IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE THAT WHEN Pedro de Valdivia came stumbling down out of the Atacama desert to found Chile in the middle of the 16th Century, there were no trout in this bewitchingly beautiful country. Now, just a few short centuries later, to anyone who loves trout fishing, Chilean Patagonia is a wonderland.
Everywhere you look is water, and in most of that water, be it a spring creek, a vast glacial lake or a tumbling mountain stream, there are trout.
In truth, many of the region’s rivers don’t really represent the ideal habitat for trout. They are, in the main, fast and formidable torrents that tumble down from the Andes and crash headlong into the Pacific, invariably just a few short miles away. Yet, since their introduction, this…