Quillen river Anecdotes, by Jorge Trucco

My love affair with Quillen River goes back to 1986 when I was scouting for a classic text book dry-fly river, other than the Malleo, to enrich our Patagonian fishing destination programs. The Quillén River is meandering in the upper stretches, like a classic spring creek. The lower portion turns more into a free stone type stream. However the best of it runs through private property, a big estancia owned by a huge family, therefore the upper accesses were private. Until then, the owners were very aware of the luxury of this privacy and only shared this wonderful river with some very close friends.

Being acquainted with the family, I contacted one of them, Santiago O’Farrel, an old school and rugby mate. Santiago was already a prominent doctor and by this time had little to do with the river. He told me I should get in touch with his cousin Jorge Lagos-Marmol who lived in the estancia all year round. Tracking him down was no easy feat but I finally succeeded and was able to catch him at his office.



That first encounter was tense to say the least, Jorge can be a tough dude to deal with and wasn’t too friendly at the beginning. After a couple of hours of rough conversation he smoothened down a bit and said “you ain’t that bad of a guy, I’m interested, let’s have a scotch…” And just like at the end of Casablanca that was the beginning of a long-lasting friendship.

Soon after that meeting we started guiding in the Quillen River and the fishing lived up to our expectations. Our very first guests were Bud and Holly Hodson, owners of Tikchik Narrows Lodge in Alaska. I had fished with Bud in Alaska in September that year and I was returning his invitation.
The next visitors were Art Lee and Galen Mercer, and they all fell in love with the river.

The early years were tough to operate; the main estancia house had burnt and the newly built one was used only by the family. Our guests had to stay at a distant lodge near a place called Rahue, on the confluence of the Quillen and the Alumine Rivers. Those were pioneer years, we did a lot of driving on bad roads, accesses to the river were few and marginal for our trucks.

As years went by the whole program evolved to what it is today. The main house was turned into a beautiful and elegant lodge. And the fishing is as good as ever. Still the massive hatches, every evening, every day.
And the Quillen is still the classic text book dry fly/nymph river I fell in love with in 1986.