The Spring Creek Murder

 Fly Fisherman editor/publisher is hosting a trip to Patagonia River Guides and will revisit the old stomping grounds of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid December 7-14, 2024. To learn more, contact him at ross@flyfisherman.com.

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The sun was piercing. As it reached its apex, I pulled up my hoodie and my face gaiter to prevent yesterday’s sunburn from getting worse. This also helped to muffle the stench of a rotting armadillo carcass a few paces away. My eyes were distracted by a male rhea and his five little chicks as they kicked up dust in response to our appearance. But my super-focused guide Agustin Cea showed me the palm of his hand—the universal signal to halt—and then dribbled an invisible basketball to tell me to crouch low in the grass. We both dropped to one knee . . . fly-fishing commandos trying to avoid detection.

Agustin had spotted a 20-inch-plus rainbow hugging the streambank. We had almost walked past and spooked it, like we had several previous times that morning, but this trout was riding higher in the water, and had bobbed his nose above the surface at just the wrong time.

The water was clear—as it always is in this spring creek—but it’s incredible how the rainbow’s spots and stripes could become so muted by rippling reflections at the surface. They blend in like the colors of an octopus against the waving aquatic grasses and mottled cobble bottom.

I could see this fish, now that it had broken the aquatic camouflage, but the problem was making the cast. A short cast of perhaps two rod lengths is tough to make with any accuracy—especially in the wind—as you don’t have the mass and momentum of the fly line driving the fly to the target. You have to flick the fly with only the leader and 5 feet of line outside your rod tip. That’s not even the “casting” portion of your fly line, and it’s not enough to really bend the rod or carry the fly. You have to cast a fly that weighs nothing with a line and leader that also weigh next to nothing, and hope for the best.

To complicate matters, the fish wasn’t just “close” to the bank—he was in an indentation in the bank that allowed him to sit in calm water and pick insects from the current as it moved past him. Stalks of grass curved into the water above and below, making it impossible to drift a surface fly directly to the fish. The best I could do was to drift close enough for the fish to see it, but embarrassingly my first cast was 6 feet to the right.

“He didn’t see it,” Agustin politely informed me.

I was acutely aware and slightly embarrassed, but I was also nervous about the “game over” grass along the bank. My fly wasn’t going exactly where I wanted it, so I cautiously inched my casts closer and closer to the fish until finally I was sure it saw the fat grasshopper imitation. The rainbow just wasn’t interested. But the fish was definitely feeding near the top and sometimes breaking the surface in typical spring creek fashion, taking either midges or the small Blue-winged Olives we’d been seeing all morning. After a switch to a size 18 Gulper Special I once again began creeping my casts closer to the bankside vegetation until the fly miraculously bobbed under a twig, into the view of the trout, and the fish executed a quick lane change and plucked the fly from the surface.

Two previous fish that morning had immediately buried themselves in the weeds when they felt the hook, and one of them was a yellow/orange hook-jawed brown that I dearly wanted to touch. This rainbow went in the opposite direction and quickly exhausted itself with a series of cartwheeling leaps across the surface. When he dove for the weeds at the end, he was all out of steam.

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Tributaries

After we released the heavily spotted redside, I climbed up out of the streambed and surveyed a vista of this small part of the vast Patagonian Steppe. It was brown and arid because it sulks in the rain shadow of the snow-capped Andes we could see in the distance. In the mountains there are glaciers and temperate rainforests, but the precipitation just doesn’t make it past those peaks.

There’s little water in this thirsty cattle country—one of the world’s largest deserts—and what there is comes from underground. I could see two green fingers running parallel with each other across the landscape, with pastures, willows, and cottonwoods all fed from underground springs along the glaciated valley. Outside of the influence of that life-sustaining water, the earth was a bleak combination of glacial moraine, brown oatgrass, clumps of Festuca gracillima, and small shrubs like Chuquiraga, palo amarillo, and mate negre.

