On an early morning in late autumn 2019, I drove with two friends from my family's small rural home in Northern italy toward the town of Bassano del Grappa, where we would meet our fishing guides. The car axles whimpered through each turn. The road was flanked by walls of dolomite, valley floors of grapevines and verdure.

Passing through villages with roads no wider than toothpicks, we intersected the Brenta River several times, crossing old wooden bridges and new steel overpasses with the water breaking below. The river wriggles from two serene lakes in the Trentino-Alto Adige region in the Italian Alps, and after more than 100 miles dismisses itself into the Adratic Sea.