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Published: January 17th 2008
Rio Centinela
The white specks in the background are andean geese that were nesting in the area.So after striking out on the Rio Santa Cruz I decided to head out of town in the other direction and check out the Rio Centinela. I walked to the edge of town, stuck out my thumb & was picked up in no time! Even better the guy that picked me up worked for a local hotel and spoke English. When I told him where I wanted to go he looked at me like I was crazy and said he didn’t think there were many fish there. When we arrived at the river I found out why, the river is no more than a trickle in the middle of a dusty no-where land.
Any way I thanked him for the ride, walked down to the river, tied on the same olive wooly bugger & Olive hares ear set up, and immediately caught a little 8¨rainbow - which was a big relief as I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of having to immediately turn around thumb it back to town again.
There was a good breeze blowing down stream so I decided is would be best to walk up stream and fish my way back. I then proceeded to
Big Baby Bird
I finally got too close to this guy and he charged me. I screamed like a little girl and then ran away....... Well they do have sharp beaks and talons! walk up stream for two and a half hours - I just couldn’t bring my self to stop and turn back - there was a good hole around every bend!
The walk up stream was quite interesting. There were lots of geese and ducks nesting along the river and they were constantly putting on their best “Oh look I have a broken wing” to keep me away from their young. In addition at one point a had a couple of large hawks start bombarding me, coning within feet if my head - it was actually quite unnerving.
It turned out the Hawks had an adolescent chick on the ground - which I got a little to close to while trying to photograph ….. it charged and then jumped at me talons first. So I screamed and ran away.
I finally started fishing and immediately began catching fish, though every single one was a clone of the first I had caught down by the road. After about an hour and a half I was beginning to wonder if there were any decent fish in the river at all when a really nice 18¨bow picked up my wooly bugger
& though he was a bit skinny he put up a good fight. I ended up catching 4 nice fish in the 17¨+ range - one of which was the longest skinniest rainbow I have ever seen and another that was over 20”, big and fat, and fought like a steelhead.
After having such a great time on the river that day I decided to try it again yesterday………. I should have stayed in town. This time I decided to walk down towards the lake. The wind was howling at 40 mph, the blowing sand and dust clogged my eyes and ears and burned my face, and I didn’t catch anything over 8” - …….. I mean this wind was bad! All I could do to cast was get up wind of the hole, hold my line up in the air, and then just set it down on the water.
Oh well. Hope you enjoy the stories and the pics.
I’ll have some more after Rio Grande!
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Quillen
non-member comment
I was wondering if you liked to fish?
Sounds like you are doing well down there. Enjoy it before you come back to chilly Portland! We'll keep the lights on for ya.