The two green fingers contain Arroyo Pescado (Fishing Creek) and the Tecka River, and where they join just a few miles distant, they form the Rio Gualjaina. Taken as a single watershed, this strip of cold water is likely the greatest spring creek on earth. The Tecka seeps from a massive wetland southwest of Esquel. Google Earth has it marked as a lake but it’s actually a freshwater bog with hummocks of grass and a lattice of weeping springs that finally come together to form a river.

The water flows north for about 10 miles until it meets Arroyo Pescado. The Gualjaina carries on far downstream from there, flowing through the town of the same name and into the larger Rio Chubut near Piedra Parada (Standing Stone), a 600-foot volcanic plug.

As the crow flies, this is a distance of 40 miles, and driving on gravel roads it’s about 60 miles from top to bottom. In river miles, it’s an eternity of fishing due to the low gradient, winding S-turns, and—on the Gualjaina in particular—the braided channels that course like spiderwebs through the valley. In places there may be four or six or 12 channels, depending on what you’d define as a river “channel.”

Some places where you can cast a fly and catch a trout are only as wide as your arm and too deep to stand. In some wide, slow spots the aquatic weeds grow right to the surface—food factories that are filled with scuds and aquatic insects. Anyplace where there is a constriction like a bend or a willow tree creates deep feeding lanes for trout so large they seem wildly out of place in such small water.

One December day I fished the Gualjaina with Patagonia River Guides co-owner Rance Rathie and his two sons. We passed through three locked gates, drove across one river channel, parked by another, and then crossed and fished exclusively in the many smaller channels weaving through a sheep paddock. We split up to fish, and even though there were five rods, Rance said we’d never be able to fish the whole beat that day. And there were likely 60 more beats just on this one estancia. “If you started fishing your way upstream and stuck to just one channel, you could fish every day of the season and never make it off the ranch,” he said.

Just because of its vast scope and size, this has to be the best spring creek in the world. It runs exclusively through private property, has nearly perfect trout habitat for trout of all sizes, and is strictly operated for catch-and-release fly fishing. The ranch operators have three products here: beef, sheep, and trout. They do their best to protect and grow those assets.

We have some pretty famous spring creeks in the U.S.—that’s how we fell in love with spring creeks—but none has this quantity or quality of fishing, or this kind of isolation. You won’t see another fisherman during any day on these streams, and you don’t see trout that are marked or damaged by hooks. I’m sure the majority of them in this massive ecosystem have never been caught.

American Bandits

In 1900, Argentina had one of the most robust economies on the planet. It was a “super exporter” with a rapidly developing railway system. It was self-sufficient and shipped huge quantities of raw resources overseas, including wool, beef, and wheat.

The profitability of the agricultural sector attracted foreign capital for railways, and with all that cash flowing back and forth across the vast pampas and across the Atlantic ocean, Argentina quickly earned the reputation of being “The United States of South America.”

This expansive landscape and Wild West economy attracted two of America’s most famous criminals at the time: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Longabaugh (their real names) had grown famous by robbing banks and trains as members of the Wild Bunch gang that operated mostly in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. As their notoriety grew in the late 1800s, and law enforcement captured or killed members of the gang, the pair escaped with Sundance’s wife Etta Place into the crowds of New York City, and then fled to Buenos Aires, Argentina aboard the British steamer Herminius.

They arrived in Argentina on February 20, 1901 and used money from several historic robberies in 1899 and 1900 to buy a ranch near the settlement of Cholila in a valley with clear, beautiful trout streams and lakes, and surrounded by rugged snow-capped peaks. It was a place so remote and so much on the frontier that it was unclear at the time whether it was in Chile or Argentina, or who had legal jurisdiction over it. The manhunt for them in the United States was ongoing.

Three years later, the two Americans—using the names Santiago Ryan and Enrique Place—each had more than 450 head of cattle, herds of sheep, and dozens of horses. They were locally notorious for their extensive collection of firearms and for their sharpshooting demonstrations.

