Oliver Burch's Game Fishing Monthly Report - October 2023

“The weather has the potential to do something, but then again it may decide not to, or perhaps do something different.” I usually start my day by reading the weather forecast, but why did I get the impression on 2nd October that Metcheck’s weather man had yawned sleepily, typed the above sentence on his lap top and then rolled back under the covers for a duvet day? I suppose that’s what working from home does for you. Truly October had started with rather indeterminate weather to confuse even a weather man, warmer than expected for the season, with some showers around which just missed us here on the Severn estuary, but which clearly had a big effect further up in Wales. Accordingly both Wye and Usk were now again in flood. Turning then to the reports received from the previous weekend, I saw that on 29th September with the Wye already rising RP from Hertfordshire had 3 barbel to 9.25 pounds and 16 chub from Fownhope 5. Meanwhile MD from Barry had this comment to make about his salmon fishing on the Usk at Abercynrig:

“It’s been 15 years since I first went to Abercynrig, then Dinas and Abercynrig. I’ll never forget that day; late September during my last-ditch trout fishing for the year, when the river rose, and I saw my first salmon run. There were fish running through and we had maybe 40 or 50 sightings. It was that day that led me to become a salmon fisherman. Here we are, years later, and today I did not see a single salmon. The water was quite high but dropping and, in this respect, good for salmon, but nothing. I think it’s wrong to even bother trying.”

MD’s report amounts to a rather sad comment and I was sorry to read it. I was out myself that morning, on the lower Usk at Kemys Commander, and I didn’t see one either. However, IN from Llanelli did see a silver salmon roll up at Cefn Rhosan Fawr. All is not quite lost. And James MacMillan caught a fish of 10 pounds from the Lady Stream at Glanwye the following day. Interestingly MB from Rhayader was also salmon fishing up at Doldowlod. He didn’t touch a salmon but he did take a brown trout of 4 pounds on the last day of the trout season. That part of the Wye has long had a reputation for the occasional very large brown trout – at the beginning of the 20th century Augustus Grimble in his salmon fishery survey inaccurately described these as bull trout. Doldowlod Common was then considered about the top of the Wye’s practical salmon fishing range and springers averaging 18 pounds were in place as early as January. Those were the days!

BR from Crawley with two friends fishing at Lower Canon Bridge was surprised to catch an out of season brown trout on ledgered meat. Believe me BR, trout will eat almost anything. I saw one eat a cigarette butt once. Grayling anglers were left without opportunities for a few days, but as levels began to drop Lyn Davies managed to find fishable water by going far up the Irfon again to Melyn Cildu. The result was a 17.5 inch grayling, but again just a single fish. Interestingly, GR from Newbridge with a friend fished the top of the Wye at Clochfaen for a single grayling and 9 out of season trout. Next day they were on the Colonel’s Water of the Irfon and they had just the one grayling with 26 out of season trout. And on the 23rd three of them fished back on the Wye at Craig Llyn, this time for 28 grayling and 13 out of season trout. One worries about fluctuations of the grayling population in different parts of the river and in different tributaries, but sometimes there seems to be no accounting for it. This is not exactly a new story and usually the populations rebuild over time.

On the 26th GM from Shrewsbury blanked for grayling at Clochfaen, but he did report an out of season salmon and 2 out of season trout. TT from Tillingham fished at How Caple Court and took 6 chub, along with an out of season salmon of 10 pounds. This one took a paste-wrapped boilie fished on leger tackle, presumably scenting it through the flood water as they used to do with a bunch of worms back in the day.

More rain followed and higher water than ever over the weekend. With the ground quite saturated, we had reached a state where every new shower seemed to run straight into the river. Barbel and chub could still be caught. GL from Abergavenny reported 2 barbel and 12 chub from Lower Redbank 1 and SC from Leeds with a friend reported 15 barbel and a chub from Middle Hill Court. RE from Cwmbran fishing at Goodrich Court, obviously concerned above all to be helpful to his fellow anglers, reported that barbel could only be caught there on “one obscure bait.” Elsewhere he described the magic bait as “one strange concoction.” I must ask my local tackle shop to see if they stock it.  The month ended with more rain and floods.

