The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected by Gleiser Marcelo;

Author:Gleiser, Marcelo; [Gleiser, Marcelo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brandeis University Press

Freedom in Attachment

My lecture over, I rushed back to the hotel to meet my guide, Alexandre Bertolucci (perhaps a relation to the great Italian movie director?). Alexandre’s parents immigrated from Italy early in the twentieth century, part of a huge exodus of Europeans—especially Italians and Germans—to the south of Brazil. The mixing between the immigrants and the locals, whites of Portuguese descent, blacks from Africa, native Brazilians, makes for a high density of absolutely gorgeous people. Even those who aren’t the result of much mixing, like the supermodel Gisele Bündchen—who’s pretty much all German—somehow benefit from the area.

A burly man in his early forties, Alexandre had a handshake of someone who’d much rather be wading the pristine waters of the Silveira River than sitting behind a desk. A fly-fishing enthusiast is definitely an oddity in Brazilian culture. I stared at him as one stares at a bizarre creature in a sixteenth-century cabinet of curiosities. How on earth did this fellow become a master fly-fisherman around here?

We left Porto Alegre around 10 PM. Looking up, I could see a few brave stars challenging the city’s glare. Excellent! São José dos Ausentes is notoriously cold—some say the coldest spot in Brazil, nestled at about thirty-eight hundred feet in the mountains on the northern parts of Rio Grande do Sul. Although temperatures don’t compare to our northern New England winters, to wade in rushing water when the air temperature is about forty Fahrenheit is no picnic anywhere. And that’s what these pioneers do around here. The trout demand it, since their peak feeding activity happens in water temperatures ranging between fifty and sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. Of course, trout being trout, this is just a general pointer, not an absolute rule. There are also small variations, depending on the species. Brook and cutthroat trout seem to be a bit more resilient at lower temperatures. But whatever the trout, their metabolism does slow down for lower temperatures and their appetite tends to wane. I always take a thermometer with me and check the water temperature before I start. Not that I’d give up if the water is too warm or too cold. But at least if I am completely unsuccessful I have something concrete other than myself to blame.

In the Silveira River, water temperature and flow are optimal between March and October, the season peaking around July, the middle of the Brazilian winter. Ironically, this is also when we fish in the northern hemisphere. The difference is that we are warm up here while they are cold down there. Lucky for me, this was late October, and the cold air was mostly gone. In fact, the problem was that it was already becoming too hot. Trout absolutely hate warm water. Not just hate; they die when the temperature climbs above eighty degrees Fahrenheit or so, as I have witnessed many times with a broken heart. Such beautiful creatures are not meant to float belly-up in a hot tub.

“Nobody has been fishing for the past two weeks,” said Alexandre.

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