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The story of the big fish from Villa Maria last week
Big fish story:
On my day off I decided to go fishing instead of resting and went out on the Rio Grande by my own, both to enjoy being out and also to make a break and think about life.
I was heading to a special pool I knew about, one that I was very confident with as the week before on the morning session I landed the record of Villa Maria season there at that time, a beautiful cock fish of 26 pounder completely bright and amazingly powerful, and also a note worthy 23 and 18 pounder on the afternoon.
So I went there with a lot of expectation as I felt this pool to be very good for big fat lazy fish that enjoy the slow flow and deep water of this pool and feel in security.
I put on my S4 AFS Rio shooting head and add a Sink Tip 7 polyleader as the tail of this pool seems to be bottomless! Started the pool a bit further up where we caught the 23 pounder and after 20 min, no take, no action at the end of the line! I put a chartreuse and black Pepe’s leech as this flies is working very well in the coloured water and the water was still a bit murky.
Changing the strategy from time to time and the way to fish the fly almost on every cast, making some dead drift, some twitch, or little strip, faster strip?all of a sudden on a dead drift cast, I feel like a stop. I know there is no rock at this spot, only one clump on the head and my line should not touch the bottom as it’s very deep. So I lift firmly the tip of my rod and feel that something strange was happening.
I keep the rod high, and pull a bit harder?the “rocky fish” didn’t like it and started to move. As soon as he felt better the hook as I was putting more pressure on him, he started to run upstream and then stop?turned and ran like a train and stop again staying on the deep channel shaking his head like mad to try to unhook himself?like the big cock fish do most of the time.
After a trilling fight of about 10 mn, I brought the fish closer and closer at the end of the pool on this little Laguna where I can beach the fish and fight him better.
I still didn’t see the fish but I definitely know that I have something big, perhaps huge? After having turned around for quite a while the fish came up at the surface once and I could see his amazingly huge cock fish head! It scared me off to be honest! That was the biggest fish head I have never seen!
It took me some more minutes to bring him close and being able to land him! When this happen I started to shake as I was shock to see how this fish was enormous and a big strange! I couldn’t realize what I have done, I caught the sea trout of a lifetime, and probably the biggest sea trout I will never catch again?! But who knows, there is some monsters here on the Rio Grande and especially on Villa Maria waters where the big fat sea run seems to feel comfortable.
I couldn’t weight the fish as I was far from the car and the fight took me already a lot of time in this deep and fast water so I only took his measurements which are 98 cm for the full length and 58 cm of girth! (38,5 inch over 23 inch of girth). Probably close to 30 pounds!
No doubt, I will certainly go fishing again and again on my days off and try to catch even bigger!
By Jean Baptiste Vidal, Villa Maria guide.
