THE ELUSIVE BALKAN TROUT
Rakia may not be the national drink of Bulgaria, but observation tends to support this theory. A kind of schnapps, Rakia is the necessary peripheral for any salad and most meals, other than breakfast, and I must confess that I love the stuff. Furthermore, through continuing visits to this beautiful country I am accumulating a growing expertise in the subject and, strangely, a lisp.
The impetus for these visits, of course, is that my wife is Bulgarian by origin and she detests the summer heat and humidity we lovingly call “BBQ weather” here in Texas. She thus spends the summer’s warmest months in her home land, returning here when the mercury finally drops a notch or two and northerly breezes become more common.
Generally, this is an extended kitchen pass for me to fish to my heart’s content, but it comes with the annoying responsibility that I must keep house in her absence. It is good that I am not officially graded on this because about three to four weeks after her departure I begin seeing dust balls the size of tumbleweeds lodging in the folds of the various socks that accumulate on the floor, a phenomenon I’ve yet to completely understand. But, usually, the house does look reasonable by roughly two hours before the returning flight arrives.
Every other year or so I take a couple of weeks off work to visit her over there, and this year was the occasion of her son’s wedding. Rusan is a good young man and well worth the journey. Plus, he makes his own Rakia.
This time the jet lag lasted a whole week, during which time lots of activity took place in preparation for the big day. Through all of this I was pretty much in a state of blithering incoherence for lack of sleep, but in and out of this dream state I recall Ani, my wife, promising that after the festivities were over, and Rusan and his lovely bride were off to Malta, we would head to the Rodope Mountains in southern Bulgaria where a plethora of trout streams lay in waiting.
This is something she tells me every time I go over there. No doubt she feels guilty for taking me away from my beloved Muddy Creek and seeks to compensate me with the promise of trout. And let us give credit where credit is due, for she has tried desperately to place me in a position whereby I can catch a trout. But I always fail to comply. While my flies do snag some very interesting local flora and fauna, trout are generally not among them and every time I go over there she becomes ever more obsessed to somehow, some way, get a trout on my hook. This is of course complicated by my refusal to use anything but flies for, as any Bulgarian will tell you, trout eat worms. So I’ve heard this before, and this would be the third time I’ve set my sights on the elusive Balkan Trout.
The first time, we went to a town called Devin. Though the hotel was nice and the scenery great I managed to catch only one rainbow trout, known locally as “American” trout for they are not native there. Of course, the waters were low and clear and my equipment was hastily assembled from shops where fly gear was found under dusty heaps of other generally unsold tackle and fishing paraphernalia. You might find a fly rod in one shop, but you may then need to hit two or three others to find a reel and then fly line. During the process helpful clerks kept steering me to hooks, sinkers, floats and bait. And they sell hooks over there that don’t have holes in them for tying onto your line. The top of the hook is just squashed flat and flares a bit to keep the line from sliding off the shank.
But the real adventure on that trip was the purchase of a fishing license. The people in the hotel told me not to bother, and others less kind just laughed at me. But I pursued it anyway.
First we had to find someone who actually sold one. In Devin it turns out that the official who could do it for me also had his own sparsely stocked tackle shop in the vicinity, so I figured this was going to be simple. But it turned into a two hour ordeal. The license eventually came in the form of a small booklet, like a passport, with some official stamps in it at the price of, oh, say twenty dollars or so. But I was told that when I was done with it I should bring it back to him, or turn it back in to the government so that they could use it again. No wonder the locals laughed at me.
At any rate, Devin was a bust. And I kept that fishing license for a souvenir.
Ani took my lack of success as a slight to her motherland and planned another trip, a year or so later, specifically designed for me to catch trout. We again drove to a very nice mountain village and spent a few wonderful days in a rustic stone cottage with a roof tiled in slabs of slate and a commanding view of the canyon through which our target stream flowed.
The hike to the stream was only 15 minutes down an ever steepening trail that wove its way through small, terraced fields before plunging down to the stream. Of course, it took 30 minutes to get back up at the end of the session. But along the way there were ripe wild strawberries, plums and cherries to munch. Periodically, little springs dripping delicious water out of the hillside gave reason to pause, refresh and ward off gravity induced fatigue.
The stream itself was indeed beautiful, but our first day was spoiled by a rainstorm which roiled the water quite well and proper. I tried for a while but nothing was biting.
The second day, though, was better. The stream was fishable and I fished my heart out.
But nothing was biting.
When I didn’t see any fish in the water I inquired about it but the locals assured me the stream had trout. So on the third day, with the water clearing nicely I tried again, and again the fish weren’t biting.
Now, with the water more clear, I noticed that there really were no fish visible anywhere. Usually, when I start wading around I see them darting from under my feet, if not just holding in pools. But there were none.
So I inquired again, more persistently, and eventually managed to coax out a pertinent bit of information. It seems that some time back some poachers had poisoned the stream with chlorine. The dead fish were picked up and sold to restaurants and the stream was now trying to recover.
