Fishing the Falklands
TARGETING TROUT IN A LAND OF PENGUINS AND ELEPHANT SEALS IS A REMINDER THAT YOU’RE A BLOODY LONG WAY FROM HOME
“GOT EVERYTHING YOU NEED?” Mary Lou, our young pilot, shouts as she loads our rods and gear into a twin-engine Islander. She ashes a warm smile and seems to read my mind. “ e wind’s only around 25 knots,” she says. “We’ll be ne.”
Wind and optimism whip over the Falkland Islands, a British territory about the size of Connecticut, 400 miles northeast of Tiera del Fuego, the southernmost point of South America. It’s October, austral spring, and my longtime buddy Eugene Jones and I are here for a week before we board an expedition ship to Antarctica. A er a night in Stanley, the capital city, we y west to Port Howard for some shing.
At Port Howard Lodge, a discarded howitzer serves as an outdoor rod rack and a haunting reminder of the Falklands War. Acting on a long-disputed claim over what they call Las Islas Malvinas, Argentina invaded the Falklands in 1982, igniting two months of erce ghting that ended in a British victory. “ is place was occupied by a thousand Argentine troops,” explains lodge proprietor Wayne Brewer. “And they weren’t here to sh.”
Wayne and his wife, Sue, welcome us into their spacious, wood-paneled lodge, replete with stacks of well-worn shing books, handdrawn river maps, displays of antique ies and lures, and the sepia skin mount of a huge brown trout. A er a cup of tea, Wayne drives us in his beat-up Land Rover past bright yellow gorse hedges and over a rolling, treeless heath toward the Warrah River, named for the extinct wolf. ( e last warrah was killed