Sport fishing in Argentina

With the arrival of summer, the same memories and images would come again. Rough winds would blow. The sand would be carried away by the winds. And most times, not even the wind would know where.

My father, my brother and I used to lower our heads and run to the first steps of the old wooden pier. As we went up, the salt of the sea could be breathed more intensely, mixed with the sand.

Photographs of incredible catches during the glorious years when there was variety and abundance were still hanging from the walls of the old pub. All the visitors of the pier would know that those were other days which, even if reality stated that they would not come back, our angler's faith asserted all the opposite.

The pier, the sea, everything was just like on those days. Even don Carlos, now retired, but not from fishing, still remained in the ticket office, selling the tickets as usual: one peso to fish with a rod and two pesos to fish with a net. And people would pay for it willingly, as the only fact of talking to him was like opening a living book of anecdotes, experiences, incredible fish and anglers. And to cap it all, nobody would prepare the bait like him.

Thus, after our "Good evening", and a "Good fishing" with his rough voice as a reply, we reached the area of the rods. Meanwhile, our eyes would look at the shore, which we were leaving behind us. The first waves and the first gutters, until the sea became a large mass of dark-colored water which the old yellow and white lights could hardly illuminate.

The nets would only catch shrimp and cornalitos. It was said that in the afternoon, at about three o'clock, while the tourists were swimming, a lady had caught a mullet of about two kilograms.

The first thing we would look at before starting to fish was if someone had caught some large fish, a sea bass or a shark. The pier was starting to get crowded. On the one side, there were those who used to come and gather in a sort of impenetrable tribe. But there were also the beginners who cast their lines fearing that they would get tangled up with the experts' lines and thus receive some kind of reprimand.

And before the general silence, because silence was a code shared by everybody, some reel would start to "shriek" and the rod would bend its tip revealing a strike. At once, its holder would start to handle it in order to try and hook the fish. And everybody would emit their opinions whether it was a chucho, a corvina rubia or some lost shark. The most pessimistic would talk about snagging. And it was no longer important whether the fish would come on the other side of the line, because the sea would surely hide a bigger one, which might be caught at any minute.

And always, before the sun would come up, we would leave the pier. As we walked among the few anglers that were still waiting, in the net sector, we would hear that the rumor of the lady's mullet would already weight over four kilos...