With tourist dollars scarce, I suppose their reluctance to report this little detail can be excused. And technically, they hadn’t actually fibbed, for trout did exist above the poisoning point. But our car couldn’t get there as the road was very bad. One local fellow came by our cottage on the last evening and showed me a creel full of small Balkan trout he’d caught with the help of a stout 4WD jeep and some worms, as proof.
Foiled again.
This time was to be different or, in my wife’s own words, she’d kill herself. That being a poor option, I figured I’d come more prepared and this time I brought my own flies with me. If I couldn’t get a trout, at least I’d get some Klen.
Klen is the local name for a fish that reminds me of whitefish, but different. They tolerate warmer water and rise well to flies but aren’t as sexy as trout. I’ve caught them on flies, the largest only 8 inches or so, but they get bigger and are fun to catch. They provide a great deal of the fishing that Bulgarians enjoy, though mostly all of them use bait in the pursuit.
While I sat and pondered my fishing fate the wedding took place. Truly, it was a splendid affair, involving a great deal of traditional antics and revelry. There was lots of running around town honking, hooting and hollering, accompanied by a traditional band of flute, bagpipes and drum. There was then a mad dash to Town Hall for the civil wedding followed by a convoy to the mountains for the Orthodox ceremony and wedding party at a resort there.
Sprinkled throughout the events were great quantities of beer, wine and Rakia, to which I applied my scholarly attentions with great enthusiasm. I vaguely remember someone riding a motorcycle onto the dance floor, though it may have been an illusion. But sometime after about 2 a.m. my beverage induced euphoria and the effects of jet lag intersected and I finally got my first, good night’s sleep.
A day of recovery followed, by which time Rusan had given us the keys to his car for our own retreat and rushed off to Malta with his bride for the real celebration. Ani and I, feeling a bit more perky by now, packed a few things into Rusan’s car and, disregarding the “check engine” light and the broken speedometer as directed, drove off to the Rodope Mountains for a week of serenity in a town called Rudozem.
Did I say serenity? Well, Ani’s daughter lives in a neighboring village, and there were two young boys of ages 3 and 5 to contend with. Grandsons. That, and the en-laws, and their friends and relatives in the village provided a great deal of social adventure. And pretty much everyone had fishing advice for me, namely, use a worm.
On the first day there we again entered the process of getting a fishing license, now much improved. It only took half an hour once we found the place where we could get it.
That day was organized as a picnic and fishing expedition on the local stream, and quite a pretty stream it was. Even better, I could see fish in it this time. So after eating and ensuring that the boys were soaking worms in a safe place under close watch of the ladies, the father en-law, Sabri, and I wandered upstream with our rigs.
Sabri caught the first fish, a klen, on his spinning outfit. Shortly thereafter, I caught one on my fly. And later another. But no trout. I began to realize that pretty much most of the fish in this stream were klen, and sighed. But klen are fun enough to catch so I accepted my fate and continued.
Late in the afternoon, after multiple fly changes and in great desperation, I put my bead headed marabou wonder fly on and began fishing back downstream to the car. Wonder of all wonders, I got a bite in a bit of rowdy water behind some rocks, and on the second or third cast there I finally got my first Balkan trout.
This one was about 8 inches long, with black spots above the lateral line and a few red ones sprinkled along it. Its a variant of the brown trout. I admired him as long as I could safely do so and then released him. Sadly, I didn’t have a camera.
Two days later, on the same stream, I got two trout to rise to my flies, one jumping clean out of the water close to me in pursuit of my fly, but neither felt the sting of the hook. And that was that.
We tried several other streams in the region, but all I got were klen, and not too many of those. They were small, and the species have small mouths, and though I got quite a few bites I didn’t hook very many of them.
One afternoon we stopped for coffee in a small village along our way and sat at their table outside with a number of village locals. Ani explained our quest and they chuckled. It seems that trout aren’t caught that much anymore in those streams. One fellow said it was a great success for me to get the one.
I suppose there are a number of reasons for this. Poaching is high on the list, and over harvesting, generally, but also a lot of small dams have been built on the streams and water flows over the top of them. In my wading I noticed that the water didn’t feel very cold, and that probably makes a major contribution to dwindling populations.
However, there are a rising number of both sport fishermen and interested tourist entities in the country, both of which are beginning to get quite serious about lobbying for stiffer penalties, more regulation, and greater efforts to improve habitat for trout fishing. In fact, this time I saw two local fly fishermen, the only two I’ve ever seen over there, avidly chasing klen.
I don’t think I’d recommend Bulgaria as a fisherman’s destination, and it’s probably not a great place for travelers who have trouble dealing in foreign tongues, but it is quite a pretty country, with wonderful people, and promises great potential. In these economic times it is also quite inexpensive to visit, if you can stand the plane ride.