We headed to Rosario for a few nights and on the first day hired bikes and took a ride along the Rio Parana, a wide, handsome river about eight times broader than the Thames at any point upstream of the Barrier.
Recreational fishermen scatter the bank sporting cane fishing poles rigged with about four metres of line, a small float and a hook baited with some kind of insect. These pescadores extract fish from the waters with a stylish snap of the wrist, flinging them over their shoulders and onto the bank to flap and gape before being lobbed into the bucket with their equally unfortunate fishy-friends.
We watched one man haul in a decent, pan-sized fish, which he promptly de-hooked and hoofed back in the water.
“Es pequeno?” I said, asking if the fish was undersized.
He replied with a string of Spanish too advanced for me to decipher before motioning to the yellow bucket next to his feet. It was half-full of fish, all of them shorter than the length of a £5 note and a fraction the size of the catch he’d just returned.
Argentina is now the only place I have ever seen a fisherman throw one back for being too big. It’s nice to know that they’re fishing for the future.
That is all,
Dale Atkinson
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