In Bosnia, everyone has war stories. The Flyfish Journal’s Jason L. Rolfe toured through Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia as a fisherman—not a war correspondent. Yet people he met and the tales he heard—all intertwined in a war that ended almost a decade ago—made the trip an unforgettable journey with filled with small moments of brilliant peace and humanity—many found on the banks of the region’s rivers...

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In Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, everyone has a war story.

Outside of Knin, a dusty country town in central Croatia near the border with Bosnia-Herzegovina—both countries directly across the Adriatic Sea from Italy’s east coast—I met a river keeper who had stories of his own. He was in his 50s and had a rustic vibe, complete with a Sam Elliott moustache and dusty brown, slightly graying hair. He called to me from the banks of the Krka River, which flows from the base of Dinara Mountain near the border of Croatia and Bosnia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, just east of the Adriatic, as I was drifting nymphs through a turquoise run below one of the many waterfalls the river is famous for. I’d been told to expect him; though I had no idea how official his role actually was, if at all. He wore camo pants, a black T-shirt and aviator glasses, the kind of outfit worn by men in semi-official roles in Ukraine, where I’d spent the previous 10 months teaching English; they usually weren’t the types of authority figures that inspired confidence.

I was concerned he might try to squeeze a bribe, but this turned out to be unfounded. He spoke Croatian. I knew just enough Russian to get by in a Ukrainian bar. We found enough words in common to have a streamside conversation. We talked about fishing, Croatia, Ukraine and the United States. He was convinced I was German and I couldn’t quite make him understand I wasn’t. In the end, that was the nationality he wrote on the license he sold me. He offered me a beer and I tried to impress him with the fact that I knew the word for trout in Croatian—pastrva. He turned out to be a personable guy as well, and I sensed it was just as important to him to share a beer with the anglers he met as it was to sell them their licenses. We drank Karlovaˇcko from green bottles, the kind of refreshing, cheap pilsner found in most Central European countries. I explained I’d been fishing here and there throughout Eastern and Central Europe.

In his book, Fly-Fishing the 41st, James Prosek describes diving in the Krka with his friend, Johannes, not long after the war ended in late 1995. Johannes spots a softmouth trout, Salmo obtusirostris, in the shell of a sunken car. The fish is a meter long. Prosek writes, “This was not only a trout but a veteran of war.”

“The War,” in overly simple terms, was really a war within a war, the result of Croatia supporting Bosnian Croats who were fighting Bosnian Muslims. The Bosnian Muslims were originally allied with the Croats in fighting Bosnian Serbs. (This is a gross oversimplification of the conflict, for which I apologize.) Veteran or not, everyone told his or her war stories differently. Sometimes, the stories were impressions or anecdotes, sometimes a philosophical take on what almost four years of destruction and death meant. A university student I stayed with in Zagreb told me about watching a helicopter gunship strafe apartment blocks in his hometown. A longhaired winemaker in Knin waxed philosophically about the conflict and where the blame lay on either side. With a mixture of hand gestures, Russian curses, Croatian phrases and pointing to various scars on his body, the river keeper showed me he had been in the war. A long scar above his knee was from a bullet. I know this because he pointed at it, then mimed holding and firing a submachine gun. I’d never met anyone who’d been shot before, and I haven’t since. He said some things I didn’t understand and we both nodded. Then he went silent. I sipped my beer and looked away.

A long scar above his knee was from a bullet; I know this because he pointed at it, then mimed holding and firing a submachine gun.

I’d arrived in Knin from Split, an ancient town in south-central Croatia perched on the Adriatic. There, I’d billeted in a hostel housed in a 1,700-year-old building. The city was gray stone and cobbles, centered by a palace for the Roman emperor Diocletian in 305 CE and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Beneath a crumbling wall stood a statue of a 10^th-century rebel bishop, Gregory of Nin. It was believed that rubbing the bronze toe of the statue would bring good luck, which I did, thinking of big brown trout and the days ahead.

The train from Split to Knin ran along clear streams that were a far cry from the muddy sloughs I’d become accustomed to in southern Ukraine and Moldova during the past year. The Krka River, when I saw it, glowed; it was a rich, deep azure that brought to mind coral atolls. The Fortress of Knin, a castle built in the ninth century, stood on a hill above town. It dominated the surrounding landscape, and I sat for some time transfixed by it as my train slid to a stop in the station.

I made my way down the dusty streets of Knin, past shaded cafes with whirring fans and languid proprietors leaning on counters. The town felt much smaller than it actually was, quiet and stuck in the not-too-distant past. I found the Krka River at the edge of town and spotted a large brown trout from a bridge. It finned easily below an undercut bank shielded from the midday sun. After a bit of work, including several fly changes and crawling around the bank on my knees, I hooked the fish. It took off on a short run downstream and thrashed about and I eventually slid it onto the bank-side grass in the shade beneath the bridge. I snapped a few pictures and shook my head in disbelief.

