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Catch Dorado in Argentina Print E-mail
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The Quest for El DoradoOn the hunt for the river tiger, South America’s feistiest fish

Story and Photos by Brian Grossenbacher

 

Fishing for dorado in Argentina
There’s a reason anglers both fear and respect the fish known in South America as the “river tiger.”

 


Fishing for dorado in Argentina
Ramiro Badessich casts for dorado on the Rio Paraná.
I'D HEARD STORIES OF GRINGOS stumbling into the wrong parts of Buenos Aires, getting abducted, mugged, and left for dead. But here I was, a long way from Montana, countless beers deep into the night, sitting across the table from a strange Argentinian with a clean-shaven head named Agustin Bustos. He was gesturing wildly. My beer sat sweating on the table. I listened as if my life depended on it. “If you want to catch the best fish in Argentina,” he said, “you need to head north, not south!”

Agustin was referring to Salminus maxillosus, the South American freshwater dorado, also known, ominously, as the river tiger. It’s a fish that has black-dotted striations along its sides, an orange tail, and cheeks that hold a faint blush of red. It also jumps like a tarpon, rips line like a brown trout, and has teeth like a piranha. I continued south, as planned, on that trip in 2001. But Agustin and I kept in touch over the years, fishing for sea-run browns in the Río Gallegos, steelhead in the Santa Cruz, and monster trout on the Limay Medio. Year after year, ad nauseam, he repeated his “Head north, not south!” refrain. Finally, a few months ago, I heeded Agustin’s advice—partly so he’d stop giving it—and booked a dorado trip with three of my best fishing buddies, guys who’d be happy playing Kick the Can in the Gobi Desert with an empty water bottle. If the fishing up north went south, we’d still have the time of our lives.

David Wanderer is a trusted IT guy in the Bozeman, Montana, area. Unlike most IT guys, he’s immediately likable, though he’s  inexplicably prone to bouts of hypochondria. Doug Nail is the guy you want to have on your side in a fight. He nearly had his leg amputated in Mexico once, after he was thrown from the bed of a truck. He kept the leg but now walks with a fitting swagger. In the Entre Ríos province of Argentina a few years back, we were invited to our guide’s house for dinner, and the guide’s wife developed an instant crush on Doug. After more than a few drinks, she summed him up in one sentence: “Este tiene mas noches que la luna.” (This one has seen more nights than the moon.) Tom Fournie is the responsible one in the group, thank God. He runs a steel-fabrication business in St. Louis yet still manages to fish more than Babe Winkelman. He’s one of those guys who see the most efficient path through life and travel it first class.

Logistically, the trip was simple: Fly overnight to Buenos Aires, spend the night in the city, then fly to Corrientes to meet our guides. Our flight touched down at 9 a.m. in B.A., and within an hour we found ourselves sipping Bloody Marys in the bar at the Alvear Palace Hotel.


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