Fishin' on the Mission: P-day in the Pyrenees

Back in June of 2016 I posted about catching rainbows at 13,000 feet while serving a mission with my wife in Peru. We are serving again, but this time in Spain. While the Pyrenees aren't as tall as the Andes, fly fishing for trout is just as possible in Europe as it was in South America. Since time is in short supply as a senior missionary (and my fishing gear is back at home), I hired a guide service who knew the terrain and could provide both the gear and the expertise to try to get me into some trout. The Pyrenees are home to two sub-species of brown trout--one native to the Mediterranean drainage and the other to the Atlantic drainage. Miguel, our guide, explained the morphological differences between the two strains and said he'd point them out once we caught some of each.

We took the train from Granada to Lleida, which would be our base of operation. The following morning a two-hour drive north nearly to the border with France put us in the heart of the Pyrenees Mountains, a beautiful range. While we had hoped to get some respite from the heat of southern Spain, the thermometer was pushing triple digits (Farenheit) while we were in the mountains as well. Wading was a welcome relief from the heat. The scenery was stupendous and we had a wonderful lunch in a small mountain village with a beautiful old church in the foreground.

We started upstream in small pocket water adjacent to and within a national park. A beautiful clear stream that had an abundnce of the Mediterranean variety (they call them zebra trout for the dark vertical stripes they develop at sexual maturity). These marks appear similar to parr marks found in other juvenile salmonids. We found more than a dozen who were more than willing to take a sparse mayfly dry.

We subsequently moved downriver to a larger section where the Atlantic variety was found. Since we are in a Mediterranean drainage, Miguel explained that the Atlantics had been stocked there at some time in the past and had established themselves. These fish were a little larger than the zebras we'd seen but were also very willing to take a dry fly.

The third location we fished was larger water still and we had fewer fish to the fly. We switched to a 13-foot leader with 8x tippet so I had to be more careful with hookset and fighting. I was impressed with how gently the fly landed on the water with the long leader and light tippet. Near the end of our time together, I had a large brown take the fly. It was a struggle to keep him from heading to the brush on the opposite bank, but exerting all the pressure I dared and putting a deep bend into the rod, I got him within a couple feet of us, but the water was swift and the fish was definetly not tired--we had simply managed to get it close quickly. Miguel feared if he tried to net it, it would likely result in a loss. We could see he was between 24-27" and a thick fish. As he headed again into the stronger current, I was unable to keep him close and he managed to work his way across the stream and found a single branch whose tip was immersed in the water. (The offending branch is illuminated by the sun in the middle of the photo.) He passed the line along it, and the 8x leader separated the fly and fish quickly and cleanly from the rod, which went limp, as did I. So close. But that's what memories are made of and I will forever have a yearning to return to the Pyrenees in search of another bruiser brown. Maybe I'll be back . . .