To Catch or Catch Not | Outside Online

You Are Here:

Home >> Travel >> To Catch or Catch Not

Today's Question
Where should I camp in Switzerland with my kids? answer

What's the best volcano to hike up in North America? answer

How can I plan a trip around riding the biggest, fastest roller coasters? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside Magazine September 2001

Page:

To Catch or Catch Not
Casting for nada y nada in the footsteps of Hemingway, on the rivers of northern Spain.
By Florence Williams

"We don't really like Hemingway, we suffer him," sniffs Mikel Ollo, a tall, gangly Basque and one of Pamplona's eminent nature guides. This isn't the reaction I expect. Outside the downtown bullring stands a rather chunky statue of the man who made this Spanish fiesta city famous to generations of American Eurailpassers. (That, of course, is the problem.) Furthermore, Mikel was hired to tool me around by the Pamplona Convention Bureau, which wrings every possible drop out of the literary connection. The tourist office even displays a life-size plastic Ernesto sporting a plaid shirt and a bandanna. He looks appropriately stupefied, no doubt anticipating the afternoon's third bottle of rosado.

Mikel knows I want to fish the river Hemingway loved (and wrote about in The Sun Also Rises and Death in the Afternoon), the Río Irati. This makes him dislike me, but he gets over it. It helps that I adore Silvio Rodriguez, the Cuban musician crooning soulfully out of the tape deck. And Mikel enjoys the fact that I've been stymied by Spain's post-Franco bureaucracy. It took all day Monday (or the part not spent in Gothic churches) to get the requisite fishing permits. Now it's Tuesday, and fishing here is illegal on Tuesday. Not even the mayor can challenge the rules of the local fishing association. My troubles put Mikel in a better mood. "No problema," he says. "We go drink café and drive along the river."

For more trips in Spain, log on to Outside Online's Trip Finder at www.outsidemag.com/tripfinder/spain.

The Río Irati tumbles out of the steep massifs of the Pyrenees. Surrounded by majestic beech and fir trees, it twists and cranks through gorges and Basque villages filled with white stone houses and wandering sheep. Every Basque man I see is wearing a beret and carrying some sort of stick: either cane or shovel or umbrella. If it weren't Tuesday, they'd no doubt be carrying rods as well. It all probably looks exactly the same as it did in 1925, about the time Hemingway first showed up with a dripping goatskin. For all his faults, Don Ernesto took his pursuits seriously. He recognized northern Spain for the best it had to offer: bullfights, rioja wines, and some of the finest fishing in all of Europe. The first two have caught on with the rest of the world, but, surprisingly, the third has not. The Río Irati is just one of dozens of cool, splendid streams in the region that teem with native brown trout.

Page: