Video: Mousing and dry fly fishing on the River of Dreams
April 20th by Chad Shmukler
There are a limited number of places on the globe where you can find dependable mouse fishing for trout. Kamchatka is the holy grail of mouse fishing. Alaska can offer excellent mousing opportunities when salmon aren't getting in the way. During "mouse years," New Zealand is home to otherworldly mouse-fishing. And then there's Patagonia.
Patagonia generally isn't regarded as a mouse-fishing mecca. And that's for a good reason: it's not. But with every rule there are exceptions, and Patagonia has a few. Find a Patagonian river that's both low on bug biomass—making its resident fish terrestrial-, fish-, and rodent-eaters by necessity—and which rarely sees anglers, and you might just find a bounty of mouse-eating trout.
Chile's Rio Blanco, otherwise known as "The River of Dreams," is one of those rivers. The Blanco doesn't just offer the finest mouse fishing we've experienced in Patagonia, it offers some of the best mouse fishing we've experienced anywhere. But don't take our word for it, check out the video below from Jensen Fly Fishing, which features gorgeous, slow-motion footage of one big, Blanco brown trout after another chasing down bushy mouse flies stripped, swung, and twitched along the river's surface.
Because the incomparable River of Dreams caters to only 6 anglers per week, availability is limited. As a result, the time to book your 2024-25 trip is now.
Experience one of Patagonia's greatest fly fishing adventures, and do so for half the price of most Alaskan lodges.
To learn more about the River of Dreams Basecamp, head here, contact us, or give us a ring at +1 (253)-780-1530.
Mouse fishing paradise
Patagonia
The River of Dreams Basecamp
The middle section of Rio Blanco is some of the most untouched water in all of Patagonia. The lower reaches of the Blanco, near its confluence with Rio Aysén and mere miles from where the river dumps into the Pacific Ocean, can be reached via both an unimproved dirt road and by upstream jetboat—until powerful waterfalls and class IV rapids block your way. And, the first few miles downstream of the river's origin can be accessed by portaging across a massive lake and hiking downriver before an impassible canyon halts your progress.
