I have never killed a man for stealing my secret fishing spot, but I know a guy who might have.
We’ve all been subjected to the absurd question, “So, where’d you catch all those fish?” This should always be met with an equally ridiculous and sarcastic answer, such as “In the water,” “From my boat,” or “It’s none of your darn business.”
We protect what we love. Our significant other, our children, our pets, our boats, and our coveted honey holes. We hold these truths to be self-evident. I tell you all of this because I’ve never seen such a display of secrecy as when I traveled to Spain to dabble in the rivers and streams of the Pyrenees mountains. The operator, who discovered I was writing a fishing article, made me swear an oath of silence. My respect and intrigue grew immediately. All I can legally say is that I was somewhere in Spain, and also near France.
The whole trip materialized because of my dear wife. Just another reason to love her. One day, out of the blue, she asked me if I wanted to walk 500 miles across northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail. That is not a misprint. It’s 500 miles of walking. I made a mental note to check her antidepressant prescription.
After three seconds of careful thought I said. “You know I’d love to do that with you, but my right knee still hurts from that accident at the corn hole tournament last year.”
“I figured you’d say something like that,” she replied, with a crooked smile. “That’s why I asked our daughter. She said yes.”
When I got the chance, I snuck into the bathroom with my computer and googled “fly fishing in the Pyrenees.” If she was going to walk for 36 days — and burn a hole in the credit card on wine, hotels, and myriad varieties of ham and queso — I was going fishing for at least a week. Like many of you, I had no idea what kind of fishing the Spanish mountains offered but I knew that the Pyrenees were serious montañas — a 270-mile range of steep rocky terrain with hellacious rivers and peaks breaking 11,000 feet. Google kept serving up a company called Salvelinus, so I ran through some YouTube videos. I noticed that none of them revealed even the slightest hint of the fishing locations, except they were in Spain, and also near France.
I reached out to the owner, a meticulous and affable Spaniard named Ivan Tarin . He invited me to come along as long as I signed his non-disclosure agreement. “Seriously?” I asked. “Deadly serious,” he replied. I’ve learned never to cross dudes named Ivan.
Fishing in Spain for Barbel
My wife and daughter blasted off to trek over the rivers and through the woods and across rugged mountains and hot plateaus for six weeks of grueling walking (average 15 miles per day), while I landed in Ivan’s plush lodge in a picturesque medieval town for fishing. I must also mention the drinking wine, getting massages, doing spas, and eating some of the most orgasmic cuisine I’ve ever tasted.
What I can reveal is that Ivan and his team of expert fishing guides have spent 24 years scouting more than 1,500 miles of rivers in eight mountain valleys. As a result, they’ve created a master compendium of off-the-beaten-path fishy havens. As I mentioned, these places are somewhere in Spain. Oh, and also near France.
As fortune would have it, I arrived in late May. This was an opportune time to begin the Camino trek and also barbel spawning season. If you don’t know what a barbel is (I didn’t either), it’s in the bonefish family and looks like the offspring of a carp, bonefish and mullet. The fish is strong and rips out line like a bonefish — it will take a dry fly if properly presented.
“You have to slap it on the head,” Ivan told me. “Huh?” “Like this.”
Ivan raised the rod tip straight up to noon, held it for a beat, then whipped it down to nine as he gave the line a short, rapid strip. Sure enough, the beetle fly slapped the water with a splash and got the barbel’s attention without scaring them. Spooking them was indeed possible but the method of whacking the water with the fly just inches in front of their nose worked like magic. In a few hours I caught a half dozen angry barbel in the 4- to 7-pound range.
Exploring the Mountains for Mediterranean Trout
The next day, Ivan introduced me to guide extraordinaire Pierre Ancelin, who lives in Spain in a house near France. Pierre took me 90 minutes by car into the high mountains for native Mediterranean trout. Other than the thousand-year-old medieval ruins scattered about, I’d have thought we were in Colorado. The original plan was to fish a river where 6-pounders sneak about, but a late-May snow storm had the water raging. I could tell that Pierre envisioned this hapless journalist plummeting down the rocky rapids and wisely took me to a tamer river.
Naturally, I wanted to tangle with beasts, but I heeded Pierre’s good judgment. In a few hours, we caught about 25 trout in the 6- to 14-inch range. Overall success, especially when Pierre prepared a proper Michelin Star lunch of chickpeas, braised turkey, cheeses, bread and red wine.
After a few days of fishing until 9 p.m., followed by mouthwatering cuisine at Juan Antonio’s Restaurant, and then getting to bed after midnight, I left the mountains behind to catch up to my family on the pilgrim trail. The fabulous high-speed luxury trains transported me 600 miles in less than seven hours. That was more than enough time to hang out in the cafeteria car, drink more wine, and wonder why Amtrak is so freaking pitiful. Face it, America is not better at everything, including protecting our favorite fishing holes.
So, if you’re looking for a truly unique angling journey and rivers of such beauty that they invoke fairy tales, all you have to do is travel to Spain, somewhere near France.
