AIn the evening the Po is a melancholy river. But the two anglers have no sight of the play of the waves, the sky that is slowly changing color behind the rows of poplars and the light under the trees on the bank. Sliding deep into their camping chairs, Andy Gutscher and Rainer Margreiter stare out at the Po, Italy’s largest river. Gutscher is the first to notice the gentle tremor on the fishing line. He raises his head towards the ship’s side and takes in the scent. “Tak, tak” is what’s going on at the iron brackets in which half a dozen rods are stuck. The trembling on the cord has increased, a nervous, impatient twitch. “Yesssssssssssssssssssssssss Andy Gutscher, jumps up, rips the fishing rod out of its holder and hands it to Rainer Margreiter. He now moves his upper body rhythmically back and forth and turns the fishing crank. The rod bends, vibrates, Margreiter’s hands tremble, he bites his lips together while cranking like a madman. But then his movements slack, the tension drains from his face and gives way to an expression of disappointment. Only the bait is hanging on the hook, which now hops across the surface of the water with a matte shimmer. So the first, difficult lesson for me as a newcomer to the boat is: Without patience, nothing works in catfish fishing.
Silurus glanis, the catfish or catfish, is Europe’s largest freshwater fish. The predatory fish with the broad head and a pair of impressively long barbels on the upper jaw was already known in ancient times. It haunts sagas and legends as a “monster fish”. Today the media keep reporting on spectacular cases, for example the catfish “Kuno” in the Volksgartenweiher near Mönchengladbach, which is said to have plastered a dachshund in 2001, achieved fame. In 2012, a teenager was said to have been attacked by a catfish in an Austrian bathing lake.
“Nonsense! Those are horror stories!” Andy Gutscher dismisses them. The tanned man in his mid-forties with a mustache comes from a small village in Lower Austria. He calls himself an addict. He toured Europe with his camper for many years, always looking for the best fishing spots. Until he finally discovered the Po, more precisely its four hundred square kilometer delta area south of Venice, where the river pours into the Adriatic Sea. Polesine is the name of the swampy world between the two rivers Adige and Po, always threatened by flooding, which over the centuries has repeatedly sought a new bed and shaped the landscape with its debris deposits. The town of Adria is said to have given its name to the sea as a market center and important port. Today it lies twenty kilometers inland from the coast between paddy fields and a network of reed canals.