Fly Fishing the Falkland Islands: A Perfect Backdrop

By Nigel Haywood

I don’t imagine many of you have listened to the Clive James/Pete Atkin album, Road of Silk.  But if you haven’t, I commend the track Perfect Moments to you…”Charlie Chaplin policing Easy Street. Charlie Parker playing my old flame.”

I was thinking of that this evening as I lay on my sofa, resting my right Achilles tendon on a bag of frozen peas. The sun was setting on the hills across the harbour; I had a nicely chilled glass of Chilean Chardonnay in my hand; and the radio was tuned to Falkland Island Broadcasting Service’s, The Vinyl Frontier. Roy Orbison, Only the Lonely. Not that I like Roy Orbison too much, but it was a hotline back to the sixties when my brother, nine years older than me, immersed himself in Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochrane. It was, for reasons I can’t fully explain, a perfect moment.

Perfect moments can be bad as well as good. Kathleen Ferrier choking on the last “Ewig” in Das Lied von der Erde, shortly before she succumbed to cancer, is, in many ways, as perfect a moment as Jonny Wilkinson kicking the winning points with seconds to go in the 2003 Rugby World Cup final.

It is important always to bear this in mind by the water. The ear-splitting imprecations to a seemingly uncaring deity when a knot breaks and a fish (which will grow daily by the telling) gets away should be tempered by the thought that maybe, just maybe, this is right. Though, being human, we will much prefer the moment when a large sea-trout is horizontal, a few inches above the water, in front of us, and suddenly, in a fit of bemusement and wonder, we realise it has our fly in its mouth, and we don’t know exactly what to do next.

The Falkland Islands provide a perfect backdrop to such moments. The Islands combine some of the nostalgia of a gentler age in England (telephone boxes, a double-decker bus, the ability to leave your key in the ignition when you’ve parked your car) with a more clear-sighted view of the future (advanced regulation of the fisheries industry, wind-power supplying 40% of the capital’s energy, high-end conservation science). The people are friendly, fiercely British, but can be wary of outsiders. Their overwhelming characteristic is grit and determination. They need it. The reason the Islands are not on everyone’s fishing itineraries is that you can’t easily get to them—Argentina deliberately obstructs access to pursue a rather bizarre claim dating back to the few months in 1832-1833 when they had put a garrison on what were, even then, British Islands.

But if you persevere, traveling either through London, where the Falkland Island Government Office can book you onto RAF flights, or Santiago, from which LAN Chile operate a weekly flight, you will find the experience worth it.



There are still signs of Argentina’s invasion of 1982 to be seen, not least in the minefields alongside some of the better fishing areas. But, although veterans from both sides still visit, and military historians organise tours of the battlefields, everyone has moved on. What matters is the future.  And sea-trout fishing will be an important part of that, as tourism develops. The record is over 22lbs, bigger than the British record. The main runs are September –November and February-April, when the climate is at its most pleasant, and you can move from traditional pub to penguin spotting to whale watching to fishing and back to the pub in the course of an admittedly long afternoon.

And the experience is worth it. The other day I was standing waist-deep on a rocky spit in the Malo River when a sea trout jumped just downstream. The gale-force wind mixed with drizzle, which can on occasion be a feature here, made casting difficult, but I was inches away.  A take, and there was a fish, brilliantly silver, clearing the water. Did it matter that, when I landed it, it was less than a pound?  Is a perfect moment dependent on an outcome so that, in fact, it’s only perfect with a hint of hindsight? That’s probably the case with Ferrier and Wilkinson, maybe less with lying back on the sofa resting your Achilles. With fishing, I’m ashamed to say, it’s probably the case too. Half an hour later, in a fit of desperation, I’d tied on my last Copper Frede, and was twitching it gently back, when a much bigger fish cleared the water. After more anxious moments than I’d have preferred, I was able to release her, at comfortably over 9lbs, to continue her journey upstream to spawn. That was, in many ways, more like it. And what was perfect? The take? The fight?  The size? The release?

No. It was the moment a split second or two before the fish took, when I stopped shaking with cold, breathing stopped, and then came easily, the world stood still, and I knew I was going to get a fish.

Nigel Haywood is Governor of the Falkland Islands and Commissioner, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. He can be reached at nigelhaywood@mac.com