Our beats
pools & pockets
The lower river
Rio Gallegos runs through 350 kilometres of Patagonia’s Santa Cruz region and is world-famous for its sea-run brown trout fishery.
Camp Karku has access to the first 40 kilometres of river running through private land, so every sea trout will be passing through their beats and, at some point, will hold in some of the countless pools and pockets.
Because of the amount of water and the limited number of fishermen (four or five per week) many of these pools never gets fished. With so few anglers, we can focus on what we believe are the most productive areas, and have everyone fishing absolute prime water at all times.
We reach the beats by driving 4×4 trucks on dirt tracks but some areas are also left alone because they would require a good deal of hiking – and with so much water and limited time during a week, why bother fishing anything but the best water?
Fly reels
If you hook a decent GT (that’s anything of more than 4-5 KG) you will need a reel with a good drag system. For bigger fish (8-10 KG and upwards) you need a reel with a good amount of drag pressure.
The only way to stop, or at least slow down, a GT hooked in shallow water is heavy drag pressure. You will be fighting the fish on your reel, not your rod.
We recommend fly reels with sealed drag systems. This is a different scene than boat fishing. Your reels with get submerged in saltwater all the time and not all reels will tolerate this kind of abuse.
Backing
Whether you have 200, 300, or more meters of backing on your reel is a matter of personal taste. Most likely, you won’t see too much of your backing, even on a bigger fish, because you must do everything to try and stop it.
On the other hand, if you hook one of the really big GTs that sometimes come onto the flats (we are talking fish of 130 cm/45 kilo+) then you might see a lot more than your first hundred meters of backing …
Fly lines
For both setups, you need a floating line made for tropical saltwater.
For your big fish rig, the 11-12 weight setup, you need a floating line made for tropical saltwater with a really strong core. Some lines cast well but don’t take much abuse and break too easily if they touch rock or coral during the fight. We will send you our current recommendations.
If you are traveling alone, bring a spare fly line. If you are traveling with friends, just make sure you have a few extra lines between you, in case some of you get “reefed”.
