Peerless sea-trout fisher Steffan Jones explains how to make your dreams come true in Tierra del Fuego
TAKING A 13-HOUR FLIGHT from the UK followed by a three-and-a-half-hour domestic flight to catch a fish may seem excessive. But if, like me, you have a sea-trout obsession, then the reason for the journey becomes apparent when you delve into the statistics.
You may fish a lifetime on your home river and not encounter a double-figure sea-trout. However, on the Rio Grande, I would be surprised if you didn’t land a trophy on your first visit. Some 50,000-85,000 sea-trout run the river every year. Their average weight is 9lb, one in five is over 15lb, and one in fifty is over 20lb. Rio Grande sea-trout are on average 17% heavier than sea-trout from elsewhere in the world of the same length.
I started visiting the island of Tierra del Fuego in 2000, fishing there at least once a year ever since, except when Covid interrupted. It has become a pilgrimage.
In the early years, it was a case of renting a car and camping for weeks at a time beside the myriad rivers and lakes scattered across the Chilean and Argentine sides of the island. These trips matured and became more elaborate, including commissioning a fishing vessel to take me into inaccessible rivers I had discovered on detailed maps of the island (now we have the luxury of Google Earth). I have been fortunate to fish at least a dozen of the main rivers, along with countless tributaries. Some turned out to be almost devoid of life, others provided bounty.
Outside of these DIY exploratory trips, I have spent months fishing along the Rio Grande, almost from source to sea. As a result, I have a firm grasp of when it should be visited, what can be caught (size and numbers) and what tackle and clothing should be taken.
Many anglers visiting the Rio Grande do not appreciate that over half the length of the river is in Chile. Indeed, the river almost spans the island, starting near the Pacific in the west before emptying into the Atlantic near Rio Grande town in the east. It is 150 miles long, slowly increasing in size and strength as it meanders through the plains, gaining several fishable tributaries along the way.
While sea-trout are undoubtedly the target, there are many other species. You are also likely to encounter brown and rainbow trout, early season king salmon and even the occasional steelhead.
“Some 50,000-85,000 sea-trout run the Rio Grande every year”
The season opens in November, but while there are sea-trout in the river, it is not a period worth your time. Nor is December, when the locals target the king salmon, of which there’s a decent run headed for the Rio Blanco, a tributary of the Rio Grande on the Chilean side. A few steelhead are caught in the early season, too, but these
