FOR AN ANGLER, the day never holds as much promise as when viewed from midstream at first light. When I stepped into the river the world was still shades of gray. But with the lightening sky, shapes flat and indistinct became bankside willows, yellow and pale green; peaks ochre and brown and slate; sand and gravel bars bleached-bone white and flecked with silver mica.

The Ara begins as a trickle among the jagged peaks in and around Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park. It is here in this wild, inhospitable region of the Spanish-French frontier that the Pyrenees reach their greatest height — Pico de Posets, 11,065 feet; Pico de Aneto (Spain's second-highest peak), 11,168 feet.

From a mountain freshet at its source, the Ara soon swells to a swift stream. Near the southwest entrance to the park it converges with the Araza — plunging from the forbidding 10,997-foot summit of Monte Perdido — and, doubling its volume by the confluence, tumbles over smooth-worn rocks toward Torla.

In the morning chill I had pulled a sweatshirt over my standby flannel. But standing in the glacial water I was cold. It was mid June, not even summer yet, still the early days of a season all too brief. By July the water would warm slightly, the big insect hatches would start. Then the weeks would gain speed, running away into August, down to a swift end. In the High Pyrenees, from September to June the trout are left alone.        

I changed flies, blowing on my hands to tie the clinch knot. With the sun edging up over the mountains I hooked and released a 10-inch brown amid a series of small rapids and riffles. A few dozen yards upriver, the only other fisherman up and about caught four in quick succession on a silver spinner. I watched him slip two into his creel.

Just above Torla the river is funneled into a narrow canyon where it becomes a deep, swirling, churning torrent, nearly impossible to get to and even harder to fish. But standing on the footbridge below the canyon I knew I had to try.I kept casting and moving upstream, working the main flow, but rose nothing. I tried the edges and, as the sun climbed higher, I had a hit, just a small splash behind the fly as it drifted in near the willows. But when I tried the same drift another half dozen times there was nothing. I climbed out of the river and sat down to rest among the willows. The day was progressing, the fish were not biting: it was time to move. I headed downstream.

Just above Torla the river is funneled into a narrow canyon where it becomes a deep, swirling, churning torrent, nearly impossible to get to and even harder to fish. But standing on the footbridge below the canyon I knew I had to try.  

Non-anglers scoff at tales of fish-rich waters detected by smell. But I have experienced it many times, from Cape Cod Bay when a school of blues was nearby to a mountain lake in Idaho’s Sawtooths, where 6- to 10-inch brook trout fought each other to hit any fly that was tossed out. On the Ara, the smell of trout hung heavy in the mist-filled gorge above Torla. To fish it, however, was another matter.

The right bank was sheer rock walls — out of the question. But along the left bank for about 50 feet there was a narrow shelf between the cliffs and the river. I climbed down from the bridge and edged along the rock. I struggled with the problem for most of an hour, but with no room to wade and rock walls thwarting a backcast, it approached an exercise in existential futility. Finally I gave it up as a worthy but unattainable goal.

When the Ara emerges from the canyon south of Torla its gradient flattens out, it becomes gentler and more accessible. 

But it is below Broto, the next village, that the Ara is loveliest and most fishable. A stretch of several miles is reachable from a gravel road that runs along the west bank from Broto south. Here it is a big, smooth-flowing stream with a gravel-and-cobble bed and occasional sandbars. Much of this section is wadeable and the banks are alternately brushy and clear, offering easy access.

The broad, sparsely populated valley, the meandering river and the mountains are reminiscent of Wyoming. Farther west, in Navarre, the Pyrenees drop several thousand feet and the countryside becomes green and lush, watered by the mists and rains blowing off the Bay of Biscay. But the Aragon Pyrenees are rougher, drier country.

Cliffs and jagged peaks tower above sunlit pine forests and the region abounds in wildlife. Near Sarvise I watched an eagle spiral down and land a couple of hundred yards upstream. Bears, ibex, chamois and deer roam the high country. There may even be a few wolves left. The reality belies the cliche of Europe as densely populated and unrelentingly urbanized.

But though the natural landscape resembles the American West, other features — the ancient towns, traditions, timeworn byways — draw sharp distinctions. It is a compelling dual ambience: wildness juxtaposed with the milleniums-old continuity of European civilization. The rivers, the mountains are timeless. And did Roman legionnaires tread this rocky trail? Was it Crusaders who built those fortress walls?

Upstream, a foot-wide channel funneled a swift, slender stream from the greater current into the head of the pool, washing in richly oxygenated water and serving as a fluid conveyer belt of trout food.On a late-spring afternoon, the river between Broto and Sarvise is a mercurial ribbon under a platinum sun. After my hard-fishing morning, Dave and had I enjoyed a leisurely lunch. Then we drove down to Broto, crossed a steel bridge to the west bank, and parked at the edge of the gravel road near the river. Dave had had enough of tagging along waiting for me to catch something so he sat in the car fiddling with the radio while I geared up and checked out the river.

Here the Ara was a series of swift riffles and mini-rapids. Viewed from atop the riverside berm, it looked problematic but not unfeasible. But when I stepped in to cross I found the water was deeper than it looked and I would be risking a dunking to wade it.

I could see that, about 200 yards downstream, the river flattened out, so I climbed back up the bank and started walking. The ground became thick with brush and rose in a small hummock as I followed the curve of the river.       

After going about 150 yards, I pushed through a patch of woods and found myself standing at the edge of a 10-foot sandbank looking down into a slick pool. Directly below, a 13- or 14-inch brown was casually feeding. I got down on my stomach and watched like a voyeur.

Cut off from the river’s main flow by a narrow sandbar, the pool was a tranquil backwater 40 feet long and a dozen feet wide. Upstream, a foot-wide channel funneled a swift, slender stream from the greater current into the head of the pool, washing in richly oxygenated water and serving as a fluid conveyer belt of trout food. At the tail of the pool the water whooshed out a narrow sluice back into the main channel.

Barely beneath the surface and three or four feet downstream from the inlet channel the fish hung suspended in the flow. In the gentle current it held its position effortlessly, barely fanning its tail, tipping up or drifting slightly left or right to sip an insect or examine a piece of flotsam.

The morning’s action had been more than slow. It had been nearly dead. I wanted this fish and wracked my brain for a plan. For a couple of hundred feet upstream and down the bank was too high and steep for me to get down it. I could dap for the trout like a kid on a sunfish pond, but it would be a ludicrous undertaking trying to haul the fish up the bank flopping and bouncing on a flimsy tippet.

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