Reflection: Neil Patterson

A forgotten curve of Crnica. The river changed its course several years ago, and this stretch exists now only in photographs and memories.

Q: How did you first discover Neil Patterson and his book Chalkstream Chronicle? What was your life as an angler and writer at that time?

I discovered the book shortly after it became available in the United States. I believe I first saw it at the Borders Cafe bookstore. I was absolutely stunned by it.

It was extremely personal and observant, and I felt like I had seen parts of it already, almost as if from a previous life. Of course, Balkan streams are not identical to English chalkstreams, but there are striking similarities: the limestone, the clear water, and the relationship between the landscape and the river.

And then there was the artistic element—a thread connecting everything together. The book was not only about fishing. It was about seeing.

Q: What was it about Neil’s writing that stayed with you? Was it the fishing knowledge, the descriptions of the river, the way he connected nature and human experience, or something else?

It was a combination of many things.

The drawings were unique. The hatch chart at the end of the book was beautiful. The fly patterns he shared were honest, practical, and elegant. They were not created to impress; they were created because they worked and because they belonged to that particular river.

Neil also had a love for soft feathers and traditional materials. Balkan fly anglers have that same connection. When you compare older English fly patterns with traditional patterns from Bosnia, Montenegro, and other parts of the Balkans, there are fascinating similarities.

The Balkan Peninsula is also full of limestone trout streams. Different landscapes and different histories, but a shared relationship between geology, insects, and trout.

Q: Looking back, do you think Neil influenced the way you started writing your own blog—especially the idea of writing not only about fish, but also about places, seasons, memories, and life around the water?

Absolutely. Neil has probably been the greatest influence on my writing about fishing and rivers.

I have had other important influences as well: Ernie Schwiebert, Ernest Hemingway, Arnold Gingrich, Nick Lyons, Roderick Haig-Brown, among others. We are fortunate that these wonderful people left so much behind for future generations of anglers.

Neil’s writing about one specific river was especially meaningful to me. I recognized that idea immediately. I also have my own river—a small stream connected to my family story and my own memories.

I also have to connect this idea to music. I remember Pat Metheny saying in an interview that, in a sense, all of us write only one song. Of course, not literally, but perhaps every artist spends a lifetime creating variations of the same deeper story.

Kenny Wheeler expressed something similar in his beautiful composition Everybody’s Song But My Own. We all have one story, with millions of variations.

Q: You have fished many different waters: Serbian limestone streams, New England saltwater, and Driftless streams in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. What connection do you see between Neil’s River Kennet and the rivers that have shaped your own life?

Those rivers represent some of the most unique environments where trout can live.

They are wild yet gentle, mysterious yet approachable, complex and sometimes incredibly easy. In many ways, they are like human life.

They can be silent for a long time, then suddenly become full of energy and surprises. They test your patience, but they reward you as well.

There is a special biological power in calcium carbonate landscapes—whether it is an English chalkstream, a Driftless limestone creek, or a Balkan karst stream.

Q: Why did you feel that this particular interview with Neil was worth sharing now? What did seeing him on the Kennet bring back for you?

It brought back calmness, poetry in fishing, and honesty.

There was no loud action music, no attempt to make fishing look like a competition or an extreme sport. Some modern fly fishing videos present fishing almost like a Formula 1 race. That has its place, but it is not what I personally look for.

Neil represents something different: observation, patience, connection, and love for a particular place.

Q: After all these years of fishing and writing, what do you think makes a river become more than just a place where fish live?

First and foremost, it is your love for it.

Rivers are like people. Their beauty is sometimes hidden beneath many layers. The more time you spend with them, the more those layers are revealed.

There is also always some kind of personal connection. Sometimes a river is simply given to you. My small stream was “given” to me because it was connected to my family history.

Other rivers you discover and slowly fall deeply in love with. The way the landscape and geology fit together, the history attached to a place—these things create something much deeper.

Think of rivers like the Test, Itchen, Silver Creek, or the Henry’s Fork. They carry remarkable histories.

But it can also be a much smaller and lesser-known river. Sometimes those unknown streams hide deeper mysteries than anyone could possibly imagine. Even after decades, I still uncover and learn new things, year after year.

Neil Patterson — River Kennet interview excerpt:

The Photograph

Last Monday I played at the “Meet the Students” faculty performance and talk. Berklee Aspire 2026 was about to begin, so it was a great opportunity to meet new students, talk about the courses our department offers, and play a little music.

I played the opening number and, after finishing, quietly sat back in the audience.

