Our boat is standing in the murky, green river. We moored in a silent oxbow of the Po, anchored over stern, moored the bow in a silver willow. Wordless we sit there, my seven-year-old son and I, in the sky feather clouds and a milky sun, in front of it: the tips of our rods. Their taut cords reach to the bottom, at a depth of five meters they run through drop lead; hanging one meter behind, hooked at the root of the tail, two arbors, tipped in the fog of the morning on the jetty. We cut off the heads with scissors so that the baitfish, driven up by their swim bladders, protrude a bit from the thicket. We have carved their silver-green flanks three times on each side so that their scent attracts the robbers.
Now he just has to bite: our first pikeperch.
It's our first fishing season. My son had 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 me a while to have all the papers together: copy of the examination certificate of the Landessportfischerverband Schleswig-Holstein e.V., fishing license from the Environmental Agency Regensburg, annual fishing license of the Public Fishing Cooperative Winzer (upper Danube).
Since then, there has been no stopping.
"Shall we go fishing today?" He asks this every day. Never before has anything fascinated the boy as much as this: fishing, fishing, fishing.
The first time, in January, with deaf-frozen hands: nothing.
In February: the first fish, a goby, finger-length.
In March: the first chunk, a kilo-heavy chub.
In June: a beautiful nose that looks like it's called.
In July, with the father of his friend, a sensation: an eel, arm-thick and leg-long, smoked, mmh.
In September, when the boy started school, he could not read or write, but knew everything about lead and pose montages, throwing weights and steel fans, sheet piling landing nets and flow edges. Roach, rudd, asp, perch, small catfish – everything went to our hook. Only one does not: the pikeperch.
The legendary eye
Sander lucioperca, the largest among the perches, a predator of the deep. Slender, strong body, dark stripes on the golden green flanks. Two-part dorsal fin, the front part spiny like the crest of a dragon. Pointed head, deeply split mouth with long "dog teeth", as anglers call them. Above it: his legendary "glass eye" – although we never really understood that. We never looked into one.
That is why we are here now, on the Po Delta, south of Venice. Broad and 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 flock from bare crowns, cormorants pounce on arbors. In our oxbow, cut off from the main stream, a heron stands on a rusty barge, motionless and patient. We hear the splashing of chasing raps, the cries of quarreling herons and stare at the tips of our rods. And wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Was there something? The boy leans forward, puts his head to the side, aims at the tip of the fish. But no, there was nothing. Only the boat, which rocked slightly and thereby moved the line.
Baitfish on ground: This is a method of catching a zander. We tried two others the day before, with Andy. Andreas Gutsch, Austrian: As a boy, he always wanted to go fishing. In the mid-nineties, in his early twenties, he came here for the first time, catching more and bigger fish than anywhere else. He bought a dilapidated brickyard on the river and turned it into "Andy's Wallercamp": fishing, fishing, fishing.