“Got everything you need?” Mary Lou, our young pilot, shouts as she loads our rods and gear into a twin-engine Islander. She flashes a warm smile and seems to read my mind. “The wind’s only around 25 knots,” she says. “We’ll be fine.”

Wind and optimism whip over the Falkland Islands, a British territory about the size of Connecticut, 400 miles northeast of Tiera del Fuego, the southernmost point of South America. It’s October, austral spring, and my longtime buddy Eugene Jones and I are here for a week before we board an expedition ship to Antarctica. After a night in Stanley, the capital city, we fly west to Port Howard for some fishing.

At Port Howard Lodge, a discarded howitzer serves as an outdoor rod rack and a haunting reminder of the Falklands War. Acting on a long-disputed claim over what they call Las Islas Malvinas, Argentina invaded the Falklands in 1982, igniting two months of fierce fighting that ended in a British victory. “This place was occupied by a thousand Argentine troops,” explains lodge proprietor Wayne Brewer. “And they weren’t here to fish.”

The Falklands mullet, also referred to as a robalo or rock cod, is native to South America. 

Wayne and his wife, Sue, welcome us into their spacious, wood-paneled lodge, replete with stacks of well-worn fishing books, hand-drawn river maps, displays of antique flies and lures, and the sepia skin mount of a huge brown trout. After a cup of tea, Wayne drives us in his beat-up Land Rover past bright yellow gorse hedges and over a rolling, treeless heath toward the Warrah River, named for the extinct wolf. (The last warrah was killed by settlers in 1875.) Without GPS or signage, he weaves through rough, soggy fields of grass and diddle-dee bushes, avoiding big rocks, flushing sheep and upland geese, to what’s known as the Freezer Hole, about 10 miles from the sea. Brown trout and salmon were introduced from Chile and Britain in the 1940s and ’50s — the salmon failed, but the trout flourished, both as river residents and sea-runs that enter salt water, gorge on krill, then return bigger and brighter. The trout season runs from Sept. 1 to April 30, no license required.

Wayne parks into the gale. “Otherwise it blows the doors off their hinges,” he says. We string fly rods in the lee of his Rover. A lean, tall, clean-shaven man in his late 60s, Wayne knows the land, water and local history but is a bit light in regard to angling gear and tactics. When I question his heavy monofilament leader, he says, “It’s the only line I can see.” And when we ask for pattern recommendations, he says, “They like red,” then urges us to “keep trying different flies until you catch something.” Perhaps the best advice I’ve ever heard.

Adding a bit of tippet and reddish streamers, we time casts between 30-mph wind gusts and land three 10-inch browns, resplendent in their gold flanks and peppered backs, before the wicked wind forces us to surrender our fly rods for spinning gear to launch small Blue Foxes up and across the river for a better downstream swim. Eugene hooks a larger, silvery trout that leaps and runs and finally comes sparkling to the bank, its chrome sides dappled with dark, pixilated marks. Wayne shouts something we can’t hear. Later, over tea and a cigarette, he says, “That was a proper sea trout — a good 2-pounder.”

Remnants of the 1982 Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom dot the solitary landscape.  

There’s a lot of military debris scattered around the Falklands, and on the road back to the lodge, we ask about an aircraft wing stuck in the ground. Wayne pulls over and tells us it’s the wreckage of an Argentine fighter jet shot down 40 years ago. “The pilot survived,” he tells us. “Years later, he came back, brought his family, grandkids and all, and stayed at the lodge. He had no hard feelings.”

The bar at Port Howard Lodge operates on the honor system, and Eugene raises an eyebrow over my heavy pour, so I dutifully revise the ledger entry from a “single” to a “double.” After a couple of whiskies and a delicious dinner of calamari and braised lamb cooked perfectly by Sue, we chat about weather, rugby and shipwrecks, then retire to our cozy rooms.

Stepping into the eerily windless morning, I see the cove dimpling with baitfish interrupted by dark fins and soft splashes. Gumming over the broad mudflat to the curious attention of gulls, night herons and a friendly tabby who follows my tracks, I work a small spoon and connect with a cobia- colored fish the locals call a mullet. Although not a true mullet, this Patagonian blenny, variously referred to as a Falklands mullet, róbalo or rock cod, is a terrific sport fish inhabiting the lower half of South America. Eugene joins me with his fly rod, and the bright sun and placid surface reveal dozens of these fish cruising the shallows. “They’re like bonefish,” Eugene says.

The wary mullet scatter at the splash of my spoon, but Eugene’s little shrimp pattern lands lightly, and with a few twitches, he’s into a 3-pound torpedo that tears up the flat. “It is like bonefishing!” We revel in an hour of sight-casting, catching and releasing before our host beckons from the lodge.

Relentless winds can make casting flies difficult. 

Driving an hour across the island, around snow-capped mountains and herds of sheep, we pass only one car as we approach the settlement of Hill Cove along Byron Sound, teeming with dolphins, elephant seals, black-browed albatrosses and four species of penguin. Bouncing through more clumpy grass to where the Blackburn River embraces a vast estuary, we nose into the rising wind and see promising splashes. Eugene casts his trusty bonefish fly and catches three mullet. I press upriver with a white Clouser, landing a mullet and a 12-inch brown trout.

It’s a bright, sunny day with balmy temperatures in the high 50s, but the coastal gusts are challenging. We wade across a gravel bar, putting the wind and high tussac grass to our backs. Longer casts draw our flies into the feeding lane, and it’s fish after fish for a while. Nothing huge, but beautiful wild trout — some sea-silvery, some river-brown — up to 18 inches. Our guide enjoys a smoke and waves from the Rover. We join him for tea and egg salad sandwiches. A caracara circles and then lands nearby, eyeing our food. Talking about birds, I show Wayne a photo of a bald eagle from my home river in Oregon. “You men are a bloody long way from home, aren’t you?” We nod, smile and realize that we’re a long way from most everyone. In two days of fishing, we haven’t seen another angler.

“You ever get lonely out here? Ever miss England?” I ask Wayne.

“Not really,” he says. “I’ve got everything I need.”