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Four suites, three rivers, eight rods
Our Patagonian trout programme runs at Stone River Lodge, a partner house on the water in northern Patagonia. Brown and rainbow, floated or waded, from November to the end of May.
Northern Patagonia
Not ours, and we would rather say so
Sierra Brava owns two lodges — the one in Córdoba and Rio Bravo on the Paraná. The trout is different: it runs at Stone River Lodge, a house we work with under a standing arrangement rather than one we operate. We handle your booking, your flights either side and the week as a whole; they handle the water.
Stone River was founded by Bebe Anchorena, one of the people who opened Argentine fly fishing up in the first place. It sits on the bank of the river in northern Patagonia, with direct access to the water, and it is deliberately tiny: four suites, eight rods, and nobody else.
On exactly where it is, we are going to be less precise than you might expect, because the lodge itself is. It publishes northern Patagonia and the three rivers it fishes, and not a pin on a map. The arrival point is Chapelco Airport at San Martín de los Andes, and you are met there.
- Suites
- 4Eight rods maximum, and no more
- Rivers
- 3Aluminé, Chimehuín, Collón Curá
- Season
- Nov–May1 November to 31 May
- Arrive at
- ChapelcoSan Martín de los Andes · transfer included
The water
Three rivers, and the stretches nobody else is on
Your ghillie sets the following day the evening before, so you know where you are going and what to put in the bag.
The programme fishes the Aluminé, the Chimehuín and the Collón Curá — three of the names any fly fisherman knows before he has been to Argentina. What makes the week is less the names than the access: alongside those public rivers the lodge holds private water that is rarely fished at all, which is where the solitude in the photographs actually comes from.
The water varies from intimate spring creeks to broad freestone rivers, so the day is decided by conditions rather than by a rota — floated or waded, whichever the river wants. The fish are wild brown and rainbow, and the guides are local men who grew up on these rivers, with fifteen years and more of guiding behind them. It is fished one rod to a guide, or two.
- Early season
- NymphsAnd streamers, from November
- After Christmas
- Dry flyFrom the end of December
- Guiding
- 1:1 or 2:1Local guides, 15 years and more
- Private water
- YesAlongside the public rivers
The week
Six days on the water, eight in the country
You land at Chapelco and are driven to the lodge. There is a welcome dinner that evening and the fishing programme is gone through then; six full days follow, and you leave on the eighth. Lunch is taken streamside, and dinner runs to several courses with a cellar of Catena Zapata behind it.
A note on what to bring: the fishing licence, your tackle and your fly kit are not included — unlike the shooting lodges, where a gun can simply be hired on site. Tell us before you travel and we will arrange them.
Before you book
What people ask about Bravo Sur
No, and it is worth being straight about it. Sierra Brava owns two lodges, in Córdoba and on the Paraná. The Patagonian trout runs at Stone River Lodge under a standing arrangement with its owners. We book it, we handle the travel around it and we stand behind it; we do not run it.
Northern Patagonia, on the bank of the river, reached from Chapelco Airport at San Martín de los Andes. The lodge does not publish a more precise location than that and we are not going to invent one. What it does publish is the water: the Aluminé, the Chimehuín and the Collón Curá, plus private stretches.
1 November to 31 May. Nymphs and streamers do the work early on; once summer sets in, from the end of December, the dry fly comes into its own. If you are a dry fly angler, come after Christmas.
No. The fishing licence, the tackle and the fly kit all sit outside the rate, which is the one place our fishing differs from our shooting — at the shooting lodges a gun can be hired on site. Tell us before you travel and we will arrange them.
Bravo Sur
The lodge, the rivers, and the fish
Or both
Birds in Córdoba first, then the rivers
The trout season and the dove shooting overlap from November to May, so the two run as one trip — three days at Sierra Brava, then a flight south and three days on the water.