Adventure with SET Fly Fishing at Rakin Lodge in Argentina

We just finished our adventure with SET Fly Fishing at Rakin Lodge in Argentina. It was a return trip for us as we were some of the first anglers to fly fish there last year. We only fished the Rio Codihue twice last year, but were able to fish six days during this trip.

The lodge is very unique. It even has a swimming pool on the lower level, which is where our sleeping quarters were. The large house sits on the plateau above the Rio Codihue.

Here is a view of the house from river level.

And a view from the cliffs. We fished this section the last day. The picture doesn’t show how high the cliffs really are.

Here is another view of the same water from last year.

Here I am with Dani holding a nice Brown Trout I caught on my second cast. Dani has scouted the river since our last trip and was able to obtain additional access from an adjacent estancia owner which allowed us to fish three more beats of the river. It’s where we began our adventure on day 1.

The quality of these fish are amazing. We caught many of them on a Royal PMX dry fly and used it as the dry/dropper to hook and land trout with Frenchies and other perdigon nymphs when the fish decided not to look up.

Here is Dancingtrout holding an average Rainbow. We caught many in the 12 – 15 inch range as well as some larger up to 20 inches. Of course, a host of smaller “bambinos” were eager to eat our flies too.

The water was much lower than last year. Low snow pack inpacted the river levels and we quit early a few days because the water was 74 degrees in the mid-afternoon and we decided to have our own “hoot owl” hours. Besides, we had caught enough fish for the day.

Some of these fish were so fat! This is a day one fish. It was caught in the new section where thousands of hoppers were flying along the river. Of course, the Argentina wind blew them into the river. Trout continued to rise to our Royal PMX dry flies, taking them as a hopper imitation. We tried foam hoppers, but the Royal PMX fooled more trout.

Did I mention how thick some of these fish were? They were so strong. Several broke off of 3X leader…and even 2X!!

Here is a closer view of Dancingtrout’s beauty.

Our first day was plentiful with trout.

Here is our parking spot for day 2, under a weeping willow. Notice the field in the background where hoppers were abundant.

This is a run that was full of fish. It wasn’t very deep, in fact, Dancingtrout hooked several fish in the 14 – 18 inch range on this side of the river a foot off the bank. She was casting from the other side of the river. I waded across to capture the run.

Here is a nice Rainbow from that run. Notice how wide the tail is! The colors of these trout were amazing.

Lauti was one of the guides who fished with us for a few days. He helped Dancingtrout wade on the slick bottom.

I’m not sure if you can tell, but this is a section of river where the Willow Worms and eaten most of the leaves on the lower branches. We fished a dry/dropper combination in these locations, with the top fly usually the Royal PMX and a Willow Worm imitation on a short leader. We’d cast very close to the trees, sometimes hooking up on branches. Fish could be found less than a foot from shore, so the closer one could cast, the better opportunity you’d have to hook up.

Here is an example of a hungry trout.

Here’s another, but was taken with a perdigon dropper. Franco is one of the guides we have fished with in prior visits.

And a closer view showing how beautiful these fish are.

The Willow Worm hatch was new to use when we began fishing in Argentina. I was able to capture a good image this year.

When the wind blows in Argentina, which I can attest to, these worms fall into the water and trout eagerly await this activity. We found trout hitting our flies immediately as they landed on the water. At some point, they build a cocoon and hatch into a flying insect and we used a size 16 caddis emerger to imitate it.

We began fishing here on our last day of the Rio Codihue. Several trout were rising along the far bank.

Even with felt soles, the wading was a little slick on the round, smooth rocks. Franco provided a hand for Dancingtrout as we moved upstream.

The edges on the far side held nice trout willing to eat our flies.

Here is one of the last runs we fished on the Rio Codihue. Both of us caught several trout on the dropper. Large boulders could be seen on the bottom and willingly ate our droppers.

And a couple of our last trout from the Rio Codiue.

While they took readily took the dropper, I was quite surprised this Brown crushed my dry fly!

Here are a couple images of the hoppers I found close to the river. I found a light green one as well.

As I mentioned above, the Royal PMX was a killer fly just like last year. For some reason, the trout love this fly.

Here are some perdigon flies we used. The most successful one for me was a Frenchie. The “Frenchie Emerger” was a joke because the fish tore them apart after only a couple of fish. Danny would change them out, but we decided to do a little research and I kept using the fly and the fish continued to eat the torn and shredded fly. This one caught fish and I caught fish on another fly with only a bead and some orange for the thorax. Yes, they were hungry trout!

We had a wonderful time fishing the Rio Codihue for six days.

In my next post will, I’ll share our experience fly fishing on the Rio Trocoman for three days.

Enjoy…go fish!