To their neighbors they were law-abiding citizens, but a series of crimes far from the ranch were widely attributed to them. In 1905 two English-speaking bandits held up a bank in Río Gallegos, 700 miles south of Cholila, and another bank to the north in Villa Mercedes in Mendoza Province. Governor Julio Lezana issued arrest warrants for Parker and Longabaugh, but the pair fled that summer to Chile, where the Sundance Kid killed a police officer in a shootout at the port town of Antofagasta.

They disappeared for a few years, and were thought to be hiding in an inaccessible valley just above Cholila, much as they had done in the U.S. when they operated out of mountainous refuges like Robber’s Roost in Utah and Hole in the Wall in Wyoming.

When Welshman Llwyd Ap Iwan was murdered by two Americans in 1909—just a day’s ride from the ranch at Cholila—it was widely believed that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were to blame. That legend is often repeated and is part of local lore.

However, most historians today believe that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were shot and killed in November 1908 when they tried to steal the payroll of a silver mine in Bolivia. Two English-speaking American criminals were buried after that incident, but the bodies were never positively identified.

Most historians today theorize that Llwyd Ap Iwan was killed by two other American bandits: Robert Evans and William Wilson from Montana. They were participants in a bungled kidnapping in 1909, and their wealthy victim returned with a well-armed police force and killed them in a bloody shootout near Rio Pico in December 1911. The posse beheaded the two bandits with the idea of returning the heads to America in barrels of alcohol to collect a bounty. It was widely reported at the time by Argentinian newspapers that these two were “the last of Butch Cassidy’s crime gang in Argentina.”

Llwyd Ap Iwan

Walking back to the truck for a lunch of Malbec, salad with parmesan and provolone, and freshly seared skirt steak, we paused at the historic headstone of Llwyd Ap Iwan. Our guide said the man was murdered by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—right here along the spring creek. It was a surprising revelation that I mulled over the rest of that fishing day.

At cocktail hour I asked Patagonia River Guides co-owner Travis Smith about the spring creek murder, and he shared the local knowledge he’d picked up during 20 years of living and fishing here. He said that Llwyd Ap Iwan was a Welsh colonist, and in 1909 operated a general store at the estancia near Arroyo Pescado. In English he went by the name Lewis Jones.

Two American men came into the store just before closing one night, inquiring about the best saddles he had on hand to equip their horses, which had been ridden hard over a long distance. However, the two men were not planning on paying for saddles. Instead they pulled out their revolvers and demanded that he open the safe and hand over all his money.

Llwyd Ap Iwan refused, and a gunfight broke out that lasted long enough for another store employee to supply additional ammunition through a back door. No one was killed in the shootout, but before the bandits left, they set the curtains on fire to create a distraction for their retreat.

As legend has it, Llwyd Ap Iwan was able to beat out the flames with his bare hands and save the building—however, his hands were badly burned. His wounds were cleaned and his hands were wrapped in bandages the next day when the two bandits returned to see if the building still stood. Llwyd Ap Iwan still had his revolvers at his side but was unable to operate them, and was shot and killed right there along the Arroyo Pescado. The stone marking the place he was killed is inscribed in English, Spanish, and Welsh and reads in part “killed by bandits.” A small white fence keeps the cattle off the historic marker.

Llwyd Ap Iwan’s body was actually buried in a cemetery back in the town of Esquel, the center of the Welsh community, and closer to the mountains where Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and Etta Place evaded U.S. justice after the turn of the 20th century. For them—just as it was for Llwyd Ap Iwan—water was crucial for their own lives, for their livestock, and for their crops. The mountainous landscape near Esquel—from Cholila south to Rio Pico—provided fortress-type solitude on fertile land just about as far as you can get from major populations centers such as Buenos Aires.