A nice gentleman was sitting next to me. His eyes were smiling, and his demeanor was utterly calm and composed, yet warm and friendly. He kindly complimented my playing, and I thanked him.

He asked almost immediately:

“Where are you from?”

“Serbia,” I replied.

“Ah... Serbia,” he said with a noticeable German accent. “That's wonderful. I'm from Munich. You know, I was a very close friend of Duško Gojković. I knew him for many years. It's a long story.”

I was stunned.

Duško was a famous trumpet player and a legend of Serbian and Yugoslav jazz. I never had the pleasure of knowing him personally, but I had actually met Duško’s mother.

It happened on October 26, 1986.

My closest childhood friend, Drda, and I were waiting for a bus to Belgrade at the Jagodina bus station. We were trying to catch the afternoon bus because Miles Davis was performing that night at Sava Center during his Tutu tour. We had waited a long time for that opportunity.

An older, elegantly dressed lady was waiting as well. The bus was late, and we started chatting.

She asked us where we were going.

We told her we loved jazz and were going to hear the incredible Miles Davis.

She smiled.

“Jazz? That’s wonderful. Then you must know my son, Duško Gojković.”

We were completely blown away.

What were the chances? We had just met the mother of one of the greatest figures in Balkan jazz — a trumpet player who had performed with Woody Herman and Maynard Ferguson.

All of this went through my head while I was sitting next to my new friend at Berklee’s David Friend Recital Hall.

Two days later, he walked into my Berklee Aspire class.

After class, he came over, sat at the piano, and began playing a beautiful tune.

I listened carefully.

“Is it your piece?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “Vlad, at this point in my life, I only want to compose more. You know... I am seventy.”

His eyes were smiling again.

“You write beautiful music,” I said. “I hear Bill Evans... and Michel Legrand.”

He simply nodded, smiling.

“You should come by during my office hours. We need to talk more. And you have to tell me more about you and Duško.”

“Of course,” he said.

He left just as my next class was about to begin.

The next morning I saw a new WhatsApp message from my sister Sonja.

Attached was a black-and-white photograph.

She wrote only one sentence:

"What a photograph... It looks like Dad and Vlajče took it."

I opened the image and immediately froze.

The photograph captured a collision of old and new Jagodina. It had clearly been taken sometime in the 1980s.

In the foreground stood the older, beautiful house of our godfather, Vladimir “Vlajče” Đorđević, professor of German at the Jagodina Gymnasium and my father’s closest friend.

In the background, above his roof, rose the new socialist-era high-rise building where we lived. Only the top two balconies and one window could be seen on the photo.

The second balcony from the top was ours.

The side window belonged to the room where my piano stood.

This was the place where jazz started for me.

Vlajče was a gentleman of another era.

He was always elegantly dressed, wonderfully charming, an erudite man, and one of the funniest people I have ever known. His storytelling was legendary. The way he told a story would make people roll on the floor laughing. He spoke excellent English, loved America, and had even traveled there with my father years before I ever imagined that one day I would live there myself.

Almost every day he would stop by our apartment.

Then he and my father would go for a walk and end up in nearby Hotel Jagodina. Local Romani musicians played there every evening. Most of them were their childhood friends, so the atmosphere was always special.

I would occasionally stop by late at night after spending time with my own friends in town.

The musicians would play swing inspired by Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. Then they would sit at the table with us, drinking Jagodinska Ružica wine spritzers and telling stories about Jagodina after World War II, about the 1950s and 1960s.

Živa, Mirko, Branko, Miki.

I had always known that Živa Petrović was one of my first teachers of swing.

I still remember playing boogie for him. He listened carefully, taking quick puffs on his cigarette and exhaling the smoke almost before it had reached his lungs. Then he turned to my father and said:

“Mića, your son plays great boogie. He will soon start to play swing like this.”

Then he taught me “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”

Looking at that old photograph almost forty years later, while talking to a student who had been a close friend of Duško Gojković, I understood something larger.

I was not only learning swing from an individual musician. I was growing up inside a whole musical world — a world of friendships, stories, cafés, and musicians who carried traditions from one generation to another.

Those musicians were my first teachers of swing.

Spring Days and Large Dark Olives

When I was still a very green fly angler, I spent countless spring days on my favorite karst stream in eastern Serbia. We would arrive for just a day, and I would quickly run to the big pool near the monastery. The monastery was little more than a ruin back then. Its reconstruction had begun in the late 1970s, and its dome finally stood in place again. Hawthorn bushes greeted me with their intoxicating fragrance, brightening even the grayest overcast day. The first barn swallows skimmed low over the meadow grass.

