Still, I wasn't one for those hook-jawed savages. I just wanted to catch something that felt big. Twenty-three inches is all I wanted, and Rodrigo was going on about fish as big as my leg.
That's when I said it: "we catch a 23-inch fish and I'll give you a kiss."

The wind was blowing so damn hard I honestly doubted I'd be able to throw my fly into the water, let alone present it in any way that might trigger the brain of a smart fish. So the statement seemed like a safe way to awaken Rodrigo to my desires without committing either of us to anything life-altering. And my very sexy and beautiful girlfriend, Ronni, was standing just down the bank snapping photos, so I didn't think I was creating unreasonable expectations: look, I don't think I'm going to do too well today, but if I do, boy will I be excited!

The Zorro spring creek winds in figure-eight S-curves through broad pampas. The land here opens and rolls like the lower Madison Valley - bunchgrass flats and deep scrubby ravines, forested benches with rimrock upper lips- only greener, more fuzzy and lush. The first pool I approached with Rodrigo was the same one I'd fished two days earlier when I took a fine 16-inch brown on a Taylor's Fat Albert Beetle. I was told that the creek bottom was crawling with pancora, a boxy little cross between a crab and a crayfish that he referred to as "the building blocks of giant trout in South America."
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