Looking for the Right River to Call Home

Every fly angler meets many rivers along his or her life path. Rivers are like romantic relationships. Some enter our lives quietly and change us forever. Some become part of us. Some are like the most passionate romances—they can sweep us away in a single rendezvous, yet they don’t necessarily hold the highest places in our memories. Others become lifelong partners, and very often they are found along paths less traveled, hidden from the mainstream fly-fishing world.

I inherited my first river from my grandfather. The Crnica became my first love, rising from its karst spring in Sisevac, a former mining village in eastern Serbia. My grandfather was a schoolteacher living on its banks well before World War II, when the village was much larger and its life was deeply tied to the mines. He fished it with flies, along with his best man, Luka Vraneš, who hailed from Bosnia and tied his own flies. I caught my first trout there as a boy, and wrote about it in my primary-school writing exam. My grandfather was a wonderful storyteller who survived two world wars and lived long enough to write about his life. I fly fish because of him. The Crnica is a river that will follow me throughout my entire life. I will always return to it.

Later, through my early college years, I started fishing the nearby Resava and Mlava more. They were cut from the same karst landscape. I was discovering rivers on my own at this point in my life, and wandering along their canyons connected me to my father, perhaps during the period of our lives when we were closest. He began coming with me on my trips and quietly became a witness to my fishing explorations. He was not a fisherman, yet he always patiently stood by my side on those journeys.

Soon after that I moved to the United States. I fished some wonderful and famous streams, like the Ausable in New York and Silver Creek in Idaho. During my years in the Twin Cities, I probably fished the Rush River more than any other American stream. Yet none of them became a part of me.

I discovered the Driftless streams before I knew I would one day live not far from the Driftless Area. My reconnection with them came during the summer after my graduate studies in Iowa. I fished the small Spring Branch Creek with almost unlimited devotion that summer. I had been separated from trout fishing for several years, partly by graduate school and partly by everything happening in the Balkans. Spring Branch brought me back to something I had almost forgotten I needed. It was intimate, manicured like a miniature English chalkstream, and full of puzzling twists and trout lies, but that summer I fished it with the intensity of someone returning to an old language.

The first river that felt like a chosen love was Waterloo Creek. This was the first stream where I completely felt: this is where I could imagine staying. While living in the Cities, I would make the long drive to Waterloo fairly often, sometimes simply to spend a few hours beside it. Looking back, I realize I was courting that stream. Its marshy valley always hid numerous surprises—from unexpected wisps of snipe in the fall and the tail slaps of beavers to a large brown trout sipping beetles along Waterloo’s quiet banks. It presented a unique world where I could disappear, where imagination and reality were completely intertwined, and every departure felt like a sudden awakening.

Waterloo’s neighbors—French Creek and North Bear—became different rooms of the same trout palace. I used to call French Creek my “Magic Carpet Stream.” Its abundant mats of vegetation would present a wonderful challenge whenever a sizeable trout dove into them. And North Bear is where I met Sid Neff, that wonderful limestone fisherman from Pennsylvania. We spent hours talking about Charles Ritz, Ernie Schwiebert, Vince Marinaro, and other limestone legends beside his camper van one morning, drinking tea and eating toast with English marmalade. We continued fishing terrestrials later that day with our glass and cane rods. It was an unexpected connection to a long-lost world.

What does it actually mean to call a river home?

Is it the place you spend the most time? The stream with the biggest fish? The most beautiful landscape? Is it a river other people think you should love?

Or is it simply the place where, after enough years, you stop looking around and realize:

I don’t want to be anywhere else.

Miniature Bonitos

Last month I spent a week in my village in the southern Kučaj Mountains. I had already enjoyed a couple of fantastic afternoons on the Crnica. Trout took nymphs surprisingly well throughout the day, but surface activity was subdued. It wasn't absent—just dampened by the fog that often forms over the stream on hot days, when warm air meets the icy water of the spring creek.

The following day I returned to the same stretch where I had fished so well the previous afternoon. It was quiet. I suddenly heard voices and realized two spin fishermen were working their way downstream toward me. I stepped out of the stream and followed a narrow path through the thicket until I reached the road. The muddy puddles glowed red, stained by the terra rossa—or crvenica, as we call it locally—that gives this region its distinctive color. I walked toward a shallow crossing, and the two fishermen emerged from the dense vegetation.

"How's the fishing?" I asked.

"Oh, not great. Only small ones everywhere. We didn't fish the water upstream—you can keep going."

I thanked them and continued upstream.

Several hundred meters farther on lay one of my favorite pools, a place that has produced beautifully during caddis hatches for many years. As I walked, I made short sidearm casts with the nymph already tied on—a simple cased caddis larva inspired by the Driftless Area's Pink Squirrel.

When I reached the pool, Hydropsyche caddis were hatching in abundance. A few large, dark Sericostoma personatum—the Welshman's Button—were also fluttering over the water.

Then I looked closely at the surface.

Several fine brown trout were intercepting emerging caddis pupae just beneath the film.

Back home in New England, I spend many autumn days chasing bonito and false albacore. These small tunas often herd bait just beneath the surface, leaving long wakes before striking with explosive speed. I had never seen trout behave quite like this.

Small brown trout were cutting through the surface film, making distinct wakes as they intercepted emerging caddis pupae—slashing through the pool like miniature bonitos.

It was an incredible sight.

I tied on a large caddis imitation and was astonished by the speed of the first take. A brown trout shot across the pool from several meters away like a miniature Spitfire and engulfed the fly without hesitation.

What followed was nearly thirty minutes of nonstop action.

Nature often rewards patience. Still, I'll take luck whenever it comes. As Hemingway once said, when luck arrives, it's good to be ready.

Iowa Driftless, 2005

From the archives: Iowa Driftless, Spring 2005. Two decades ago...Tempus fugit!

From the Archives: Wisconsin Spring Creek, March 2009

Driftless: Fishing Between Thundershowers

Most of the creeks were blown, but with little patience some nice trout were caught in fishable water. Majority of fish were in 12"-20" range, all caught on streamers. I fished my little Paradox 734 bamboo-glass hybrid exclusively.

Paris, Driftless, Jazz