Extreme Fishing (26 page)

None of the team wants to leave the next morning; we all want to stay here forever. Maybe we could miss the plane and go another day? Where are we going next, anyway? I
don’t really care. In the distant recesses of my mind, Taylor and Vanya call to me. I snap out of my reverie; the spell is broken. I have to manhandle Jamie, Craig and Peter into the cab to
the airport. Peter is worst of all.

‘Go on without me. I’ll only slow you down. There are others who have the gift of sound.’

‘Well, none like you, Prada. You are a fucking one-off, my friend,’ I say, booting him into the passenger seat.

Had I not had a beautiful wife and child to return to I would still be there to this day. Cuba is one of the most enchanting places I have visited on this fishing odyssey.

January 2011, At the Ends of the Earth, Series 4

After what was a bit of a bumpy start,
Extreme Fishing
is becoming a veritable ‘beast’, a term we use in telly to denote a successful show. It’s a
case of ‘be careful what you wish for’, though, as there’s little time for anything else work-wise and I can forget about a social life.

But everyone is talking about
Extreme Fishing
, and now in the street I am harangued thirty or forty times with, ‘Caught any fish yet?’ or: ‘Off fishing?’ I was
even on the loo minding my own business when some guy popped his head over the stall wall and asked, ‘Caught any extreme fish lately?’ I bombarded him with toilet rolls until he left me
alone. When I was Jimmy Porter in
Casualty
, I used to get ‘Oi, Robson, I hurt my finger.’ When I was Tucker – ‘Where’s Paddy?’ And when I was the surgeon
in
Reckless
I would have grannies winking at me, asking if I could do reconstructive bowel surgery. I definitely prefer the fishing questions.

In this latest series, our objective is to go to the ends of the earth, and there’s no place further south than Patagonia. Patagonia is the tail region of South America, with territories
shared between Chile and Argentina. The British Falklands Islands (Islas Malvinas) are just off the east coast of Patagonia on the Atlantic side, but it’s best not to mention the war!
It’s even more important they don’t know I was in
Soldier, Soldier
, for obvious reasons. Personally I don’t know what all the fuss was about – some small rocks in the
middle of the ocean. I mean, it’s not like they found oil, minerals or gas there. Oh, they did, did they? Now, fancy that.

Torres del Paine

After a fourteen-hour flight to Buenos Aires and another internal flight, we are travelling eight hours by bus to Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. Our plan is to
fly-fish for the king salmon, or chinook as it is also known, and then continue to Tierra del Fuego in Argentina, where I hope to land the biggest brown trout of my career.

The hitchhikers we have picked up along the way, one German and two American girls, think we have a great plan. They are all travelling alone in search of adventure and I am envious of their
pluck. I don’t think I could have done that at their age. They are impressive kids who can all speak three languages. They seem to hit it off with each other, crammed in like sardines in the
small minivan, and they start to hatch a plan to travel together for a while.

We arrive in Torres del Paine around 3 a.m. It’s pitch-black so I can’t get much of an idea of my surroundings. I’m too tired, anyway. My head hits the pillow and zzzz . .
.

I pull back the curtains of my cosy log cabin and stare open-mouthed out of the window. The panorama is incredible, mountainous and dramatic. The name Torres del Paine
(pronounced ‘pie-nee’) is from the Tehuelche Indian word for ‘blue’, and
torres
is Spanish for ‘towers’. It refers to three jagged granite peaks that
violently pierce the sky; they are magnificent and defiant. The largest horn, the Grande Paine, is over one and a half miles high. In front of the mountains is a lake, Lake Pehoe, perhaps five
miles across; its bright azure colour indicates its icy temperature and mini icebergs float around in it. The frozen breeze ripples the water. In Patagonia the wind can be cruel and unrelenting.
Locals call it ‘the broom of God’, as it can literally sweep everything away. As I walk outside to take some photographs I feel like I have been superimposed here by special
effects.

Chinook Salmon

Patrick Marcos looks like a revolutionary. A young Fidel Castro, without the cigar and beret. We are standing next to the Serrano River, only minutes from the hotel. I am
hoping to catch a hefty chinook (or king) today, the biggest of the species.

