Ghosts of Summer

The season is changing.

A dram for the farewell to summer, with my trusty Pezon-inspired travel glass rod.

Scarabus seems to belong with the ghosts of past summers.

Sisevac — September

I returned to Sisevac on Sunday, a brief visit before leaving Serbia. This was not a fishing trip. My cousin Đorđe and I drove from Jagodina after the family wedding. Along the way, we stopped at an old soda shop and had an early-morning burek in Ćuprija.

The Crnica greeted us with its lazy autumn murmur, already carrying the quiet, nostalgic character of an early fall day. Notonecta swimmers were all over the slower sections, moving busily around. There were no obvious hatches, and I saw little trout activity. Some of the surrounding trees had already begun to turn brown, not from the cold as they would in a New England autumn, but from the prolonged drought. Others were simply becoming darker green or yellow, with that withered look. It was not the sort of day that invited much fishing.

But the low water offered something else: a different view of the river.

Sections that had been too deep, fast, or awkward to approach in May were now accessible. New pockets, seams and small runs appeared between the exposed rocks, and the reduced current made it possible to see much more clearly how the stream divided around the bed structure. Wading and casting positions that simply did not exist at higher water were now possible

Some of these newly revealed sections looked surprisingly fishable. I found myself studying the river rather than looking for rising trout—trying to understand where the current would hold fish when the water returned.

The tradeoff is obvious. There is much less water, potentially warmer conditions, and considerably less visible trout activity. Yet the low autumn flow also exposes another side of the Crnica. The river becomes almost a map of itself, revealing its structure and showing possibilities that remain hidden beneath the higher spring water.

For a short visit, that may have been the most interesting thing I brought home from Sisevac: not a fish, but a better understanding of the river.

Bamboo Love

Very Slow Fishing

Caribou Zuddler

Idylle — La Vie Mobile

I arrived in Belgrade this May. Same time, more or less, as always. The air was smelling of dust and ozone. Acacia fragrance and heavy blooms were teasing my eyes and nostrils.

The forecast showed steady rain. Not the best time to go to Sisevac—to my beloved Kučaj Mountains—yet. We decided to watch the weather and spend a few days in Belgrade.

The following day we went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, one of my favorite hangs in Belgrade. It is one of those places where I utterly feel at home, always surprised with something new, something I possibly never saw before.

We reveled in great, well-known paintings of modern artists of former Yugoslavia. Konjović, Lubarda, Šejka, Barilli, Vučo… And then we arrived at the one which just made me lose my breath.

Idylle – La vie mobile

The brilliant collage of Marko Ristić, a father of Serbian Surrealism. Sonja and I both sighed, and looked at each other. Immediate resonance. The work just blew my mind. Maybe because I saw the subtle irony in it.

The Mobile Life.

Yes, that is my life.

It has been mobile for the past 35 years. Yes, three and a half decades of utmost mobility in every sense. Unsettled. Unexplainable. Idyllic? Beautiful! Romanesque?

We continued walking and looking at paintings, enjoying every step, every floor, every room of the museum.

The rain stopped just when we exited. Belgrade looked both fresh from spring rain, green grass glowing in diffused light, and also tired and worn from the current zeitgeist.

It is a time for change.

Now!

Curved-Hook Spinners and Poodle Para-Ants

A couple of recent experiments from the vise. Think: late-season ant swarms and early-autumn Heptageniid spinners.

August Ants

I met Goran at my acquaintance Peđa’s place. I had come over to show him some camera lenses that I no longer needed. Peđa, a professional photographer himself and a painter, was dealing in photo equipment, and Goran arrived just as I was about to leave.

He introduced himself as a cameraman and photographer. I learned soon enough that he was also a great painter, sailor, and writer—we just kept talking. He was older than me, but we became friends immediately.

Goran’s curiosity about fly fishing quickly became another connection between us, and his musical taste was extraordinary. I would spend time at his place listening to Egberto Gismonti while he showed me outstanding color slides he had taken with his own hand-constructed camera.

I have never seen images like that.

Although I was preparing to leave for Boston to study at Berklee, our friendship did not end with my departure. During my visits home from Berklee, we continued sharing many experiences together. We talked, biked, hiked the nearby hills, filmed the long-eared owl population that wintered around Aračlijski potok near Jagodina, and discussed art, music, poetry, photography, and biology.

The summer of 1993 was a difficult one because of the Balkan wars. I was home from Berklee that summer, and Goran and I decided to go fly fishing in Resava Canyon. It was August 10—just a few days before my birthday, so I remember it well.

We knew the water was low and that our chances of catching fish were not great. My father was our driver, and he never abandoned his role as a silent witness to my fly-fishing experiments.

