Seasonable Angler: Life and Death Between Two Rivers

“The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”  –Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn  

It was a three-hour drive from the Buenos Aires airport to the docks along the Rio Gualeguay, a tributary of the mighty Rio Parana. My friend Luciano Alba had invited me to spend a few days on his Golden Dorado Cruiser—the only mothership-based fishing operation in Argentina. I had just enjoyed eight days in northern Patagonia at Estancia San Humberto, fishing the Rio Malleo with my buddy Bob White. Now I was about to exchange the clear mountain streams full of rising trout for the quick, muddy waters of the Rio Gualeguay—teeming with ferocious dorados, wolf fish, and piranhas. I was ecstatic with anticipation.

The Rio Parana is the longest river in Argentina, and second only to the Amazon in South America. It originates in the tropical rainforests of Brazil where monkeys howl, macaws screech, and jaguars scream. From beneath the jungle canopy it travels 2,479 miles through the Pampas of Argentina’s Littoral Region to its marshy delta near the great capital city of Buenos Aires. The river basin once supported multitudes of capybaras, caimans, and deer, but now this portion is inhabited predominantly by widely scattered cattle, horses, herons, and humans, due in part to a cultural predisposition of local fishermen and farmers to shoot non-livestock animals on sight—a sad reflection of our own human capacity for misunderstanding and darkness.

I almost immediately felt that my guide Malcolm Jeffrey and I were destined to become lifelong friends. I guess that friendship began with a simple but honest smile and the aroma of two steaming cups of java. He is the son of an English father and an Argentine mother—fluent in both English and Spanish and a masterful fishing guide with a deep love for this river and its golden dorados. I soon learned that we shared a piscatorial passion for predatory fish. Yes, I know that almost all fish that we catch on a fly are carnivorous predators, but for me there is a distinct difference between a trout sipping mayflies and a bluefish slashing anchovies until the seawater is slick with blood and oil. One is a ballerina and the other is an ironclad warrior.

The vast area we were exploring over the next few days is called “Entre Rios”—Between Rivers. This is because it rests between the Rios Uruguay and Parana. And between them lies a patchwork of rain-softened wetlands and sun-hardened grasslands. I understand the value of this dichotomy.

With every passing year I have had to come to terms with the reality that I contain the currents of both rivers—peaceful poet and proficient predator. After all, I was and always will be a U.S. Marine. During the 35 years of my life given to armed protective services, there have been times when the continued survival of myself and those I vowed to protect required the commission of acts of violence—ostensibly for the greater good. It doesn’t need to be this way but unfortunately, humanity is by nature a part of Nature.

Nature isn’t kind—at best, it’s apathetic to our continued existence. We all live between these two rivers: between a finite existence of flesh and blood and a timeless immortality of our kinder souls. As Annie Dillard once wrote, “We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.” There are no pure saints in Nature or human nature—although like Jesus of Nazareth, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, we can always choose kindness at any price.

Our journey into the heart of darkness and spirit of light began shortly after breakfast. We loaded the skiff, fired up the motor, and turned from the mighty Rio Parana across its mud-soaked waters into the only slightly clearer long, snaking tributary known as Rio Gualeguay. Sitting just forward of the boat’s transom with my legs propped upon the casting deck as the skiff slips and slides to the rhythms of river—this is one of my favorite experiences in life. I love everything about it, rain or shine. But on this morning the sun shone brightly in a cloudless sky as Malcolm deftly piloted us around each serpentine bend in the river. What began as a sliver of light upon the eastern horizon was now illuminating everything in sight—except that which was hidden within us.

After about an hour and a half of cruising rapidly upriver we came to a series of submerged sandbars and began watching the currents, looking for likely places where a golden dorado might be waiting in ambush. Malcolm proved to be a talented teacher for an eager learner like me. I wanted to learn how to read these waters and understand these fish. This is why I love placing myself into new situations where I am doing things I’ve never done—unafraid of failure and eager to learn. Writers, wranglers, and anglers all need to be brave.