Bandits came here to drop out of sight. It’s the same reason fishing guides and anglers started coming here 20-plus years ago to set up camp on a new frontier, away from the crowded streams of home. Today, Patagonia River Guides fishes on waters and ranches that haven’t changed much since the days when the famous American bandits rode through the valleys cut by streams like the Carrilleufu, Rivadavia, Corcovado, and Futaleufu.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid likely camped and moved their cattle along lakes in what is now Los Alerces National Park, and also to the south where a lake near one of their infamous hideouts near Rio Pico is called Lake of the Gringos after them.

I walk in their footsteps in the area of Lake of the Gringos and Lago Vintter to sample some of the best fishing for big brook trout in the world; to the mountains above Esquel to revel in the deep mysterious lakes and float connecting rivers filled with wild browns and rainbows; and out onto the Patagonian Steppe to wade and stalk giant trout suspended in clear water among beds of aquatic weeds. The fact that there’s so much frontier history here offers yet another way to appreciate the culture and the spirit of the land that cradles some of the most unspoiled “Wild West” fishing in the world.

Patagonia River Guides

Montana guides Rance Rathie and Travis Smith founded Patagonia River Guides 20+ years ago. The two childhood friends eventually bought an existing lodge in Trevelin in 2010 and expanded it into a luxury fishing outpost with 14 single-occupancy guest rooms, a complete spa, a 10-acre vineyard on the premises, and unparalleled service with a 3:1 employee-to-guest ratio.

Each day of fishing includes a senior and a junior guide, and the lodge provides top-tier outerwear and tackle for each guest, so you can fly to Argentina easily with no worries about delayed luggage. Lodge guests fish with R.L. Winston AIR 2 rods; Abel SDS reels; Airflo lines; Simms waders, boots, and jackets; and all the flies and terminal tackle you require. The well-

appointed rooms have everything you need as well, including fine soaps, shampoos, and other toiletries. The mattresses, towels, and bed linens are also more akin to what you’d find in a five-star hotel in New York City, rather than a remote hideout in Argentina’s Andes Mountains. It’s not a fish camp, it’s a place where you eat and drink well after a fine day of fishing. Everything is taken care of except the casting, which is up to you.

Guests at the Trevelin lodge fish the spring creeks Arroyo Pescado, Tecka, and Gualjaina, which are all components of one enormous spring creek watershed. They also float miles of private leases on the Rio Corcovado, as well as rivers like the Rividavia in Los Alerces National Park, and the Futaleufu tailwater that flows from Trevelin, all the way through Chile, and then into the Pacific Ocean. They also have access to an incredible number of lakes—public ones in the national park and private lakes on estancias in the mountains and on the Patagonian Steppe.

PRG also runs a slightly smaller operation about 2.5 hours to the south in the Rio Pico area at Tres Valles Lodge. This is near where Evans and Wilson were finally shot and killed. There are no large rivers to float in this region, but there are an enormous number of lakes with big rainbows and browns, and the best fishing for big brook trout in all of Patagonia. PRG South also has access to many small streams. Some of them are spring creeks with quality fishing for big trout, but they aren’t nearly as extensive as the Gualjaina system. However, there’s still more water than you can fish in a lifetime!

Travis and Rance also run an operation in the San Martin area called PRG North, where guests fish out of a variety of lodges on the more famous rivers of that region, or indulge in the PRG Unplugged program, with completely catered multi-day camping trips on rivers such as the Chimehuín, Limay Medio, Aluminé, or upper Chubut. In this lavish “glamping,” there is zero drive time to the rivers. Guests float between 8 and 12 miles a day and always arrive at a completely new riverside campsite with all the appointments, including Wi-Fi, fine dining, and comfortable beds in heated walled tents.

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Ross Purnell is the editor/publisher of Fly Fisherman. He is hosting a trip to Patagonia River Guides and will revisit the old stomping grounds of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid December 7-14, 2024. To learn more, contact him at ross@flyfisherman.com.