I walked into the lower section of the pool. The banks glowed with the pastel greens of Monet. Then the Baetis rhodani hatch—the Large Dark Olive—would begin quietly, almost without warning. The riffles suddenly carried more life than water, small somber insects lifting from the stones and drifting into the current.

Back then, there were many more rainbow trout in the system. They escaped from the nearby state hatchery whenever floods overtopped its poorly enclosed ponds. Before long they acquired lovely coloration and behaved almost like wild fish—bold, acrobatic, and far easier to fool than the wary native browns. At that stage of my angling life, I welcomed every advantage the river was willing to give me.

I kept staring into the water, certain I had seen a tiny rise. The water was fast, and the rises were brief and difficult to read. I tried small wets and dries, but the river was always a little ahead of me.

By then, the insects were everywhere—a classic blanket hatch. I remember taking a few nymphs into my hand, not intentionally at first, just lifting them gently from the shallows. In the palm of my hand they would change. Dark, flattened forms slowly loosened, legs and wings separating from the body, the shape of the dun emerging over a few uncertain seconds.

I kept trying, but with little success. The hatch waned almost as suddenly as it had begun, as though an invisible conductor had lowered his hands. What stayed was not the catching, but the transformation itself—the river expressing its timing in something small enough to hold, and too delicate to keep.

Green Pools of Resava Canyon

Back during my years of studying jazz composition at Berklee in Boston, I would arrive home for the summer. It was a difficult time, with wars going on in the former Yugoslavia and a period that was extremely depressing for everyone from my home country. Even though the danger of being drafted was real and lingered through the summer, I could not wait to be back on the karst streams of eastern Serbia.

I would bring my American-bought fly rod and reel, along with some flies I had started tying back then, to try them on the Resava—the stream I fished so much in those years. I fished the Crnica and Mlava too, but I really got hooked on the Resava. I guess it was because I felt I did so much better in its canyon section, upstream from the ramp.

Back then, the road from Strmosten was still gravel. The Yugoslav Army had completed the road through the canyon sometime in the early 1960s. However, the asphalt road to the ramp at the canyon’s entrance was not built until the early 1990s. Right by the ramp, there was a big pool and a small dam. The area was mostly pristine, with only a handful of vacation houses—nothing like the flocks of buildings that exist today for tourists and visitors. The only place that stood out was a socialist-era mountain club house for hikers.

The dam created a big pool, and it held nice-sized browns—not big fish, but big for eastern Serbia karst-stream standards—over 40 cm. I loved fishing Ephemera danica because of the slight silt accumulation by the dam. Those big cream-colored mayflies loved to deposit eggs there, so their spinner dance and fall were abundant. The fish would really key on them.

I took some nice fish using a “sudden inch” technique. Many times, fish would be extremely selective, no matter how good your presentation was. I would dead-drift the big white spinner fly dressed with spent mallard wings, and gently twitch it just before it came into the fish’s window. The fish would take it decisively, with no hesitation. I loved this way of fishing.

Back then, I fished an old two-piece Fenwick HMG graphite—a soft, long rod I bought at Stoddard’s, a legendary Boston fly shop on Temple Place, near Park Street. Those were tense but memorable summers.

We would get lost in thought, the sound of bird calls, and the dull, steady hum of the waterfall. My dad would sit and watch me casting, or walk nearby oak forests to pick a few boletes. Sometimes I would ask him, while fishing and observing the fish’s behavior:

“Hey, what do you think I should put on?”

“Throw them an Adams,” he would say.

Fishing would not make us think about the war. Often we would stay into the darkness, just after the predictable Sericostoma personatum hatch would finish at the same spot. I loved fishing Tom Rosenbauer’s Rabbit Foot Emergers; they were a great imitation of emerging Sericostoma caddis. I remember the bottom of the deep green pool being laden with their larval cases—such a recognizable shape, with bright green larvae hidden inside.

Once the river stopped talking to us, we would pack and leave, driving home late in the darkness, tired and happy.

The Sisevac Caddis

Back in the winter of 2011, I obtained some natural emu feathers. Initially, I had in mind tying a few sandworm gurgler-inspired patterns with them. The feathers were beautiful and made wonderfully enticing tails on sandworm imitations. I fished those successfully for stripers on various beaches along Boston’s North Shore.

Then, in January of 2012, while sitting at the vise dreaming of summer trout fishing, an idea suddenly appeared: why not attempt a dry fly with these feathers?