Goran brought his 7’6” Germina fiberglass rod for a #6 line.

“The weight does not bother me,” he would say.

And I knew that. He loved to exercise, was always in great shape, and never took the elevator to my apartment. He always ran up the stairs. I lived on the tenth floor of a high-rise building!

We followed the dusty road into the canyon. We fished different spots, separated from each other, probing the deep karst pools with our flies.

I was lucky and caught a small trout near the large rosehip bush, where trout would often rise.

Later, we met again.

“Did you get any?” Goran asked.

“Only one small fish. You?”

“I had one attack my wet ant,” he said, showing me his large thread-body ant with a lacquered finish. “But I struck too soon.”

The day was getting late.

In those years, Resava looked different at the entrance to the canyon, below the ramp. There was a series of pools created by several smaller dams. Those quiet stretches provided tremendous hatches of caddisflies, E. danica, and other insects.

We decided to try one particularly interesting pool farther downstream. I had done well there earlier that summer, and I remembered the bottom of the pool covered with large cases of limnephilid caddisflies.

All three of us spread out along the pool. Goran was making upstream casts with his Germina. I was slightly upstream from him with my little Diamondback Carbonite 6’6” 3-weight.

Before making my first cast, I looked up.

Huge swarms of ants were twirling in the air above us, like a tornado between the treetops and the side of the road where we had parked our Peugeot.

We continued casting, with the sun already far behind the canyon walls and the shadows growing longer.

Slowly, fish started rising.

I could not believe it.

I tied on my winged ant fly, and a beautiful trout, close to 40cm, took it with confidence. The little Diamondback bent almost in half, and Goran helped me land the fish.

He dropped his rod. Both he and my father were standing beside me, watching quietly.

It was already completely dark.

The ants were everywhere.

I put on a larger Light Cahill dry fly. I could no longer see my ant, so I decided to use the last remaining light to tie something larger and more visible onto my leader.

Against the last traces of light in the sky, without a flashlight, I tied that knot.

By then the pool was boiling with rising trout. Huge splashes appeared everywhere.

I kept casting.

Another trout came—this one slightly larger. Goran gave me instructions, although I could no longer see him. He was crouching low on the bank while I played the fish from the asphalt road above.

After that fish, I landed one more, about the same size. Goran expertly guided that last trout into his hand.

I was shocked.

I had never caught such beautiful trout on dry flies in Resava before—not just one, but three good fish in one evening. In the dog days of August!

And then, just like a light switch, everything stopped.

The ants disappeared.

The trout went back into their hiding places.

All of us realized the same thing:

We had witnessed another one of nature’s miracles.

We broke down our rods in complete darkness and drove back toward Jagodina, excited and puzzled.

My father was driving.

Goran turned toward me and smiled gently. There was no excitement, no dramatic celebration. He simply placed his hand on my shoulder.

“You are a heck of a fisherman,” he said.

That moment stayed with me.

I realized that sometimes the most disappointing day can suddenly turn around and surprise you with something enormous.

Unfortunately, I did not realize then that my time with Goran was limited.

In those years, he told me many things about life that I was not ready to understand.

Today, I know he was right.

Some people appear at exactly the right moment in our lives to teach us lessons that last forever.

Goran was one of those rare people.

Sword Beetle

August beetle fever!

Peacock beetle variation with elytra made from sword feathers and parachute hackle.

Steampunk Pump

Built in the 1920s and renewed in the 1950s, this old water pump still supplies Sisevac with drinking water. It stands beside the Crnica, the little limestone stream that runs through the village. The man who keeps it running is my childhood friend, Toplica.

Karst Mystery Stream

Somewhere in the limestone country of eastern Serbia, I found a little stream that disappears into the earth. I looked around its Ranunculus beds and saw no trout. But the water goes underground, and somewhere downstream a remarkable karst spring emerges with an exceptional wild, native trout population.

Is there a connection?

Perhaps. One day I'll find out.

Summertime Reading — Limestone Legends

Searching for Silver Sedge

(Photo: Odontocerum albicorne, Trawscoed, North Wales, August 2015. Photo by Janet Graham, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

Two days ago I spent almost four hours on the phone with my friend Dave Skok. We talked about trout and striped bass fishing, sight casting, dry flies, spring creeks, hatches, and fly rods. That conversation somehow sent me looking for a particular insect I thought I might have seen on my trout water, the Moesian karst stream Crnica in eastern Serbia.

I have spent countless hours reading its currents, turning over its river stones, and trying to fool its trout. Yet even after all these years, the river still manages to keep secrets from me. It concerns a magnificent, heavily structured caddisfly that I suspect may be hiding right under our noses: Odontocerum albicorne, famously known to fly anglers as the Silver Sedge.

