UOur boat is standing in the murky, green river. We moored in a quiet backwater of the Po, anchored over the stern, moored the bow in a white willow. We sit there without a word, my seven-year-old son and I, in the sky clouds of feathers and a milky sun, in front of it: the tips of our rods. Their taut cords reach to the bottom, they run through droplets of lead at a depth of five meters; hanging a meter behind, hooked at the base of the tail, two arbours, tapped on the jetty in the morning mist. We cut off the heads with a pair of scissors so that the bait fish, buoyed up by their swim bladders, protruded a bit out of the thicket. We have scratched their silver-green flanks three times on each side so that their scent attracts the robbers.
Now he just has to bite: our first zander.
It’s our first fishing season. My son has wanted to fish on the river outside our door for a long time. But I had lost my fishing license 20 years ago, and it took a while before I had all the papers together: a copy of the test certificate from the Schleswig-Holstein state sport fishing association, fishing license from the Regensburg Environment Agency, annual fishing license from the public fishing cooperative Winzer (upper Danube).
Since then there has been no stopping.
“Are we going fishing today?” He asks that every day. Nothing has ever fascinated the boy more than this: fishing, fishing, fishing.
The first time, in January, with numb hands: nothing.
In February: the first fish, a goby, as long as a finger.
In March: the first chunk, a heavy chub.
In June: a beautiful nose that looks like its name.
In July, with his friend’s father, a sensation: an eel, arm-thick and leg-length, smoked, mmh.
The son of our author and Andreas Gutsch fishing livescope (echo sounder) with Fireball.
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Image: Julius Schophoff
In September, when the boy started school, he couldn’t read or write, but knew all about barrel weights and float rigs, casting weights and steel leaders, sheet pile landing nets and flow edges. Roach, rudd, asp, perch, small catfish – everything caught our eye. Only one not: the zander.
The Legendary Eye
Sander lucioperca, the largest of the perch, a robber of the deep. Slender, powerful body, dark stripes on the golden-green flanks. Bipartite dorsal fin, the front part spiky like a kite’s crest. Pointed head, deeply forked mouth with long “dog teeth” as anglers call them. Above that: his legendary “glass eye” – although we never really understood it. We’ve never looked at one.
That’s why we’re here now, on the Po Delta, south of Venice. Wide, green and heavy, the river flows through the country on its last kilometers before the mouth, carrying floating wood and whole trunks with it. Pigeons swarm from bare treetops, cormorants pounce on arbours. In our oxbow lake, cut off from the main stream, a heron stands on a rusty barge, motionless and patient. We hear the splashing of hunting asps, the screams of fighting herons and stare at the tips of our rods. And wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Was there something? The boy leans forward, tilts his head to one side, aims at the tip of the fishing rod. But no, there was nothing. Only the boat rocking slightly, causing the line to move.
Ground Bait: This is a method of catching a walleye. We tried two others the day before, with Andy. Andreas Gutsch, Austrian: When he was a boy he only wanted to fish. He first came here in the mid 90’s, early 20’s, and caught more and bigger fish than anywhere else. He bought a derelict brickyard on the river and turned it into ‘Andy’s Wallercamp’: fish, fish, fish.