Freshwater dorados are sleek, toothy eating machines that hold as close to the banks and structure as possible while facing into the conveyor belt currents that bring them oxygenated water to breathe and prey to consume. Although these alpha predators will eat many things, in these waters their main prey is the sabalo, a greenish-gray species of ray-finned fish. Every now and then we’d see the water boiling as dorados chased sabalos. At times the dorados struck the surface with such vigor as to propel their entire bodies into the atmosphere. Often, the hapless forage fish would leap from the river’s surface in their desperate attempts to escape the dorados that relentlessly pursued them. Occasionally they leapt so wildly as to land upon the shoreline, flipping and flopping on the sodden soil until they either found the river or suffocated in the morning sunlight. Even if they flipped their way back into the river, a dorado’s hungry jaws awaited. Fairness is a human construct, unknown in Nature.

We decided to begin with me tossing big poppers with my 8-weight rod and aggressive, weight-forward floating line. The trick was to slap the popper on the surface as close to the bank as possible, allowing it to sit a moment and drift, and then twitching it before retrieving a few quick strips, then picking up the line and repeating the process methodically wherever the embankment or structure met the current. It took only a few casts for me to get a savage strike and a miss, with the popper being tossed into the air before I could even try to set the hook. Then, another strike and miss—this was high-speed action. And finally a strike, strip-set, hook-up, and short battle with a smallish dorado before it came “unhooked” just before it could be netted. That was Malcolm’s expression—it came “unhooked.”

We kept working along the river’s edge, with me getting one slashing strike after another. But I kept missing the split-second timing of setting the hook when the fish smacked the popper. Sometimes there was nothing to set the hook into, because the dorado was so aggressive that it would miss the popper while launching itself completely out of the water. Other times, I was just too slow. I am always aware that when I don’t catch a fish, it’s not him—it’s me. But I approach every mistake in life as an opportunity to learn, and in time I began to sense when the strike was coming and strip-set the hook with enough authority to penetrate the fish’s bony, toothy maw. And just like that, the fight was on!

My first golden dorado was neither small nor a leviathan—but he was on the right side of “in between.” He was a chunky, muscular, metallic, ferocious golden warrior with the speed of a bullet and the acrobatic ability of an Olympian. I held my rod high as he carried me back and forth over Malcolm and the motor, and between runs he’d burst into the atmosphere while shaking his angry head and giving me the stink-eye. In life, there is no guarantee about the outcome of any battle and in that moment in time, all time ceased to exist. There was no imaginary economy, nation states, politics, religion, heaven or hell, or anything except me and this fish, until at last I held him, ever so carefully, in my arms—and even then, it felt timeless.

I heeded Malcolm’s warning: “Be careful! They can turn and bite you like a dog.” While briefly holding my first golden dorado, I noticed him watching me out of the corner of his angry eye, waiting for the chance to exact his revenge. But with all that, I knew that I loved him. In that moment, I was Hemingway’s Santiago—hands bleeding, face sunburnt and full of gratitude, with only the sounds of the water against the hull of the boat, and of Malcolm slapping my back as I slid my first dorado back home. I have never been more happy with any fish I’ve ever caught. As he vanished into the river I said, “Gracias, pesca” aloud. I remain grateful.

I caught one more dorado with the popper before we decided to switch to a streamer—a  tactic that might result in less surface drama but more reliable hook-ups. The second dorado was slightly larger than the first, and I marveled at her razor teeth, metallic sides, and wide, wounded tail. I discovered than many of the larger dorados had bite-sized chunks taken from their tails—the price paid for living in waters seething with voracious piranhas. In the end I landed 13 golden dorados in two days of fishing under less-than-ideal conditions.

It was a two-hour boat ride from my last cast on the Rio Gualeguay to our home base on the Golden Dorado Cruiser. The last amber flickers of light gleamed across the water, and my mind wandered from the moment to its meaning. No matter how much I may wish to be a man of peace, I know that we must be able and willing to fight for those things that matter—things like our beautiful, wounded planet and people. I am just an Imperfect Texan Buddha, always cognizant that both rivers flow within me. Now more than ever, we must all choose with humble wisdom, and bold courage.

---

Steve Ramirez is a Texas master naturalist, poet, and U.S. Marine Corps veteran. He is the author of four books published by Lyons Press: Casting Forward (2020), Casting Onward (2022), Casting Seaward (2023), and Casting Homeward (2024).

---