Dorado in the Virgin Forest:
An expedition to the Grand de Tarija and Bermejo
rivers in search of the treasures of the virgin forest,
the magnificent dorado

 Marcelo Morales


      

Following a narrow game trail more suitable for mountain goats;
walking for three hours through a machete-cleared path that in places was 
totally overgrown; crawling like reptiles through dense vegetation to reach the water ...

The Grande de Tarija not only tests one's angling abilities to their limit, 
merely getting to it is physically demanding. The river runs through a wonderful
virgin forest and if you know what to look for, the forest will surprise you
time and time again, with tropical bromeliads, ferns, plants and trees --
being watched by birds that demonstrate little fear of man ...
tapirs, peccaries and jaguars that appear in the twilight ... but the true gold
that is the magnificent dorado, a fish that one just might have to battle on
a fly rod between rocks as large as a house.

And then there is the Bermejo river, the perfect river for the fly, containing
a succession of channels and pools of crystalline water, and also home to 
the dorado ...

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