The chinook is thought to have made its home here some time in the twentieth century, after hundreds of non-endemic salmon were released by fishermen in the 1930s and again in the late 1970s, in
the hope of establishing the species here. Only DNA tests can reveal their true mitochondrial heritage, but many are thought to have come from North America. But one thing is for sure: they have
set up home here and are thriving, making the 600-mile runs from the Pacific back to their new-found rivers and tributaries. It’s spring and we have arrived during this epic journey, when
thousands of them return from the sea to spawn and then, as we discovered in Alaska, die.

Today Patrick is my ghillie, which is a combination of best friend and fishing mentor in one. He will be there to give me assistance on casting techniques, where the best pools are, where the
fish congregate and rest, and the best lures or flies to use. Patrick knows this river like the back of his hand and he says he knows the back of his hand really well. I’m not sure I could
spot mine in a line-up but he says he could. (‘It was
that
hand that stole the handbag, officer. I never forget a hand.’)

I tell him the biggest salmon I ever caught weighed eighteen pounds.

‘You could triple that in this river,’ he says. The biggest fish Patrick caught here weighed sixty-four pounds!

‘That would be a record in Britain, Patrick.’ In fact, it would match the enormous salmon caught by Georgina Ballantine in 1922, a UK record that remains unbeaten to this day.

We start casting at his favourite spot – the weather is slightly overcast and it is about four degrees. We are using spoon lures, which look nothing like spoons but instead like small
silver fish that replicate a distressed minnow. The salmon don’t attack the lures because they want to eat, and I ask Patrick why they go after them – his theory is that you’re
trespassing on the fish’s property. My theory is that we are trespassing on their lovemaking.

I say, ‘Imagine if I cast a spoon over you while you are making love to your wife, Patrick.’

‘I would kill you,’ he says.

We wade out into the river. I am dressed up to the nines in technical fishing gear that keeps me cosy and, more importantly, dry. I dangle the spoons in the water and cast. As I am casting, a
stranger appears to my right. He walks into the water and sidles up to me, within about five yards. He then starts to cast. I am incensed. Angling etiquette dictates you don’t walk into
another fisherman’s beat. This guy is trying to nick my spot. Patrick very politely asks him to leave and suggests he find his own spot. If that had happened on the Coquet, I would have
decked him. I know how the salmon feel about our lures. I want him to bugger off.

I carry on casting. Patrick’s reel starts screaming.

‘Robson, I have a present for you,’ he says, and passes over his rod.

This is the first time this has ever happened on the show, as I always have to catch my own fish.

Patrick says, ‘I want you to feel this fish. You think you have caught a big salmon – you have seen nothing yet!’

I take the rod off him and immediately the chinook becomes airborne, like the helicopter of the same name. Cameraman Keith Schofield keeps his lens on the fish as it leaps – it’s the
biggest ‘springer’ I have ever clapped eyes on. Bosch! It leaps again and flies across the river, jumping five or six times, left to right, showing itself.

‘Oh, my God!’

Salmon: derived from the Latin
salmo
, and possibly the verb
salire
, meaning ‘to leap’. And boy, can this fish leap. I can tell it’s a male because of his large
gib. When males become sexually mature, the bottom part of their lip passes over the upper lip – it’s like putting your bottom lip over your nose – and it looks extraordinarily
phallic.

He’s still fighting hard. I play him, and it’s one of the most beautiful plays I have ever experienced. Finally I start to slowly reel him into the shallows. I am excited. Patrick is
hysterical – he forgets he is the ghillie. He thinks it’s one of the biggest fish he has ever seen. It’s certainly the biggest I have ever seen. I bring it ten feet from the bank,
and to my disbelief, Patrick goes over and tries to pick the fish up. It’s a forty-five-pound-plus salmon. He kneels down in two feet of water and puts both arms underneath it. I’m not
sure this fish is ready to bring in – it could run again – but I rush over to help Patrick. He drops it but manages to corral it with his legs and get hold of it again.

‘Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it,’ I say, trying to hold it by the caudal peduncle. (This is known as wristing a fish and it’s the correct way to take hold of them.)
But Patrick can’t keep hold; the fish struggles one last time and is away, motoring with its powerful tail.

The silence is deafening. I stare at him. He stares into the water. The greatest salmon I have ever seen and he’s let it slip away. He stands chest-high in the water and wipes his eyes as
if hoping he might awake from a bad dream. He rubs his whole face with his hands, trying to take in what has just happened. He silently walks off and stands and stares into space. Alistair,
however, is elated.