Nerma’s uncle Sulejman, his teenaged wife Hatidza and sons Enver and Mustafa also lived in the family home. The family and especially Nerma’s grandmother were well liked in Blagai, but her grandfather, the village butcher, was a much more distant and even feared figure. He spent most of his time in his shop or smoking upstairs at home, sitting and brooding with a little ibrik of black coffee. Cardak is the name for those projecting upper storeys with wooden screens from which the street could be observed unseen. You didn’t bandy words with the butcher of Blagaj who was famous for being able to slaughter a steer single handed. A dark, angry looking man who always wore a heavy black coat slung across his shoulders, he was also known for poaching fish with dynamite and nets. A typical story about him involves a young man who came to his shop and spoke with great respect: “Forgive me Grandpa Saric, you know my family, but I need work, I need a skill. May I offer to work for you without pay for two years if you will be kind enough to teach me the butchery trade?”  The old man’s response was to take his largest knife down from the wall and chase the young man down the cobbled street while shouting: “There’s only one butcher in Blagaj and that is me.” People afterwards said that the young fellow should have had more sense.

The Buna here is only a short river as it runs down to the Neretva, but it is strong and clean so that there are water mills and even a trout farm in Blagaj. Riverside pastures and fields are fertile. More famously, besides the cave from which the Buna flows are the Tekija, mausoleum tombs of dervish saints. There is a legend that a pan of water left beside the tombs will be dry in the morning, presumably drunk off by their ghosts. As a teenager dressed up in the traditional Turkish dimija trousers and embroidered jacket, Nerma served coffee and cubes of loukoumi delight to tourists who would visit the tombs.  However, at certain times of the year religious dervishes from all over Bosnia would gather here for festivals. These slightly frightening occasions were for men only, and strange rituals, more of magic than religion, reportedly occurred to the hypnotic beat of drums while hot coals would be walked on bare foot or skewers thrust through cheeks.

For a young girl growing up in a Communist workers’ state where religion was tolerated but folklore and tradition were actively encouraged, the future looked surprisingly open. Her father drove a truck and her mother was a seamstress; they lived in a modern apartment block in Mostar city, although the traditions of the village and the older generation were also close at hand. When Nerma was 10 years old, as a child pianist she had been the one chosen by the Party to present Comrade Tito with a bunch of flowers when he came to visit Mostar. Later she went to Sarajevo University to study English Literature and sat on the committee of the 1984 Winter Olympics. She became a teacher and then a music school principal. After Tito’s death, the mood of the country changed as corruption and inflation followed and she became very aware of the gathering clouds of nationalism. She liked at that time to collect paintings from local artists and one of these in particular impressed me. A still life of pomegranate seeds against dark red curtains, it has a backdrop of the city threatened by a lowering sky which always seemed to me to be a premonition of sinister happenings. It reminds me of El Greco’s Toledo and I think we still have that picture in the flat, one of the few Muslim-owned apartments now left in West Mostar.

Blagaj in wartime was perhaps the most dangerous place in the Mostar area, packed with ragged Muslim soldiers and refugees from all over Herzegovina. The Serbian and Croatian populations had fled. Eventually the village found itself at the southern point of a triangle of territory still controlled by the Bosnian Government. On one side was the line against Bosnian Croat forces across the burned out vineyards of Mostarsko Polje; the mountains and crags directly above on the other side were held by the Bosnian Serb army and they shelled at will. The big guns up at Nevesinje were ranged on Mostar, but little 76 millimetre mountain guns and mortars could pick out closer targets with unnerving accuracy. I think my first visit was in early 1994, just after the end of the Muslim-Croat war and a cease fire which was more honoured in the breach than the observance. The Serbs still shelled the other two factions whenever they felt like it or according to payments made. The tarmac road into Blagaj across the plain was then too exposed for safety so I took my Landrover in by the so-called Partisan Road, a rough track built close under the mountains by the Mostar Brigade, and I found Nerma’s cousin Mustafa on the first checkpoint.

Once arrived in Blagaj, I had a parcel from his family abroad to deliver to one of the doctors at the clinic. He took a break from his patients and we went out in the sunshine to where heavy baulks of timber were propped over the windows to protect them from shrapnel and opened one of the packets of cigarettes from the parcel. The doctor was young, but with a dark, deeply-lined face and he smoked through one of the long ivory holders men affect in Mostar. He was polite, not unfriendly, but in a cynical mood. This became expected. Given what they had to deal with on a daily basis, I found Bosnian medics usually were pretty cynical as the only way to get by.

“What do you think of the situation?” I asked him.

“The situation? Well, I think another 10 years fighting should do it. What are they saying outside?”