If you look at European entomology maps, the Silver Sedge is a documented resident of the region. It has been recently documented in Montenegro and is present in Bulgaria. It is also included in published lists of the Trichoptera fauna of Serbia. However, I have a confession to make: I don't believe I have ever personally seen one on the Crnica.

But before you call me crazy for speculating on its existence, consider the timeline. Odontocerum albicorne is a summer specialist. Its peak emergence occurs from June through July and stretches into August. For many years, my calendar has kept me away from the river during those exact sweltering summer months.

Could this beautiful insect be hatching in the warm summer twilights while I am wading the flats around Boston, looking for striped bass, far away from the Crnica? I think it is entirely possible.

I have, over the years, observed an enormous biodiversity of aquatic insects on the Crnica. I have also found that another almost identical species is documented in the Balkans, Odontocerum hellenicum. Based on the current data, it seems that O. hellenicum would be more likely to occur farther south, in the Stara Planina region.

To understand why the Crnica is a prime candidate for the Silver Sedge, you have to look at how these insects live. The larvae are master underwater stonemasons, constructing incredibly strong, curved defensive cases entirely out of tightly bound grains of sand. They don't just live anywhere—they require clean, permanent, moderate-to-fast flowing water with a rich substrate of gravel and boulders.

The pristine, well-oxygenated upper stretches of the Crnica fit this ecological profile perfectly.

When they do emerge, they are not small caddisflies. The adults boast a substantial forewing length of 13–18 mm, easily identified by their distinctively long, aggressively toothed antennae and striking silver-grey appearance when resting on riparian foliage. For a trout, an adult Silver Sedge or its swimming pupa represents a high-calorie steak dinner.

I am hoping that next June I will dedicate some time to setting UV light traps and doing more sampling of insects along the banks of the Crnica. I hope this ghost story will eventually be solved!

A Few Things I Found Down the Rabbit Hole

While I was a biology student in Belgrade in the late 1980s, one of my dearest professors was Miloje Brajković. I told him way back then about my interest in fly fishing and angling entomology. He smiled and gave me some tips and encouragement as I began collecting specimens, along with resources for identification.

So I am listing his work on top…

Živić, I., Marković, Z. & Brajković, M. (2006). Contribution to the faunistical list of Trichoptera (Insecta) of Serbia.Acta Entomologica Slovenica 14(1): 55–68.
— A very useful general Serbian caddisfly reference; the revised list increased the known Serbian Trichoptera fauna from 173 to 186 species.

Novaković, B., Stojanović, K., Marković, V., Radojević, A., Božanić, M. & Živić, I. (2017). A Valorization of Benthic Invertebrate Fauna of the Mlava River (Eastern Serbia).
— The Mlava survey: 197 benthic taxa recorded during 2009–2014.

Stojanović et al. (2018). Odontocerum hellenicum (Malicky, 1972) (Trichoptera: Odontoceridae) as a host of Agriotypus armatus (Curtis, 1832) (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) — the first finding for Serbia.
— Particularly relevant to the southeastern-Serbia angle.

Klima, F. & Hodges, J. C. (1987). Description of the Larva and Female of Odontocerum hellenicum Malicky, 1972, as Compared to O. albicorne Scopoli, 1763 (Trichoptera: Odontoceridae). Aquatic Insects 9(3): 177–183.
— The really useful hellenicum/albicorne comparison.

Kiss, O. & Pfliegler, W. P. (2011). The biology and life cycle of Odontocerum albicorne (Scopoli, 1763) (Trichoptera).
— Excellent general natural-history source; also discusses the Balkan Odontocerum species and the Bulgarian O. hellenicum records.

Kumanski, K. (1981). Faunistic investigations on Bulgarian Trichoptera to June, 1980 — with a revised check-list. In: Moretti, G. P. (ed.), Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Trichoptera, Series Entomologica 20: 139–147.
— The older Bulgarian source behind the O. hellenicum connection.

Malicky, H. (1972). Weitere neue Arten und Fundorte von Westpaläarktischen Köcherfliegen (Trichoptera), von allem aus dem östlichen Mediterrangebiet. Mitteilungen der Entomologischen Gesellschaft Basel 22: 25–68.
— The original description of Odontocerum hellenicum.

Bozdoğan, H., Bilalli, A. & Ibrahimi, H. (2025). New caddisfly records (Insecta, Trichoptera) for Montenegro and Ecoregion 5, Dinaric Western Balkans: distributional and ecological insights. Biodiversity Data Journal 13: e146076.
— O. albicorne was documented on the Zeta River in Montenegro using a UV light trap on July 22, 2024; five males and nine females were recorded.