‘That was brilliant! So many corridors of drama: elation, conflict and despair.’

We look over at the sad figure of Patrick.

‘Go and console him, Robson,’ says Alistair, never one to miss an opportunity. I go over.

‘Robson, you cannot broadcast that. It will be the end of my career,’ he says.

‘No, it won’t. Everyone in the area thinks you are the best. We are all fallible. Fishing is a battle: we lost and the fish won.’

There has been a paradigm shift. I am now the comforter rather than the comforted and it’s a nice position to be in. Thank God it wasn’t me that fucked up this time! Patrick is still
glum. We sit on the bank together.

‘To paraphrase Gene Wilder in
Young Frankenstein
, “If fishing teaches us anything, it teaches us to accept our failures, as well as our successes, with quiet dignity and
grace.”’ I pretend to sob uncontrollably, then turn to him and say, ‘But if we catch another fish like that and you lose it, I will wring your fucking neck!’

He smiles for the first time.

Back at the hotel I take Patrick for a beer. The bar is packed, news is breaking that the government has raised gas prices in the south by 50 per cent as an austerity measure.
The people are very angry and there is going to be a general strike.

‘Life is hard enough here, why are they doing this to us?’ one lady says on the news.

With very few trees and little coal, gas is the only source for cooking and heating in the area. The unions announce that, unless the government backs down, they will go on strike and they call
on all Chileans to support the cause. All roads will be blockaded – there will be no way in and no way out. Supply lines will be cut, tourism will cease and there will be a general
standstill.

Patrick says, ‘This will never happen. They can’t implement these measures. They will sort it out.’

We call Helen to update her on the situation.

Daniel, our fixer, says, ‘It should be OK. Governments do some stupid things but this would be suicide.’

He says, however, that it is up to the office whether we stay or leave. Alistair liaises with Helen and they agree we should stay put. Unbeknownst to us, this is a bad plan because the
government goes ahead and implements the austerity measures overnight.

Inflatables and Escape

We have an early start with Patrick at Lago Sofia, about half an hour away. We do not get a chance to catch the news, and besides I’m trout fishing, which is far
more important than politics. Today we are fly-fishing with a difference: it includes flippers, a pump and an inflatable. It looks like I’m getting ready for a Conservative Party
Conference.

Rainbow and brown trout were introduced here more than a hundred years ago and they grow to sizes never seen back home. The biggest trout I ever caught was on the Coquet and weighed four and a
half pounds, which is a decent fish for that particular stream. Here many grow closer to the size of the British record, which currently stands at thirty-one pounds. For many years the record was
thought to be thirty-six pounds but it turned out the guy who took the title had actually found dead brown trout in a lake at Dever Springs. He held the record for seven years until he could no
longer live with the guilt. His behaviour became erratic, his marriage broke up, and he never fished again. He was to fishing what Lance Armstrong is to cycling: a big fat cheat.

Patrick has blown up his inflatable and it’s now my turn to pump. I say to him, ‘I know it gets lonely out here but this is ridiculous.’ From a distance it would look very
wrong!

Inflatables are used in the UK for trout fishing, but they tend to be a bit rustic – mainly the inner tubes of tractor tyres. It’s never really appealed to me but it’s time to
give it a go. I finish pumping and behold my comfy chair, complete with a drinks holder – it can even recline! It’s far more appealing than an old tractor tyre. An inflatable allows for
a stealth approach and is powered by your flippers. I have my waders on and several layers of thermals, but I am already freezing my cojones off.

I stand on the edge of the natural lake, with my webbed feet, fly rod and inflatable, looking ridiculous. I feel like Ade Edmondson in
Bottom
. Patrick is alongside; he always looks cool.
We paddle out together. It’s quite breezy today – and inflatables and wind don’t tend to mix. The broom of Patagonia starts to gently brush me across the lake, and I attempt to
steer myself back on course, my flippers going ten to the dozen. It’s not easy but trying to cast into the wind is nigh on impossible. I cast again and the fly drops a few metres away,
nowhere near the point I was aiming for. I look over at Patrick. Where is he? What? He’s now back on shore, chatting on the phone. Great, I am the butt of a Chilean practical joke.