Fly-Fishing the 41st (21 page)

The day unfolded as an answer to secret wishes. The display of soft-colored petals against the gray sky grew more and more spectacular the closer we came to Hakadote at the southern tip of the island.

We took the highway along the ocean and then turned inland up the Shiriuchi River. As if all at once before our eyes, the world had turned green; the forests on the foothills leading up to the snowy crags were soft and light like moss, dotted with the pink petals of the cherry blossoms. The land was rejoicing.

I had chosen a tributary of the Shiriuchi called Detofutamata to try fishing and we followed on the map as best we could to find it.

We passed a man and his wife who were photographing flowers by a tiny brook and stopped to speak to them. They found it amusing that we were after trout. We drove as far as we could up the mountain road near to cliff edges and crossed over a small rushing brook on a rickety wooden bridge.

“We might try here,” I said to Dawn.

I rigged up my fly rod and after some minutes of fishing below diminutive cascades in dark pools I could not see into, I had caught several
iwana,
a small silver-blue char with large white spots. I held the fish in and out of the water and photographed them.

“You look at them like that couple looked at the flowers,” Dawn said.

 

That evening at the lodge Dawn and I told stories of the fish we caught and the
sakura.
After dinner we joined several guests at a nearby
onsen,
or hot spring bath. Stripped down to our bare selves sitting in a warm natural pool, I closed my eyes to the cool dark evening. Imprinted like stars on the insides of my eyelids were pink
sakura
blossoms and the white spots of the small native trout.

The next morning the owner of the inn at the foot of the mountain took Dawn and me to see a patch of yellow bell-shaped flowers that had just opened up. He did not photograph them because he already had taken thousands of frames of this single place. Apparently it was a rare flower and very special to him. The petals were delicate like tissue paper and the whole patch fluttered in the slightest breeze.

 

Days later, Dawn and I returned to the main island of Japan. We visited the temples at Kyoto and walked through the perfect gardens of stone and maple where moss is worshiped and weeded by tiny ladies hunched over like snails. I bought some art materials at a district in Kyoto, Gosho Shimogamo, known for its beautiful handmade papers, sumi ink brushes, and pens. I wanted to teach myself and partake in an ancient Japanese tradition of making ink prints of fish on rice paper, called
gyotaku.

Dawn and I ate lunch in one of the temple gardens, and she presented me with a gift. She had made me a
hanko,
or a stamp made of wood, with my name, Prosek, carved in phonetic Japanese. It came in a small box with a stamp pad of vermilion ink.

“I enjoyed our trip together,” she said, “you made me see something I would never have seen on my own. Now when you make
gyotaku
you can put your name on it, in Japanese.”

A
fter the long winter, my first trip with Johannes took place in a country where we both spoke the language tolerably well. On my return to Sankt Veit, over a glass of beer in the Sonnhof bar, Johannes and I finalized plans for a trip to Spain and Portugal.

Collecting native trout in Spain would be especially difficult because the last pure populations were scarce, closed for fishing, and highly protected, and we could face severe fines if we were caught by a warden. If we had more time we could have probably arranged, for scientific purposes, to fish legally, but we had only three weeks to sample some thirty or forty small rivers in all corners of Spain and Portugal.

Our source of information for the locations of the last native trout was a graduate thesis on the trout of Spain, published by a student at the University of Barcelona in 1994. Johannes had been in correspondence with the student, whom he called simply Garcia, who now taught at the same university. Garcia gave Johannes detailed information in exchange for information on Turkish trout.

We left Sankt Veit on a rainy afternoon. Three days of driving, and four languages later—German, Italian, Piemonte, and French (each with its own word for trout, respectively,
Forelle, trota, truta,
and
truite
)—we approached the Pyrenees Mountains on the border with Spain (and three more languages, Catalan, Basque, and Spanish
—truita, amuarrain,
and
trucha
).

I had not thought of our itinerary as flexible and then I remembered how dependent our success was on the weather. As we approached the town of Perpignan we slid beneath a ceiling of clouds the color of dark grapes. We had hoped to coordinate all our
trips to encounter the least rain, the warmest weather, and the least number of tourists. June had seemed to be the right time, but the distant sky, streaked with rain like falling razor blades, made us feel that we had not been as clever in our planning as we had thought.

“Rain makes trout hunting difficult,” Johannes said, “it turns the water off-color. But we have a choice,” he added, pulling over and taking out the map. “When we reach the city of Perpignan we can go south, clockwise around Spain, or counterclockwise as we had planned.”

“I think we should go south first,” I said.

“Why?” he asked. “Well, anyway, I agree, then we'll end up in the Pyrenees, where it is colder and wetter, at the end of the trip, and by then maybe it will be dry and warm.”

We chose the land of oleander, olives, and oranges.

