Italy 2023: Day 4 - Fly Fishing along the Alto Sarca River

When I knew I would be in the Italian mountains, the Dolomites, my mind immediately drifted towards mountain streams and the possibility of fly fishing. So I started researching fly fishing guides and came upon the Trentino Fishing Guides website: https://www.trentinofishing.it/lang/EN/catalogo/cerca/std_id_categoria=15. I would be passing through Trento and so I cross-referenced my availability with their stable of guides and matched my preferences for rivers, species, etc. and found Stefano Fedrizzi.

We agreed to meet at the Bici Grill Rendena, a small cafe with a few fly fishing supplies and equipment about an hour's drive west from Trento, right on the banks of the Fiume Sarca (river). Stefano arranged for my permit that provided me sole access to a portion of the tightly controlled trophy river. I brought my own waders and boots, a small box of flies, tippet, leaders, floatant, and nippers. Stefano supplied the rod and reel, guide flies, and his secret weapon - Tiemco dry shake spray

I was in search of a local species, marble trout, but Stefano lowered my expectations because it had not rained in several weeks, the water was low, the stream was hot, and the fishing had not been good. He said we would catch no marble trout today. He advised we move up the watershed, into one of the smaller tributary and focus on brown trout instead. He also mentioned that we would be fishing all dry flies. This would normally make my heart sing, but, thinking we would be doing a lot of euro-nymphing, I had tied a ton of patterns he recommended, so that was a bust!

This placard marked our section of river.

Looking upstream it looked like this.

Downstream, like this...

Stefano spent about 10 minutes showing me the European way to fish dry flies upstream, keeping most of the fly line and leader off the water to get a good drag free float with all the different currents flowing around. I botched a bunch of casts trying to break old habits, but pretty quickly got into the swing of things missing and landing some small browns. Within the first 30 minutes, I got a solid hookup on his barbless dry and landed this nice MARBLE TROUT! Even Stefano was surprised!

We were hitting all the strategic holding water and this marble trout was in the left-hand back eddy of this beautiful pool.

We kept working our way upstream, chatting on all manner of topics, relaxed after having caught my target fish. I missed a bunch of fish, but continued to land fish on a regular basis as we hopscotched along. The water was beautiful with lots of pockets.

The browns were smaller than I expected, but with their parr marks and beautiful coloring, it reminded me of brook trout fishing and the size didn't matter so much.

The stream was beautiful, the fishing was fun, our conversation was good; what's not to love! We got to this one deep pool and Stefano rigged a nymph dropper (one that I had tied) on the dry fly. That did the trick and I landed another nice MARBLE TROUT!

In between the marbles, the action on the little browns was steady.

As we got to the top of our section of river, we slowed our pace to take advantage of the numerous runs and pocket water.

The Torrente Arno flows out of the snow fields and glaciers of the Adamello mountain group.

We fished until almost 5pm - a full day. I caught tons of fish, missed two ton more!, caught two MARBLE TROUT, and moved a couple other large fish that I missed. What a satisfying day! On the walk back to the car, Stefano and I talked about everything fly fishing from saltwater redfishing in the US to swinging flies in northern Sweden. He generously provided some flies for my box, we got out of our gear and said farewell. I would highly recommend Stefano and recommend you check out his Instagram feed @stefanofedrizzi_flyfishing. His personal website is: www.stefanofedrizzi.com