ON THE SHORES OF LAKE ISEO

Iseo is defined by its surrounding mountains. The smallest of Italy’s great lakes, this scythe-shaped squiggle of water is home to a handful of fishing villages tucked into deep bays, backed by an amphitheatre of snow-capped Alpine foothills and terraced hills that produce Italy’s most-prized sparkling wine

- SARAH BARRELL

Sandro Novali isn’t fishing today. “He’s spent a lot of his life on the lake,” Sandro’s son, Nicola shrugs. “Not so much these days. But there are still a few regular fishermen out there.” We huddle just inside the entrance of La Foresta, the Novali family restaurant with rooms that put the little island of Montisola on the map when it opened back in 1974. Then, Lake Iseo was barely a blip on the radar for visitors to northern Italy’s watery heartland; a simple string of fishing hamlets floating in Iseo’s central waters, backed by mountains densely wooded with beech, hazelnut and downy oak.

Even for the hardy few out and about on Montisola’s shores today, it’s not a morning for catching much more than a chill. Exhaled breaths hang in ice-thickened air; the mainland’s snow-capped Alpine foothills puncture holes in the fog-frozen horizon. Everything is still, silent, apart from a few men shuffling about on the shoreline, mouthing swearwords into recalcitrant moorings, huffing warming breaths into their hands. The boats are mostly traditional wooden skiffs from which fishermen lower hand-hewn cast nets. The centuries-old expertise behind Iseo’s net-weaving industry is now being put to use for racket sports and hammocks as much as for fishing.