Hero or Zero

A cold front had come through the mountains near Coyhaique.  We had been fighting heavy wind and incessant rain the entire morning. The sun briefly broke through to show the surrounding mountains covered with fresh snow. We had a couple nice Browns to show for our fishing effort, but they were hard-won. 

We took lunch at Magic Waters Patagonia Lodge, and, after warming up, Lynnette decided to remain behind. Andy, our guide, drove me to a trophy lake he and our host, Eduardo, referred to as “Hero or Zero” because the lake held few fish and all of them were huge.  You either got a huge fish or you got skunked. 

The lake was surrounded by reeds and visibility crystal clear. The wind held strong, but the rain had subsided and the sun occasionally broke out. “This lake is unique because the fish could be anywhere. Throw an occasional cast to the deep side.” Andy said in his French and German accented English.   

Andy expertly rowed the raft around the lake edge for two hours as I cast and retrieved a huge, articulated leech on a fast sinking-tip line.  Our methodical devotion was finally rewarded by a strike that felt like a log was caught.  I have had the great fortune in life to have felt a lot of big fish on the end of my line, and this was a very big fish. He briefly betrayed his size by shaking his head to transmit a bobbing cadence to the end of my rod, then he sounded into the deep water, bending the eight-weight rod into a hoop. Andy expertly maneuvered the raft into deeper water.  “Big Brown.” Andy said. “Take your time.  We have all day.”

Lynnette and I had the privilege of Andy being our guide for the past three days as we fished a series of lakes and caught scores of beautiful Brown and Rainbow Trout. 

Andy is an easy-going man of casual but competent manner. He was born in western Germany in the Alsatian region; a portion of Germany bordering France where the border has moved countless times in wars over the centuries.  He was a computer network engineer and his wife was a graphic artist when they decided they were not enjoying their lives and left everything behind to begin traveling. They found themselves in Patagonian Chile, camping near the edge of Lago Caro about 15 years ago. During the 10 day camp, they met some local landowners who told them they had a couple hectares of the land that they wished to sell away from the road, further down the Lake.  Andy and his wife went to see the land then immediately purchased it with the intention of continuing their travels and coming back to it later. They found themselves tinkering and making small improvements. They built a small house. They added rooms onto the house then built a shop. They built a guest house. They had two children. They built a greenhouse and raised animals.  They had found a home.  
When Andy’s two children became of school age, the family moved to Coyhaique to enroll them in school. Their children speak Spanish, English, French and German. We were told one had just won a regional spelling bee in English. The family still comes to the Lago Caro property on long weekends, holidays and school breaks. It’s no easy trek to reach it. it’s about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Coyhaique and an hour and a half drive from Magic Waters down some winding, narrow roller-coaster roads clinging to steep mountain sides.  

Andy took us to the Lago Caro and, as was typical for the previous couple days, we banged-down the road in his Land Rover as Andy worked his gear shift lever like a Lemans Race driver. 

The only thing that slowed him was a gaucho driving cattle down the center of the road. 

Upon reaching the lake we launched a boat then rowed the lakes shoreline, strewn with sunken logs, and cast over the logs to draw out the Brown Trout that would attack our streamers. 

We would also row along steep plunging cliffs and pick up Rainbows the same way. 

The real treat to visiting Lago Caro was a visit to Andy‘s house. He invited us to partake in lunch there within his hand-made solarium and it was absolutely charming.  

Even better yet, his property bordered the largest lakeside waterfall we’d seen in several days of seeing waterfalls. 

The waterfall cascaded hundreds of yards down from the mountain overhead and took several abrupt steps before the final plunge into the lake-level pool in a spraying fan that was about 40 feet wide.  

The pool ran about 100 yards into the lake and it held the largest fish we’d seen in a couple days of fishing, several looked 20 to 24 inches.  Even though they had not seen a fly all winter the fish scattered in the low, clear water as we cast dries over them. It didn’t matter. We’d caught dozens of beautiful Browns and Rainbows already that day.    

 
Oh, yeah, about that big fish at Hero or Zero Lake.  After five minutes of keeping intense pressure upon the fish with no gain, and never seeing him, the rod & line went to slack as the hook came out.  Andy cried out in anguish and buried his head in his hands. He said “That was a BIG Brown, probably well over 30 inches.”

 After about a minute of silence he looked up at me, broke into a grin and said: “I will give you one-half of a hero point for that one.”