“Fish the Limay , fish it smooth” EPIC 888 Fast Glass II.
It is the end of the fishing season in Patagonia Argentina. Two of my buddies, Marcos Hlace, Diego Soto and myself decided to fish for the mighty migratory trout at the upper Limay River, a "must do" at least once in a life time.
In the last few years, fisherman who target these massive trout while wading spend most of their time spey casting due to the magnificent conditions that this river offers for this kind of fishing. The only other way to fish is drifting a boat and fly casting from it, looking for holding water.
We love wading so we decided to get there and swing some flies.
Marcos, told me from the beginning he has something that I should try. “Sweet stuff” he affirmed. And certainly It was! I was given the opportunity to fish with an Epic Fastglass II 888 fly rod.
I thought it would be very interesting to test this beauty with a single handed spey line and try for these powerful migratory fish. When we target these fish at this time of the year (month of May) we mostly fish sinking lines so I decided to pair it with a 225 grain sink 3ips single hand Skagit body style and a 60 grain sink 6ips sinking tip which matched the 888 perfectly.
As it was my very first time with the 888 I started began with a small tungsten bead black and purple leech tied on a #6 hook, I felt very very comfortable either water born anchored cast (snap-T mostly) and air born anchored cast (single spey mostly) both worked perfectly.
The way you feel the load of this stick is very similar to any fiberglass rod, but as soon as the Epic begins unloading… this is when everything is different… The 888 has amazing recovery speed and you feel it, so when it comes to single hand spey casting you really need to calm down and let the rod do the work and it really does do the work! The smoother and calmer you perform the cast the better it casts!
We spent an hour fishing the first section of the river and Marcos suggested we move further down to a beautiful run where he claimed there were a great amount of fish holding, and it sure did, after the first 10 casts I hooked into a beautiful female dressed in fall colours, this time I was using the exactly same line but in this case a “Monkey Minnow fly” pattern size #4 white and chartreuse combination.
What can be better that chasing migratory brown trout in Patagonia with friends? Swing with fiberglass!!!
Tight lines!
Marcelo Widmann.
Photograpy: Marcos Hlace.
Rod: EPIC #8 888 Fastglass II fly rod
Line: Single Hand Skagit body 225 grains 3ips. Tip 60 grains.
Location: Upper Limay. San Carlos de Bariloche.
