Fly Fishing Spain
I was back in Spain of my annual hosted trip to the Pyrenees Mountains and while the water levels were extremely high for early July, we made the best of it and some lovely fish were landed. In all my travels, I don’t think that there is a trip I look forward to more than when I go back to Spain each summer. The food and wine are excellent and I just love the diversity of species and environments that the Pyrenees offers anglers.
For this trip we spent 3 nights at La Ribagorza Lodge and then headed further west to La Jacetania Lodge, fishing for 5 days in a multitude of pristine and unpressured environments.
The Aren region proved to be a real mixed bag with my favorite river being borderline too high to really fish. We did find a bit of clear water here and there and I lost a lovely Brown Trout that got me in to the current and then broke me off. That said, one of the tailwaters in the area was holding some enormous trout (both Rainbows and Browns) and it fished beautifully. All of the guests I had on the trip hooked in to some real beast and while not a lot of big fish were landed, several stunners were brought to the net.
On Day 3 we packed up and headed west to focus more on dry fly fishing the high country rivers and creeks that this part of Spain has an abundance of. I love the high country and its vistas in this part of Spain. The scenery is incredible and it’s hard not to just want to stay up there for a few days. Switching from 6 weights to three weights for higher elevations is a blast and it took a while for me to kick back in to the technical nature of this light weight fly fishing.
Each of the guests on the trip spent a day in lower elevation rivers fishing for Barbel on a dry fly. The barbel is a bit of a cross between a bonefish and a carp and they readily take a well-presented fly. I absolutely love fishing for them and always try to carve out at least a day during each trip to specifically target them. It was great to see how much the guests on this trip also enjoyed fishing for them. It’s a lot like bonefishing in that you are site casting to specific fish in crystal clear waters. Only instead of on a saltwater flat with a Gotcha, you are using a Beatle in a gorgeous mountain stream.
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