Some of the emu barbules were slightly stiffer, while others were extremely soft. At the same time, I had long been fond of clipped-hackle flies. The Klinkhåmer was one of my favorite prospecting flies back then, both on Driftless streams and on the small karst rivers of eastern Serbia.

I also always loved soft-hackled flies and was deeply inspired by old Balkan fly patterns that used local wild bird feathers such as owl, jay, duck and crow. Emu reminded me somewhat of owl feather in texture and movement, although structurally the feather is, of course, quite different.

So I combined these ideas and came up with this impressionistic caddis imitation. The pattern is essentially what happens when a saltwater material, Balkan soft-feather sensibility, and limestone-stream trout fishing converge into one fly.

I decided to call it the Sisevac Caddis, after the small Serbian village of Sisevac, my fishing home base on the Crnica River.

Sisevac itself carries layers of memory that go beyond fishing. Long before the mining period, the area was already shaped by the presence of the 14th-century St. Sisoje of Sinai monastery, from which the village of Sisevac takes its name, embedded in the older cultural landscape of the Crnica valley. The river was later described in the 19th century by Hungarian naturalist Félix Philipp Kanitz, who recorded the region’s karst formations and the clarity of its waters in his travel and scientific observations. In the early 20th century, it was still shaped by its mining-era character, and daily life moving closely with the rhythm of extraction and water. A family photograph from the 1930s — taken during a wedding in Sisevac — preserves a moment of stillness within that motion: figures gathered in formal dress, light falling across a landscape that is neither rural nor industrial, but suspended between states. It belongs to a time when the river and its valley were not yet “observed,” but simply lived within, as part of an ongoing flow of hard work, travel, and gathering.

Recipe

Hook: Size 12–14 curved wide-gape hook (such as Daiichi 1130)

Body: Palmered natural emu hackle, clipped on the inner side of the curve

Thorax: Golden brown or Peacock Ice Dub, or similar material

Parapost: Polypropylene

Parachute hackle: Ginger, brown, or sandy dun rooster hackle, depending on local caddis coloration

I first tested the fly in Iowa’s Driftless region and it worked beautifully. Later, I brought it to Serbia, where it performed wonderfully on my old home streams. My old friend Dave Skok liked the pattern as well, and we fished it successfully near his home waters on the Deerfield River in western Massachusetts.

The Sisevac Caddis is something of a semi-damp dry fly. It can imitate a crippled or emerging caddis, but it may also pass for a spent insect—or simply whatever the trout wants it to be at that particular moment. I believe much of the fly’s effectiveness comes from the way light refracts through the emu barbules. The fibers move almost like CDC, although they do benefit from a good treatment with quality desiccant powder before fishing. A powder such as Tiemco Shimazaki Fly Shake gives the fly what I like to call a subtle “moth factor.”

It is an excellent flatwater fly, best fished dead drift or with tiny twitches. At the same time, it floats well enough for moderate riffled water and lands on the surface like a whisper—something I have always loved about this pattern.

Image references

• Figure 1: Sisevac wedding photograph (1930s), family archive.

A historical image from the mining-era settlement period in Sisevac, capturing community life in the Crnica valley.

• Figure 2: Crnica River spring system, Sisevac.

The emergence of the river from its underground course through limestone and rock formations.

• Figure 3: Small wild brown trout, Crnica River.

Native trout from the system that the Sisevac Caddis is intended to suggest.

• Figure 4: The Sisevac Caddis fly pattern.

A clipped-hackle, emu-based caddis imitation developed from mixed saltwater and Balkan soft-feather influences.

Slide Show: Days of Trout and Mushrooms

 

Return to the Karst Stream

I just made this short video about a small karst stream in Serbia that I have fished since childhood. I was lucky to have excellent weather there this past week, along with equally good fishing for small wild brown trout on both dry flies and nymphs.

There were excellent caddis hatches (mostly Hydropsyche), some Sericostoma, and a healthy presence of various mayflies, especially during the evening spinner falls of E. danica, Ecdyonurus/Rhitrogena, and some Baetis. A few Isoperla stoneflies were also noted.

It is still a rather wild place, with a fragmented stream structure and remarkable biodiversity of aquatic insects. One pool may come alive with a caddis hatch, while the next may fish better with an E. danica spinner. Many stretches are overgrown with deadfalls, and the canyon section is truly epic.

The video mostly shows the gentler upstream reaches, which do not descend too steeply.

Fly Fishing in Serbia (part II)

Just for fun, I used my old Canon S100 point and shoot camera for some fishing photos in Serbia. I believe they have more of an "analog" feel, than my latest phone pics! 

Fly Fishing in Serbia: Limestone/Karst Stream Trout