I’d mostly hitchhiked here, along with the odd bus or train trip, from Odessa, tucked into the northwestern shore of the Black Sea in southern Ukraine. In my pack I had a few changes of underwear, a hammock, a box of flies, some tying materials and my four-piece rod and reel. For the first time since I’d begun flyfishing a couple of years before, I felt like I knew what I was doing, I was finally worthy of the title angler. It was, at the time, the biggest fish of my adult life. In a few hours I would see an even larger one caught by a local with a spinning rod.

The next day I visited the fortress overlooking Knin. I’m a sucker for a good castle and have always sought them out the few times I have traveled and lived in Europe. This was the first castle, however, in which I sensed a purpose; it was built for defense, for war. Rather than enjoy the millennium-old bas-relief, I couldn’t help thinking this was a place built because humans will do evil things to each other.

I took a bus from Knin to northwestern Bosnia-Herzegovina and a city called Banja Luka, the second largest in the country. Along the way, I saw shells of houses destroyed by artillery fire, building facades pockmarked by bullets and even overgrown craters left by mortars dropped on the countryside. At the edges of many forests, bright red skull-and-crossbones signs said simply, “Pazi—Mine,” and with that, whole swathes of countryside were off limits. The cool shade below the pines was something to avoid if you wanted to keep your legs and your life.

Yet, “the War” was not something the people I met dwelt on. It was acknowledged and discussed as matter of factly as an earthquake or tornado. In one Bosnian town I passed through while hitching a ride, two outer walls forming a right angle were all that remained of a once-grand building; parked neatly in this nook stood a tank and an artillery cannon, a sort of macabre museum display placed there not to glorify the war, but to disallow anyone from forgetting it. The proximity to war in both time and place left little room for dissembling.

At the edges of many forests, bright red skull-and-crossbones signs said simply, “Pazi—Mine,” and with that, whole swathes of countryside were off limits and the cool shade below the pines was something to avoid if you wanted to keep your legs and your life.

Outside of Banja Luka, a city in northwestern Bosnia-Herzegovina dating back to Roman times, I hitched a ride from a Bosnian guy who’d contracted with the Scottish army and been involved in the first Gulf War in Kuwait. It was obvious that he’d mostly learned English from the Scots because he spoke with a heavy Scottish accent and cursed as fluently as anyone I’ve ever encountered. He picked me up at a gas station and nodded as I told him about my travels in Ukraine. When he learned I was fishing, he said without hesitation I needed to fish the Pliva River. He dropped me on the bank and said, “Good luck, and catch some fooking fish!”

Over the next few days I fished the exceedingly cold and clear Pliva, though I couldn’t buy a hit from its huge, finicky grayling. The river was set in a lush, green valley emerging from two gushing springs in the side of a mountain—a far cry from the dry, Mediterranean climate of the Krka just a few days before. When it came time to leave, I bummed a ride from two anglers to the nearby Ribnik. One of them—a bison of a man, bare-chested under his fly vest—yelled jovially at me in Bosnian, as if the heightened volume of his voice would induce fluency. The driver, a kind man named Jovan who later gave me a handful of his own Ribnik flies, did his best to translate his partner’s boasts and jokes. We drank Karlovaˇckos together in the restaurant of a modest fishing hostel before they left me, and I assured them that, yes, there were large fish to be caught in my home state of Washington—had they ever heard of steelhead?

The Ribnik, also in northwest Bosnia-Herzegovina, was a very well-cared-for, small, shallow stream and a popular destination due to its clear water and bracing mountain air. Some say it’s the best fishing river in the country. While there, I fished alongside Bosnians, Italians, Macedonians and others, catching brown and rainbow trout and grayling. I don’t know if they had war stories or not, but I do know that if they did, the Ribnik was not a place they were going to tell them. On the river, no matter where they came from, they were anglers, not veterans. The river was full of them, but it was also full of fish—large ones. You could very nearly choose the difficulty level at which you would fish: cast an Adams or elk hair caddis for 12-15-inch browns; more exact nymphs (without split shot, as per the regulations) for larger browns and rainbows; and still smaller nymphs that had to be drifted with precision for large grayling. Three Italians in a row fished a bend below some willows, smiling as they made cast after cast in what seemed a choreographed routine. In another spot, a large Macedonian stood midcurrent, facing downstream, making delicate and precise casts to a large brown, which he eventually hooked and held briefly for a picture. The scene was idyllic; it seemed everyone was perfectly happy and content. I imagine life on a country estate might be comparable to this, someplace where happy gentlemen wake late and fish unhurriedly through the day, then retire to a terrace in the evening to smoke cigars or pipes, drink brandy and Scotch, and eat simple meals of fish and soup and vegetables.