As we neared Valencia, I saw an orange tree and then groves of them, and felt the warm sun on my skin. I was happy to be a passenger, watching the stillness of a world going by, lulled into a meditative state by the repetition of passing trees and fence posts.

 

It was not long before we had left the highway and were heading up into the mountains, a pattern that was familiar to me now after several trips with Johannes. Native trout now lived in remote places, where few people did.

The Rio Linares was the first stream we fished, flowing east out of the Sierra de Gúdar toward the Mediterranean Sea. It ran through an arid hill country below clusters of terra-cotta-tile-roofed homes built on small peaks and ridgelines. We sampled the stream at several points along a ten-mile stretch. Because of the rough terrain, there was no single road that followed the course of the river, so we took no-name dirt roads that might lead us to the water.

We were encouraged when we finally saw a sign posted on a tree that read
Vedado de Pescar,
Forbidden to Fish. The sign, to a
Schwarzfischer,
was an open invitation.

I packed my seven-piece fly rod in my backpack and we hiked downstream on a tractor path. When I arrived at a good-looking pool, concealed by lots of brush, I took the rod out of the backpack, put the pieces together, strung it up, tied on a fly, and fished. I had become very efficient at assembling and disassembling the rod quickly. I caught two small trout in Rio Linares, handing them to Johannes, who held them in a plastic bag filled with water as he kept a lookout for wardens. I continued to fish.

“We have enough trout to photograph,” Johannes whispered through the bushes, “put your rod away.”

“I just want to fish a minute more,” I said. “You take me all this way and put me on a gorgeous trout stream and expect me to fish only for five minutes?”

“There will be other streams,” Johannes said.

“Not like this one,” I said.

“Better,” Johannes said, “don't be greedy, there may be wardens.”

The trout I caught on diminutive dry flies were yellowish green with fine red and black spots. They also had three or four dark verticle bands along the sides, a characteristic I was finding was typical of many trout from streams flowing to the Mediterranean. I had seen these peculiar markings on trout from eastern France, northern Greece, Croatia, and Corsica. I had told Johannes that the French called such trout
la truite zébrée,
zebra trout. We discussed the trout over dinner that night at a small restaurant in a small mountain village run out of someone's home.

“Not all Mediterranean trout have it,” Johannes said, referring to the zebralike bands, “but most do. I have never seen these
zébrures
on trout from Atlantic drainage streams or on those from the Black or Caspian seas. It is unique.

“The Iberian Peninsula is interesting for trouts, in the same way that Turkey is,” Johannes continued. “In Turkey you have rivers going to four major bodies of water, the Caspian, the Black, and the
Mediterranean seas and the Indian Ocean. In each drainage, trout have been isolated for thousands of years, and in each they are different. In Spain and Portugal you have rivers going to the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. I will be curious to see how the fish differ. The trout of southern Spain interest me most. I believe they will be like trout I caught in Morocco.”

A fascinating puzzle was unfolding before my eyes. In almost every stream we fished, the trout were slightly different. Because of the nature of the way brown trout evolved—oceanic ancestors isolated by retreating glacial melt, and confined to specific rivers for thousands of years—their diversity is astounding.

 

The next day Johannes and I headed farther south on winding roads to the basin of the Tajo River, the longest river in Iberia (its headwaters were in eastern Spain and it flowed to the Atlantic in Portugal). The location we wished to fish was mentioned in Garcia's paper as being near the village of Peralejos de las Truchas, about two hundred kilometers east of Madrid, in the province of Guadalajara. The name of the stream with pure native trout was Rio de la Hoz Seca, or river of the dry gorge. In his thesis, Garcia included the name of the local warden who was in charge of protecting the stream.

When we had driven a good way into the mountains and the roads had become narrower and more difficult, we began to wonder if we had taken a wrong turn. The road at times seemed too small to lead even to a farmhouse, let alone a village. But eventually we arrived in Peralejos de las Truchas.

It was a village built of stone, not far from the Tajo River. We drove through the narrow cobble streets and found that the only roads beyond the village were four-wheel tracks. It made sense that the predominant vehicles in town were old box-shaped Land Rover Defenders.

The main section of the Tajo near town was absolutely clear and
you could see many trout holding in the current and rising to flies. According to Garcia's paper, though, nonnative brown trout had been introduced and hybridized with the natives. The original genetic strain in the Tajo was no longer pure. The tributary we wanted to fish, however, Rio de la Hoz Seca, was isolated from the main stem by a waterfall, and Garcia wrote that this section had never received introductions.

Our map showed that Rio de la Hoz Seca was about thirteen kilometers outside of town, but as far as we could tell, no roads went there. Left with no other source of information, we were forced to ask locals which track might lead to it. The problem with asking for information about Hoz Seca, though, was that it might raise suspicion with the locals.

