Atlantic Salmon Journal, News & Blogs
Long-Distance Calling: The Art of Sebastian Letelier
By Martin Silverstone
August 18, 2026
Editor's Note: This story appeared in the Autumn 2022 issue of the Atlantic Salmon Journal.
“It’s all about learning,” Sebastian Letelier’s Spanish-accented English comes in clear as a bell over my phone from Paine, Chile. And clearly, when it comes to understanding the fish, the flies and the fervour evoked by Salmo salar he has done better than most.
Letelier lives far, very far, from any salmon river. Yet, through his curious nature and generous personality, he has come to understand the biology of the species, the history of Atlantic salmon angling, the evolution of equipment from bamboo to graphite, and even the culture of the conservation community.
Letelier is an artist, fly-tyer, and a guide and by all accounts he is excellent at all three endeavours. He is the only South American artist to be included in the collection of the American Museum of Flyfishing. His paintings have a dream-like quality, done in the “European style” which gives them a timelessness that harkens back to another era. Yet, they are completely modern in subject, the Atlantic salmon angling scenes accurate down to the complete absorption on a fisher’s face as he selects a fly.
And flies are also something he knows more than a little about. Among the classic fly dressing community, Letelier has a reputation built over years of dedication and persistence.
“As soon as I saw his work I wanted to meet him,” says Paul Martin, a retired child-care worker in Auburn, Maine. “Then we ended up talking about experiences I rarely told anyone else.”
Martin told me about Letelier’s knack for tying the flies of William Blacker, considered one of the greatest fly-tyers ever. Blacker’s 1842 edition of The Art of Fly Making was often criticized for its difficult-to-follow instructions. But this is unfair as the instructions were made for tying flies by hand, not with a vise, the technique used by the vast majority of fly-tyers today. It’s important to note that such criticism did not stop the rarest of Blacker’s books being sold in 2021 for $293,733 at Bonhams auction house in London.
Letelier’s Blacker flies are a marvel, and he shares his own simplified instructions for tying them freely. Martin was the recipient of a set of those guidelines and treasured them enough to hand bind them into their own special volume, along with a Shannon no. 12 fly, tied in hand by Sebastian.
Collectors of presentation flies seek out Letelier to hand dress hard-to-find classics. Many would be surprised to hear that he also fishes with some of his most intricate designs, often gifting them to friends and fellow tyers.
When I first saw Letelier’s art, the salmon paintings were so familiar, at I thought the artist was Canadian and the rivers were possibly in the Gaspé. But no, Letelier’s experience with Atlantic salmon comes from his travels in Scandinavia. They seemed familiar because they were renditions of classic angling scenes on rivers like Sweden’s Em and Norway’s Gaula—sparkling streams running beneath forested hills, still showing patches of snow. Sound familiar?
Letelier says he was marked by his Atlantic salmon angling adventures. “The west of Norway holds some stunning rivers, unique in their scenery and clearness of the water,” he says. The beautiful surroundings and being able to land and release a 37-pound salmon in a fast flowing glacial river is something he will never forget. “I still remember how that fish rose to take a big fly,” he recalls. And making it even more special was that it was right at the end of a weeks-long trip.
Weaving art in and around Atlantic salmon is not an uncommon common theme, take many of the artists that have appeared in these pages like John Swan, Chet Reneson and Pierre Lutz, to name only a few. Letelier, however is so much more remote than these North American painters.
It helped that Letelier was born with art, his father was an artist and from his earliest days he was surrounded by paint, brushes and palettes. The fishing came early, by eight he had caught his first fish, and by 12 he was hooked on fly-fishing. A significant moment in his development of that skill came when he met Adrian Dufflocq, owner of the Cumilahue Lodge. It’s a story Letelier relates often in interviews, but is best told by Dufflocq “The bell rang, I opened the door, and a young boy of about 13 introduced himself as Sebastian Letelier. He wanted ‘to talk about fly fishing.’ My own beginning in fly-fishing was not easy; I had to teach myself from scratch.”
And because of his own experience, instead of closing the door on the youngster, Dufflocq welcomed him in and thus began Letelier’s journey into the fascinating, sometimes mystifying traditions and culture of fly-fishing. For someone with an interest and grounding in the traditional European style of painting, the world of fly-fishing has some familiar traits. In both domains there are no shortcuts. Art students are taught to stretch canvases on hand-built frames. A base of rabbit skin glue, linseed oil, chalk and iron oxide pigments is added in preparation to receive oil paints.
Both disciplines—painting and classical fly dressing— pushed him to expand his horizons, to continue “to learn.” Letelier travelled to Norway where he caught his first Atlantic salmon and to paint, studying and working with the Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum. All the while his own technique for dressing classical Atlantic salmon flies improved.
“The human experience make it very special,” he says “The many people I meet and am still in touch with. I look forward to see them again. Skills can´t be taken away from you because they belong to you,” Letelier told me, adding, “also you may travel light.”
And travel light he did. Over the next few years to Germany on a commission to tie flies for a collector. To Scotland, and back to Norway, Sweden and Denmark where he visited Jens Pilgaard, a master at tying flies without a vise. And in the summer months in South America he returned to guide in Chilean Patagonia. Letelier also added steelhead in the U.S. Northwest to his resume, but before he could make it to the Atlantic salmon rivers of eastern Canada, he was grounded by the COVID pandemic. He wasn’t completely idle during the shutdowns, however. He worked on a few oil paintings as well as on a commission to tie 114 fully dressed classic salmon flies.
“A fascinating project,” he says. “Because along with tying the well-known flies I researched the more obscure ones.” A few were even used to fish rivers in Norway and Scotland. “The angler who used them landed and released some Atlantic salmon, among them a 19.5 kg fish,” says Letelier.
From his studio in Paine, outside Santiago he follows the saga of the Atlantic salmon. Rivers like the Cascapedia, Restigouche, Miramichi and Matapedia continue to beckon him. He reads everything he can and communicates with the international world of fly tyers. His trips to Norway exposed him to the struggle to conserve wild Atlantic salmon. “I remember the net buyout program in the Trondheim fjord,” he says. “The filthy salmon farming industry in many fjords is probably the biggest threat and must be stopped.” Art is his own way to promote live release and conservation. He has donated his presentation flies, paintings and drawings for sale at NASF and ASF auctions.
Letelier guides at the Estancia del zorro Lodge situated in the high pampas of the southern Chilean Patagonia. There, where gauchos still roam, the great variety of water and resident brown trout make it one of his favourite areas to fish.
Yet, there is still that hole in his 30-year fly-fishing resume. He had hoped to return to Norway in 2020, but COVID put an end to that trip. Now, more than anything else, he yearns to visit the cold, clear, clean rivers of eastern Canada that are home to wild Atlantic salmon. Perhaps next year we’ll hear a Spanish accent on a Gaspé river, and meet a tall, bearded artist and angler who offers you a fly of almost impossible intricacy and beauty to fish with. And who wants to learn.