I fished alongside Bosnians, Italians, Macedonians and others, catching brown and rainbow trout and grayling. I don’t know if they had war stories or not. But I do know that if they did, the Ribnik River was not a place they were going to tell them.

From the Ribnik I took a bus west, back across the border to Croatia, then hitchhiked to the small mountain town of Slunj, midway between Knin to the south and the capital Zagreb, in the north. Slunj sits near the confluence of the Korana and Slunjˇcica rivers, a pastoral place complete with ruins and waterfalls and a graceful curved bridge leading out of town.

In the middle of the Korana, several currents poured into a deep slot made visible by the low water, and a large grayling took a dead drifted nymph so quickly I missed the hook set. I had it on for a moment, realizing I had finally fooled that large grayling I’d been hoping for throughout the trip, and just as quickly lost it. The water was low and the sun was bright, so I left the river and walked up into the hills above the town. I snapped pictures of ruined fortifications and looked out over the red roofs of the town to the valley and countryside rolling away to the north. I found a room in one of the many houses that families offer to travelers like myself.

My hosts were an elderly couple. They rented a room on the top floor of their house. It was clean and warm, with a small balcony that looked out over the town to the northwest. I opened the shutters to the last light of the day, took my first shower in a week and a half and smoked a cigarette. On the side of the house shortly after, beneath a grape arbor, the old man shared some of his homemade slivovitz, a sweet plum brandy that was as smooth as it was strong. The old man’s hooch was good though, and the old woman brought out cheese pastries. I sat on the patio trying to explain I had been traveling and fishing, hitchhiking here and there, taking busses and trains, and I was leaving the next day to return to Moldova where I had a girlfriend in the Peace Corps. This had all come to seem awfully trivial, though. They didn’t need stories. They were happy to share their home with me, their food and drink. They were happy to be sitting there, that the evening was calm, that the sun was setting slowly in a clear, unbroken sky.

Eventually, the three of us grew quiet. I took furtive glances at the exposed skin of the man’s arms and neck, looking for the war’s telltale scars. Evening came. I offered the old man a Chesterfield and we smoked and sipped the brandy, enjoying the last warmth of the day and the simple act of sitting together.

I offered the old man a Chesterfield and we smoked and sipped the brandy, enjoying the last warmth of the day and the simple act of sitting together.

When the Sam Elliott-esque river keeper at the Krka told me his war stories, he had been forced to resort to gestures as much as language. I understood him well enough, and the scar on his leg said more than either of us could have managed. When I was fishing the Pliva, though, I had more time to talk with the river keeper, a man named Alex who spoke English well. Alex was a tightly wound spring, constantly humming with the kind of manic energy I imagine could turn to depression on occasion. He had fished all over the world and he loved his river more than most men love their wives. From a little cabin on the bank of the stream, he directed visiting anglers and offered them beers, tied flies with strands of women’s nylons for the thread, and organized rafting and fishing expeditions for the region’s youth. There was something of the merry prankster about him, as if he always had some trick up his sleeve, or the punch line of a joke he wanted to withhold a moment longer.

We talked one evening about the river’s grayling, fishing in Colorado and Mongolia, where I should fish next. The bracing, spring-fed water of the Pliva flowed by our feet. Alex handed me a beer from a box submerged in the stream and the subject of the war came up. The war had brought to a halt any industry in the area, he told me. Things like logging, factories along the river valley, other manmade ventures meant for profit of some sort—most of them had either been destroyed or simply not taken up again after the war had ended. As a result, Alex said, the river was doing wonderfully. There was no pollution, no diversion of water, no runoff from clear-cut hillsides.

Alex grinned and sipped his beer. “Imagine that,” he said, peering at me with a glint in his eye. “These fish, this river, they’re doing great. And all it took was a war.”

Things like logging, factories along the river valley, other manmade ventures meant for profit of some sort—most of them had either been destroyed or simply not taken up again after the war had ended.

The Flyfish Journal Volume 6 Issue 1 Feature Battle Scars

above The author's collection of fishing licenses from Central Europe. He couldn't convince one river keeper that he was American, not German.

Courtesy: Jason L. Rolfe

6.1 Issue Features

GREETINGS FROM TUFF CITY

BATTLE SCARS

GIMMIE SHELTER

SMALL MIRACLES IN THE MARSH

EXIT STRATEGY

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