SLOW FISHING THE FRESH WATERS OF ITALY MICHAEL LAWRENCE SENA COPYRIGHTED, 2017 BY GREEN HORSE PUBLISHING COMPANY VADSTENA, SWEDEN OCTOBER 2017 Slow Fishing The Fresh Waters of Italy Page 1 Dedication This book is dedicated to all my mentors who have helped me choose the paths I have walked and the rivers I have fished. Slow Fishing The Fresh Waters of Italy Page 2 Prologue Fly fishing lore is filled with stories about chalk streams in England and Pennsylvania, freestone brooks in Vermont, salmon rivers in Norway and Iceland, brown trout waters in New Zealand and wild rainbow streams in Montana. The literature is not populated with tales 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 on the 25th of March 2011, when suddenly I had a lot of time on my hands, and, as fate would have it, I met someone old enough to be my father 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, spent mostly in Sweden. That was five years ago. Fishing for me back then was the only way I could take my thoughts away from what had happened thirteen years earlier. I blamed myself for the deaths of my parents and nothing anyone could say could convince me otherwise. I wanted them back. I knew it wasn’t possible, but that fact did not stop me from wishing. After the funeral, an idea came to me of how I could keep other sons and daughters from losing their parents as I lost mine, and the idea was what got me though university and into my first job. My first and only employer promised to let me work on my idea for as long as I stayed with the company. I never imagined that the company would not always be there. Without a job—THIS job—I would not be able to do what I HAD to do. Sofi, the only woman I had let into my life after my parents died, believed I would work and fish less, and enjoy life more, if we had a child. She was, and still is, a wonderful and loving person, but I could never explain to her in a way that she could understand that I didn’t want to work less because there was something more important than anything, including Slow Fishing The Fresh Waters of Italy Page 3 our relationship, that I had to finish, and I needed to fish in order to give my brain a rest from the guilt. Even though we had not lived together since I rejected the idea of starting a family with her five years before, she was still my best friend, and I continued to rely on her for support when I reached my deepest levels of exhaustion and depression. Catching fish using flies, which is the way I have always fished, rather than with bait or lures, requires your full concentration, from deciding where and when to fish, reading the water, selecting the fly—wet or dry, imitation or attractor—to presenting the fly, hooking, playing, landing and releasing the fish. It's like the difference between taking a walk in the woods and using it as a time to think about how to solve a problem with a co-worker or a friend or a partner, versus concentrating while you are walking on spotting birds or discovering where the mushrooms are hiding. In fact, I believe that most of us who fly fish intensely, as I did five years ago, do so to avoid thinking about anything else, especially thoughts that hurt, like the death of a loved one or separation from a partner, or thoughts that cause anxiety, like deciding whether to make a commitment to start a family. At least that’s what I have found. People who try fly fishing and give it up don't usually do so because they don't catch fish or feel it’s a waste of time; they leave it because they don't have a reason to block out the world. Or if they do, they find that drugs or alcohol are faster, more effective or just easier. Fly fishing is also work. It was pure coincidence, then, that led me on that day in March, 2011 from a life that was destined to be an unhappy one to having a life today that balances work, family and fishing in a way that in Sweden we call lagom, just right. The process of change started with me having to take a forced vacation because my company could not pay my salary. I was working in the automobile industry, which turned out to be the wrong industry to be in at the wrong time. The worst global recession since the Great Depression Slow Fishing The Fresh Waters of Italy Page 4 had begun eighteen months before, in the autumn of 2009. People had stopped buying cars. Large automobile companies like General Motors and Chrysler had to declare bankruptcy. My company, Saab, a small Swedish car producer, had been sold by General Motors in January 2010 to a Dutch businessman named Victor Muller, who owned another car company called Spyker Cars. Saab had not made a profit since 2001. After he took over Saab, Muller spent all the money he was able to scrape together to keep Saab running, but the money was running out and the bad news was arriving in a steady stream. Finally, Muller was out of options. We would all be out of our jobs. I had tried hard to push the thought of Saab closing and me being unemployed out of my mind. When it finally arrived in a phone call from my boss, I definitely felt the only thing I could do was to go fishing. During those few weeks of fishing, with the help of my new companion, Alessandro, his friends whom we met in ten of Italy’s twenty regioni, and his goddaughter, Raffaella, an accomplished fly fisher who had her own reasons for fishing, I gradually began to see myself and the world around me differently, more positively. I was with people who were filling the voids that had been in me since that night thirteen years before when I became an orphan, and I was becoming a whole person. I gradually slowed down the pace of my fishing and eating and, eventually, my life, in order to enjoy the pleasure of the moment. Fly fishing for me today has become a passion, not an escape, one that I share with my loved ones. I have other passions, too, like cooking, and I have a new vocation, which still involves helping people but not in order to soothe my own conscience. I invite you to come along with me to experience my transformation and perhaps learn a few things along the way about the food and the fishing in a beautiful part of the world called Italy. Nicklas Laurentzson Milano, Italy - 14 October 2016 Slow Fishing The Fresh Waters of Italy Page 5 Slow Fishing The Fresh Waters of Italy Page 6 Chapter One Unaware My mobile phone rang while I was eating a hard boiled egg in its shell and brewing my second cup of tea in the breakfast room at the NH Hotel in Trieste. The meeting that was scheduled for 10.00 a.m. had already been cancelled with an SMS I received from the company’s purchasing manager. He didn’t need to explain why. I had left a message with our travel agent to reschedule my flight home, so I thought this call might be from them. I pushed the answer button on my Nokia. “Pronto!” I said jokingly. The caller line identification gave the caller away. “Nicklas?” asked the voice on the other end of the line. “Is that you?” “Si, si,” I continued. It was my manager, Lars. He was always so serious and easily confused, but never irritated by my silly pranks. He was a really decent person who worked hard, supported his staff and did everything he could to make us feel like our work was appreciated. He had spent his entire life with the company, having grown up in Trollhättan. His father was an undertaker, just as his father before him had been an undertaker. Lasse, as everyone called him, decided he would do something else, so he studied automotive engineering at Chalmers in Göteborg, returned to Trollhättan with his degree in hand and went to work at the biggest employer in town. He was also a dedicated member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, had five children, all boys, and, in my eyes, he was married to the most beautiful woman in West Sweden except for Sofi, who was to me still the most beautiful woman in the world. Slow Fishing The Fresh Waters of Italy Page 7 “Very funny,” said Lars. “You’re going to need your good sense of humour. I’ve got bad news.” “Viktor has appointed himself head of R&D?” I interjected. “That would be really bad news,” laughed Lars. “This is just the bad news we were all hoping we wouldn’t hear but deep down inside were sure we would. Jan-Åke has resigned and Viktor is taking over as CEO. The loss came in at €218 million, bigger than even the pessimists had thought.