Slow Fishing the Fresh Waters of Italy (Click to read): Slow Fishing Italy_31AU18  for PDF version.  Please leave a comment by scrolling to the bottom of this page.

You can follow Nicklas Laurentzson and his new companion, Alessandro ‘Sandy’ Carlotti, through the regions of Italy, fly fishing the waters and sampling the foods.  They travel slowly, in classic Swedish cars that Sandy has collected during his long life.  They fish slowly.  There is no rush; no one is waiting for them to come home.  And Nicklas learns to eat slowly.  He learns other things as well.

I have written this book mostly for people who already fish with the fly and who may wonder what it is like to fish in a place where there is more to eat than a burger with fries at the end of the day.  Italy is such a place.  If you have any thoughts about what you read, please leave a comment. If it is a comment that can be shared with other readers, I will post it on the site.

Slow Fishing

Slow fishing combines the joys of fishing with enjoyment of the culture—especially the food— in the area where one is fishing. It takes inspiration from ‘slow food’ with an added dimension: Live to eat and fish, and encourage traditional gastronomy, local food production and the promotion of sustainable fishing in streams, rivers and lakes. Members of the Slow Fishing Club are encouraged to share their experiences in the club’s meeting room provided by this site. Our only maxim is that the best start, middle and end of a day spent fishing are meals shared with friends, family or both.

“The literature is not populated with tails of catching trophy trout and grayling in the rivers and streams of Italy. I had never heard of it before I happened to be in Italy when I suddenly had a lot of time to kill and, as fate would have it, I met someone who knew a thing or two about catching fish with a fly. He was also knowledgeable about food, architecture, politics and personal relationships, all subjects to which I had not given much thought during my thirty-one years.”

From Slow Fishing the Fresh Waters of Italy

Waters

We can drink, bathe in and cook with fresh water. We can sail to far off lands in salt water. We can swim and fish in both. Some fish live only in fresh water; other fish live only in salt water; and, some fish, the anadromous and catadromous kind, can swim from one to the other when it’s time to spawn. There are places along a seacoast where the waters are as calm as a tiny mountain pond when the wind is still, and there are lakes that can produce waves when the wind whips them up that match a heavy sea.

Fishing Fresh Waters

The books and magazines we read to complement and guide our fishing tell tales of a Golden Ribbed Hare’s Ear dry fly presented to a rising brown trout on the River Test in Hampshire, England, or a tandem Grey Ghost streamer trolled over landlocked salmon in the Rangely Lakes in Maine, or a black Wooly Bugger dangled on a short line on the Soca in Slovenia. These are tales of fresh waters, and the waters are part of the local culture where they are and through which they flow. They cannot be separated.

Great Blue Heron

“Have you ever seen a Great Blue Heron fish?” asked Sandy.

“I’ve seen heron, but I don’t think I have ever seen one catch a fish,” replied Nicklas.

“You probably did not wait long enough. They stand very still and wait for a fish to swim under them. They use the sun and the shore vegetation to increase their invisibility to their prey. When the right fish is in the right position, they strike down like lightening, extending their long necks that they keep in a tight s-curve until they deliver the death blow. The technique is similar to a coiled snake.”

From Slow Fishing the Fresh Waters of Italy

Piscator non solum piscatur – Fishing is more than just catching fish.

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