Solstice Celebration (wtihout Rob)

My Friday off fell nearly adjacent to the summer solstice, which of course meant it was time to fish until dark. With Rob off in Peru fishing at the equivalent of the top of Mt. Rainier, I found an old friend, Trevor Larson, to accompany me. He had not fly-fished in years, and is one of the few who actually followed through and called me on an offer to take him sometime.

We left in the evening, after Trevor had finished looking in peoples' mouths and I had completed nearly a full day of honey-dos, helpful when you are going to be gone until long after dark. We climbed the steep road through the rolling wheat fields to the astounding elevation of 1,660 feet (take that, Rob!), where we found a beautiful and familiar stream. I had both my 3-weights rigged and ready with the CGPPN -what else to use? Me with a size 12 and 16, Trevor with a size 14; I thought it wise not to give a newbie two flies, that's asking for trouble.

I slipped into the water, and had a couple fish to hand in the time it took Trevor to follow down the rocks and make it over to me. Yup, I love this place. With a little coaching, he soon was getting reasonable dead drifts, handling the slack in the line as it came towards him on the upstream casts, and finding fish like this one, his first of the day.

Trevor's first trout after a long hiatus from fly-fishing

As usual, the upstream pace was excruciatingly slow, because there were so many fish. I'd want to move up to the next run, but how could you when you were still having a fish nearly every cast? The trout were even prettier than I remembered in the past, many with deep red color. 

Beautifully colored rainbow

Size was good, probably more than half in the 8" to 11" range, with the assortment of flyers and chesters, and the occasional one pushing 12". As usual, fish were often in the shallow water at the edge of the moving water as well as in fast water lest than a foot deep. We also found lots in the few deeper pools. In one little pool at the side of a fast run, I had two doubles along with maybe 20 fish or more, while Trevor kept pulling them out of the riffle on the other side of the fast water. I told him he couldn't use the excuse that I caught twice as many fish as he did because I didn't let him use two flies!

I finally left that little pool when the fish started getting small, and it was approaching nightfall. There was still some good water upstream to hit. We continued up, finding fish everywhere they were supposed to be, and a few where you wouldn't think they would be. Trevor sat in one little fast riffle and probably caught 20 fish before things slowed down. As it became too dark to see, Trevor climbed out to the path, but I needed just a couple more in a beautiful run we had just reached. With the sunglasses, I couldn't see anything on the water, so I cast blindly, and found two more nice ones stripping the indicator in, then stumbled to shore through the now black water which hid all the rocks underneath. Walking back to the car, we both had big smiles. It took us 2 1/2 hours to fish through a quarter mile of stream, and between us we probably found 150 fish. How could you not have a big smile! Happy summer solstice!

Another of many beautiful fish

Trout at 13,060 feet

Beautiful stream with incredible backdrop!

Mary and I are on assignment in Peru as humanitarian missionaries for 18 months.  This is our first time living in the southern hemisphere.  Our assignment has taken us past a couple of streams that definitely looked “fishy” but our schedules are usually packed and it isn’t possible to do much beyond our assignments.

However, as luck, fate, inspiration, or star alignment would have it, we returned this week to a place where we have travelled before, passing through a place that definitely looked fishy, but this time we were the ones in charge so could have a little more control of the schedule.  I had prearranged with our driver for a stop at the outlet stream of a high Andean lake (they call them Lagunas) that was said to have trout in it.  Our elevation was  13,060 feet above sea level so my fly casting was much better than normal since there was less air resistance.

Laguna Querococha--elevation 13,060 feet above sea level

I fished in the middle stretch between the highway crossing and the lake outlet.  Click the link below to go to a map showing the location:

This is where I found the trout! :-)

Mary and I were traveling with a video crew who will be doing some filming of the school project we’ve been working on and a formal delivery ceremony scheduled for Thursday in the main town square.  I let our fellow travelers know there would be a little break before we hit the summit of the Andes (tunnel through the top is at 14,816 feet above sea level!) on our trip.  On the road to Huacaybamba (our third trip to the remote province) I stopped this time to fish the river below Laguna Querococha.  We finally weren’t travelling in the dark, or with the Area Welfare Manager who wouldn’t be able to understand why one would stop in the middle of nowhere to throw a hook with some feathers tied on it into a river to try to catch a fish just to let it go again.

I tied on a size 10 Renegade (my favorite go-to fly back home) with a size 16 green Copper John dropper.  First run a fish made a swipe at the Renegade soon after it landed on the water, which I missed.  Reflexes have slowed from lack of use, and maybe altitude had something to do with it.  I know my brothers would say nothing new there.  Anyway finally got the first small rainbow to hand, and as shown it is literally “to hand” but hey, it is my first southern hemisphere trout.  For that matter, I don’t know if any Merrill Boy has landed a trout in the southern hemisphere, so take that Rick and Tom!

First trout from South America on the fly

After the hour of “rest” was up I had brought 17 trout to hand, all rainbows, and fished about 125 yards of stream.  About one-third were on the Renegade and the rest were on the green Copper John.  I broke off the dropper on one nice fish so changed to 3x tippet to avoid a repeat of that.  It isn’t easy to get replacement flies here so I have to be much more careful than usual.  Thankfully the fish weren’t leader-shy. The largest was 26 centimeters (got to love that metric system—makes them sound even bigger!) but it slipped away before I got a photo.  I thought it was awesome that the trout here liked the Renegade.  Glad I brought a few.  Hope I can let a few more fish use them as “chew toys” before we return to the States in 2017.  I think I also set a new family record for highest elevation trout catching.

They loved the green Copper John

We then continued on our journey to Huacaybama, which lies about another 7 hours down the road (very rough dirt road—think Indiana Jones ride at Disney).  We crossed the Marañon River (principal tributary of the Amazon) just before ascending up to Huacaybamba.  A few weeks ago we were in Pucallpa on assignment along the Ucayayli River which joins the Marañon at Nauta to form the Amazon.  In two weeks we will be evaluating a project in Nauta so will be where the Amazon actually becomes the Amazon.  This mission is not only an opportunity for service, but we are getting to see some amazing things.  I hope to wet a fly again here in Peru—maybe in the Amazon for piranha or some other exotic fish.  Today was lots of fun and Mary, our driver, and the videographers were very kind to indulge me.

The coloration was different on every single trout

Huacaybamba is way out and there is very little light pollution so the stars are brilliant.  The sky has been cloudless since we arrived.  Tonight from the Plaza de Armas (main town square) we looked up at the star studded sky and saw the Southern Cross.  Really cool—especially after catching Southern Hemisphere Rainbow Trout, which I’ll refer to from now on as the “Southern Trucha”!

An interesting geologic sight--known as the "Map of Peru". The cleft in the hillside has vegetation that provides a darker shade in contrast to the hillside. Pull out your atlas (or look on Google Maps) and you will see that this does in fact roughly approximate the shape of the country of Peru.   This was on the hillside above the stream where I fished.