Rainbows
The rainbow trout is a cold-water fish species. The habitat of stream-dwelling rainbow trout is usually small to moderately large, shallow rivers with gradual flows and gravel bottoms, of the pool-riffle type. The lake-resident trout are usually found in moderately deep, cool lakes with adequate shallows and vegetation for good food production. For a lake population to be self-sustaining, there must be a gravelly river to which the adults can migrate during the spawning season.
The Palena and the neighbouring, nutrient rich waters we fish including the Fulelafu, Yelcho and private lagunas, are all home to very healthy populations of rainbows. The fish vary in size depending where you are fishing but one thing is for sure, you can expect to catch alot of them.
Just like their North American cousins, Chilean Bows can be found in all the likely spots such as back eddies, undercut banks, underneath logs and debris, behind big rocks in tail outs and right in the riffles when they are feeding greedily on the prolific caddis mayfly and stoneflies that abound in the southern Waters.
The major difference between the trout in our waters is their feeding habits depending on their location. For instance the fish in The Lower Futaleufu and Lago Yelcho tend to grow to immense sizes, and very quickly due the abundance of smaller fish, giant dragon flies, and extremely prolific terrestrial hatches!
Over the course of the week, and depending on the time of year, anglers will find themselves casting dry flies to free rising rainbows, amidst prolific mayfly, caddis hatches on the rivers. We also fish a wide variety of foam bodied attractor dries, such as fat albert’s and Chernobyl ants, over sunken logs and pockets on the river edge while drifting by boat through countless mile of prime trout habitat. For those of you that aren't afraid to get down and dirty, the streamer fishing can produce fantastic results. Baitfish and Pan Cora crab patterns will move even the largest laziest slab off the bottom to devour your fly!