“We don't want to draw attention to ourselves,” Johannes said. “Somebody might inform the local warden.”

“You really think that the local people know there's a special protected trout there?”

“You never know,” Johannes said. “You have to assume they do.” He laughed. “It's the only town I've ever seen that has ‘trout' in its name.”

We parked in the small central plaza in Peralejos de las
Truchas
and walked around until we found a bar. In these small villages the bar seemed to be the source of all local knowledge, at least that's how Johannes perceived it.

Inside the bar were three old men, shouting in a singsongy dialect. They weren't shouting out of malice but just seemed to be hard of hearing. We sat down beside them and felt the bar shake as they rattled their glasses on it.

“
Dos cervezas,
” Johannes said to the barmaid.

When she brought our beers, Johannes asked if there was a place to stay nearby.

“
Sí, hostal de Tajo,
” she said, “it's very nice.” She was wiping down the bar with a rag and Johannes got her attention again.

“
¿Sabe usted,
” Johannes asked, “
si hay carretera a la hoz seca?
”

“Sure,” she said, “just past the church, take your first left. Then at an old abandoned farmhouse take a right. At the bottom of a steep hill the road will split again and you go left. The road will cross the river in the
hoz seca.
”

I noticed behind the bar that there were some fishing lures and flies for sale.

“Is this town a fishing destination?” I asked the woman.

“Oh yes, that is our main business, serving fishermen. But people also come here to hike and hunt.”

“Can you buy a fishing license in town?” I asked.

“The closest place to get a license is Molina, thirty-eight kilometers away. It takes a week to process the license forms, though, because they have to mail them to Guadalajara, the capital of Guadalajara. Or you could go to Guadalajara yourself, which is a three-hour drive from here. They don't make it easy. And that license is valid only in the province of Guadalajara. If you wished to fish in Andalusia, Asturias, Galicia, or País Vasco, you would need other licenses.”

“
Dos cervezas mas,
” Johannes said, finishing his beer. The woman brought them and an old man took her place. He put out complimentary tapas in front of Johannes and me, plates of fried pork rinds, olives, and fresh anchovies. Johannes and I were eating the tapas and drinking our beers when a man walked in and sat beside us.

He noted us as foreigners, ordered a beer, and introduced himself. “I am from the nearby town of Checa,” he said. “My name is Jorge. What brings you to Peralejos?”

“Just sight-seeing,” Johannes said.

“Oh.”

“I have been curious, though,” I said to the man. “What does the
Peralejos
mean in the name of this town, Peralejos de las Truchas?”

“I think
peralejos
is an Arabic word, but I can't remember the story. Do you know, Pedro?” he said to the bartender.

“No,” the bartender said.

“I've probably drunk too much absinthe. It erases the mind.”

“Do they have any absinthe here?” I asked. “I've always wanted to try it, it's illegal in America.”

“Of course, yes, yes, they do, don't we, Pedro,” he said to the old man.

The old man shook his head. “No.”

“Sure,” the man from Checa insisted, “you must. Señora,” he said to the barmaid, now sitting in a corner, knitting, “
tienes absenta?
”

“
Sí,
” she said, and walked to the bar and pulled out an old wine bottle with a liquid in it and no label.

“
Tres,
” Jorge said, and the barmaid poured out three glasses of green alcohol.

Another man walked into the bar and saw our drinks being poured.

“I get drunk just looking at that stuff,” he said. He was wearing a fly-fishing vest over a camouflage shirt. He sat down at the bar and ordered a beer. He had left the door open and I noticed that it was getting dark outside. A cool breeze blew across the bar.

“Did you catch anything?” I asked the fisherman.

“Yes, I had very good fishing just near town.”

“What kind of flies do you use?” I said.

“Oh, soft hackles,” he said.

“You tie your own?”

“No, I buy them from a friend in Peralejos, a man who owns another bar, called the Jube. He sells beautiful flies there, but his bar is closed now because his wife is nine months pregnant and they are staying with her sister in Molina, closer to the hospital.”

The bartender put out more plates of food, roasted red peppers, smoked fish, and whole cloves of cooked garlic still in the husks. I added some water to my glass of absinthe and the clear green fluid turned milky. It tasted sweet and anise flavored, like raki or ouzo.

“I will show you on a good map where to go,” said the man from Checa to me. “If you are interested in fishing.”

The absinthe was strong. I had read that if you drank enough it had a hallucinogenic effect, due to its main ingredient, wormwood. It was not long before I was having some trouble speaking.

“We are interested in trout fishing,” I said.

“No we are not,” said Johannes, who was a little drunk too.

“I am,” I said. “I am interested in trout.”

“Well,” said the fisherman, “trout are very beautiful creatures.”

“Especially these,” said the man from Checa. “We have very beautiful trout in Peralejos.”