CHAPTER XXIX
HIGHLANDS OF ASTURIAS
(1) THE TROUT IN SPAIN
THE Asturian Highlands—a maze of mist-wreathed mountains forested with birch and pine, the home of brown bear and capercaillie, and on whose towering peaks roam herds of chamois by hundreds—form a region distinct from the rest of Spain.
Rushing rivers and mountain-torrents coursing down each rent in those rock-ramparts attracted our earliest angling ambitions. Some of those efforts—with rod and gun—are recorded in Wild Spain, and we purpose attempting no more—whether with pen or fly-rod. For the Spanish trout is given no sort of sporting chance, and lovely streams—a very epitome of trouting-water—that might make the world a pleasanter planet (and enrich their owners too) are abandoned to the assassin with dynamite and quicklime, or to villainous nets, cruives, and other engines of wholesale destruction with which we have no concern.
Never since the date of Wild Spain have we cast line on Spanish waters, nor ever again will we attempt it. Spain which, from her French frontier in the Pyrenees right across to that of Portugal on the west, might rival any European country in this respect stands well-nigh at the foot of the list. Not in the most harassed streams of Norway, nor in her hardest-“ottered” lakes, have the trout so damnable a fate dealt out to them as in northern Spain, and for twenty years we have abandoned it as an angling potentiality—or, to put it mildly, there are countries infinitely more attractive to the wandering fisherman.
The case of the Spanish trout as it stands to-day is summed up in the following letter, dated April 1910, from our friend Capt. F. J. Mitchell:—
I have tried a great many of the best rivers in northern Spain, and have come to the conclusion that for angling purposes they have been hopelessly ruined—by dynamite, cloruro, lime, coca, and various other things. There may be deep pools here and there where fish have escaped, but they are very few. If your book is not finished you can put this in, as it is accurate, and may save many a disappointment to the free fisherman.
Farther south, in León and northern Estremadura, are also rivers of first-rate character. The Alagón, for example, with its tributaries, is well adapted for trout—dashing streams with alternate stretches of pool and rapid. These still hold trout in their head-waters among the mountains; but lower down the speckled beauties are well-nigh extirpated.
In this region one frequently observes, not without surprise, evidence of the introduction and acclimatisation of exotic products by old-time Moors—often in most outlandish nooks, wherever their keen eyes had spotted some fertile patch: probably, ere this, that energetic race would have preserved and cultivated the trout! The success of such enterprise in New Zealand and South Africa (it is even promising to succeed under the Equator in B.E. Africa), and indeed in Spain itself (at Algeciras), attests how easily these Iberian waters might be endowed with a new interest and a new value.
Such, however, is existent apathy that, although the local natives (N. Estremadura) were aware of the presence of fish in their rivers, and told us that some ran to 10 or 12 lbs. in weight (these were barbel), yet they knew no distinctive names for the various species. All fish, big or little, were merely pesces—Muy buenas pesces. None could describe them, whether as to appearance or habit, nor did they know whether some species were migratory or otherwise.