. Suddenly the devil himself grabs the end of my rod.
“Fish on! Fish on!” Ciru screams. I gasp as a dorado, the biggest, most beautiful fish I’ve ever caught on a fly, erupts out of the current, flares its gills and thrashes about like a Godzilla stung by missiles. “Hooooly…!” I bellow. “Bring him around!” yells Ciru. The rod contorts into a grotesque arch as I test the integrity of the metal leader. The fish leaps over and over again. After ten exhausting minutes I’m holding a 13-pound beauty by the base of a tail meatier than Lionel Messi’s quads. Ciru frees the fly with pliers from a massive, toothy mouth that would gladly free you of your fingers. “A souvenir you will never forget,” Ciru says, handing me the fly. For the first time I see how scabby and swollen my hands have become from all of the mosquitos. During the next two days I catch three more dorado, each one bigger than the last. I stick a 16-pounder next to a log, and haul an 18-pounder out of a deep pool. Each night we relax on the veranda, drinking Fernet and Coke and devouring handmade empanadas to a concert of crickets. Months later, I’ll still be playing those highlight reels in my head. On my last day I strike gold and land a dorado on a dry. I watch in awe as a 20-pound monster emerges from the depths with its crescent maw agape like Jaws on the movie poster. It sucks in a big black rat dead drifting not six feet in front of me. The eat is so casual I have time to think, “wait, did that just happen?” before setting the hook. The fight leaves me shaking. “It’s not an easy fish, but it is a great fish,” says Ciru. “People have known how to catch trout for a hundred years on flies. But dorado? We’re still figuring them out.” The light turns strawberry pink, signaling it’s time to go. I take one more cast for good luck. This time I read the distance well and place the rat right over a seam. All I see is a flash of light.
Good to know: You must check your fly rods for domestic flights in Argentina. You will not be allowed to carry them through airport security. |Stay: Salta is worth checking out before or after your fishing trip, with good wine, hiking, museums, and restaurants. Rooms at the local Sheraton start at $130 for doubles, though you can get a better deal online in advance. (sheratonsaltahotel.com; +54-387-432-3000) Autentica Salta can arrange custom trips. (autenticasalta.com; +54-9-387-522-0806)