By Raúl San Martín

 

 

            First Part: “CHILDHOOD YEARS”

 

 

 

From early age I had the fortune of enjoying experiences that with the years would gain enormous value for my personal anecdote’s book.

In my first school years, nothing was more important to me than coming back from school to go fishing in the small streams that winded in the green and wooded valley next to my house. I used to wear for those cases old trousers with suspenders and leg to half a cane with some patch in the knee or behind, and pullover round the waist just in case. I used a colihue cane of two and a half meters long, cotton string to tie packages with the last stretch of half meter out of sowing thread as leader, taken from my mother’s sewing basket. And as hook a needle taken from the same basket, which I heated with the flame of a match so as to bend the tip upwards, worms I used in small pieces because the fishes where also small, peladillas or farionelas (Aplochiton Taeniatus and Aplochiton Zebra). The kids today can only see them in books because they are almost vanished species.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was all about putting the hook with a little bit of worm in the water and two dozens of peladillas would come, and the fastest were the most unfortunate ones. I came home with my friends and the pockets full of little fish to make a fantastic frying party!! And afterwards I had to take up with my mother’s scolding because I had forgotten a fish in my pants. I was lucky to be born in that small paradise that was Villa Futalaufquen in the Los Alerces National Park, were everything was beautiful; everything was easy for me in those childhood years. The streams were full of peladillas and puyenes (Galaxias Platei), the same as many lakes full of perks and patagonic pejerreyes, today there are almost extinct.

An underwater world densely populated by natural individuals, was drastically change due to the introduction of foreign specie of the other hemisphere. One guesses easily the enormous amount of native fishes that were the easy prey of the salmons, tremendous predators, until they outnumbered them completely. For how many decades those water mirrors have held in their depths enormous amounts of record trout from the begging of the last century when they were planted in the absence of fishermen.

Altered the ecosystem, and with the running of many decades, the salmons changed their alimentary diet and in the same way reduced their sizes to a smaller or even more normal size, our insect eating trouts.

 

THE PIONEERS OF FLY FISHING

At the end of the 50´s decade I did my first fly weapons by the hand of Erik Gornik who was the first fishing guide of the area of the west Chubut and the first fly fisher. It was the time of the bamboo canes and the braded lines which you had to lubricate for them to last longer, I remember as well those first pioneers, historic characters in Bariloche, San Martin, Junin, guides y fly fishermen, some names like Turvanoff, Henke, Shwed, Hossmann, Radziwill, Fraser, Anchorena, etc. and illustrious guests as Joe Brooks,Ernie Schwibert, A.J. McClane, Roderick Haig Brown, Curt Goudy, and so many others. Personally I had the fortune of receiving as gift many teachings from Joe Brooks, and from Al McClane also I learned sensitive things I’ll never forget. But the biggest for me, and from which I learned the most because I also lived with him was my master Gornik, who was, besides from guide and fisherman, an excellent artist. Austrian of birth, with Yugoslavian father and Norwegian mother, he was Argentinean through adoption and he was my master in fishing and in painting. 

 

Eric Gornik, with two rainbows of 8,5 kg

and 10,4 kg fished in the Cisne River outlet

– Lake Menéndez – 1957

He was the fly-fishing pioneer in this area, fishing as a sport, and fishing as a touristic attraction. He was an incipient journalist who helped make this place known through his many articles in magazines of that time. I lived with him until I was twenty, when I had to present myself for the military service and I knew then that I wasn’t going to see him again for him also was leaving for good. Our relationship continued through letters filled with marvels from here and there, he lived in St. Thomas, the biggest of the Virgin Islands of the Caribbean.

Years later I found out with a lot of grief about his death. Today I enjoy with nostalgia the memories of our shared years, and I enjoy also when I read the Fly-fishermen Will by John Voelker who signed his writings as Robert Traver, or some parts of the books Squaretails or Pools of Memories, delicious works of Charlie McKensy Kroll´s fishing experiences, with whom I spent many days fishing and he mentions these days in some chapters of his book. Chuk, called like that by his friends, has now passed to a better life and I keep two of his books with special dedications each.

Luckily these great characters left us with great teachings that we can transmit today to our children.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                        

Alad Jones (at that time the Lago Verde

ranger) and the record of 12,4 kg – 1957

Jones, De Leòn and Gornik with the three

trophies, all of them fished on the same day!