The Lower Rio Grande, with its broad runs and gravel bars, will appeal particularly to two-handed anglers. Like the water farther upriver, the lower Rio Grande is shallow and easy to wade. Anglers fish chrome bright sea run browns on classic swinging water that is all privately controlled by the ranch. The day’s schedule is centered around the fishing. The guides are very knowledgeable and the staff and managers offer a hospitality that makes you want to return.
The Lower Rio Grande, with its broad runs and gravel bars, will appeal particularly to two-handed anglers. Like the water farther upriver, the lower Rio Grande is shallow and easy to wade. Anglers fish chrome bright sea run browns on classic swinging water that is all privately controlled by the ranch. The day’s schedule is centered around the fishing. The guides are very knowledgeable and the staff and managers offer a hospitality that makes you want to return.

The lodge limits the number of anglers to eight, so that each guest is important and their needs can be accommodated. Villa Maria is situated in one of Patagonia's biggest and oldest working estancias, Jose Menendez. It has four spacious, well furnished bedrooms, each with a private bath. The lodge features an intimate dining area, living room, and a well stocked bar with local spirits, wine and beer. Each evening the chef offers a selection of local and international cuisine accompanied by the best Argentine wines.

The "estancia" (ranch) on which the lodge is located, was carved out of the wilderness in the last decades of the nineteenth century by an ancestor of the family that still owns it: José Menendez. There is one aspect of his many achievements which is of particular interest to all of us for a very special reason. The manager of José Menendez’s estancias, where Villa Maria is located was an Englishman: John Goodall. He was a passionate angler, with a preference for trout, who worked (and lived) in an area of the planet where trout did not exist. Encouraged by Menendez, Goodall took the only logical step: he sailed to England and returned with an adequate supply of trout eggs. We like to think that by introducing the "catch and release" philosophy to Patagonia in 1984, and by continuing to promote it, Menendez’s great-grandsons, Jorge and Fernando de Las Carreras, are preserving the work of a man who, left an important legacy to the anglers who come to Villa Maria from all over the world every year.