Nerma’s grandparents had both died long before the war, but Sulejman and his family continued to live in the old house by the mosque, protected now with timber and with plastic in the windows. Sulejman and his sons Enver and Mustafa were all enlisted in the Mostar Brigade. Later, when we had the humanitarian bakery in East Mostar, most of the bread went into the city but we delivered a van load of fresh loaves every day to Blagaj. We had to swap the delivery point around on a daily basis or the Serbs would have shelled the bread queue. Even then the river was full of fish. I once asked Enver to show me how to tickle trout, something he had been famous for as a boy. Enver, now a tall raw-boned young soldier, replied: “Why don’t we just throw a bomb.” He wasn’t joking, because although the Bosnian conflict was theoretically under an international arms embargo, every household was by then awash with weapons and ammunition, and would remain so for years after the war. A Kalashnikov sold on the market for 50 marks at one time. We didn’t throw anything, in case you were wondering, but I saw all sorts of ways of catching trout demonstrated at Blagaj, including misuse of electrical stunning equipment.

Later still, in the early days of peace, I had some experience of the Serb-held territory high above Blagaj towards Nevesinje. This consists of a high plateau of karstic limestone rock interspersed by sink-holes and bogs, and I came to realise that there is an upper part of the River Buna which meanders slowly across this porous plain, before it disappears underground for several miles and drops thousands of feet to emerge from the cliff at the Tekija of Blagaj. Karstic limestone produces a strange, hollow landscape with characteristic sink holes which can be found in other places such as Crete, and even the west of Ireland as vividly described by Kingsmill Moore. It was Gary, my irrepressible Glaswegian convoy driver, a former legionnaire, who got us all into a bit of a pickle by taking a wrong turn and then trying to reverse his truck onto what looked like firm ground to retrace his tracks. His voice on the radio then had a sense of desolation about it: “Oliver, you had better come back and look at this mate.” I did go back, saw the disaster of the sunken truck, but found the green crust would support a Landrover all right. I drove all round him and attached a rope, trying pulling at a few angles. But you can’t move a 20 ton Scania sunk in bog to its axles with a Landrover.

Eventually and after some thought we accepted a certain amount of risk by approaching the local Bosnian Serb army base and asking for help. Since Dayton we were unescorted, but thankfully our only national staff member (my interpreter) was an ethnic Serb. A few months before we might have had to write off all our vehicles as lost in unfriendly territory. The negotiations with the Serb commander were slightly tense: “If I take a tank out of storage, NATO will accuse me of a cease-fire breach. What do you expect me to do?” However, given that most of our humanitarian deliveries had been to Serbs displaced from Muslim territory, we eventually negotiated it down to 50 German marks for diesel and he told two of his young soldiers to come out to us with a recovery crane. Unfortunately the two lads drove like idiots, spinning their wheels, and in a moment their crane had sunk in just as deep as our Scania. There we all stood, Brits and Serbs, looking rather blankly at each other, wondering about night coming on and how we were going to get out of this.

In the event, NATO in the form of Spanish Battalion saved the day. Along came a patrol and a very smart officer from the Canary Islands summed up the situation and gave rapid instructions involving winches, pulleys and wire cables. The Spanish kept their vehicles on the tarmac and relied on winch power at different angles to pull us all out. The Spanish were all smiles and salutes; I was extremely relieved; Gary was certainly relieved; the two young Serbs were embarrassed by NATO’s obvious competence but pleased because I gave them the 50 marks anyway. In fact Gary next wanted to go and have a drink with the Serbs, always an interesting but potentially dangerous proposition when we had national staff with us. I felt we had pushed our luck enough for one evening, so off we went across the cease-fire line and down to Mostar.

In the nearly 30 years since those days we have got news from Blagaj sometimes. The family has had its ups and downs, trying to make a living in post-war Bosnia and elsewhere in the world. Uncle Sulejman who worked as a travelling salesman for a while has recently died, but Hatidza still lives on in the old house. Enver, always a bit of a wild one, has disappeared somewhere into the Middle East, but his family are with Hatidza. Mustafa is some kind of businessman in Holland. Other relatives still live in Mostar, mostly on irregularly paid pensions or foreign remittances. Nerma has gone back occasionally to visit her parents’ grave, but her contemporaries are scattered over the world. Her brother and his family are in Sweden. In terms of old school friends, she is as likely to get a message from Stuttgart or Wisconsin as from Mostar. 

Given these connections and memories, imagine my surprise on opening the October copy of Fly fishing and Fly Tying to find that the 20th FIPS Mouche Cortlands World Youth Fly Fishing Championship for 2023 had taken place, out of all imaginable and unlikely locations, on the River Buna at Blagaj. This happened in July, with air temperatures in the high 40 degrees, so the competition times were delayed to late afternoons and evenings, and the fishing was tough. The last day was held on Mostarsko Jezero, the first hydro-electric lake in the Neretva gorge above Mostar. Young Americans Drew Bone and Kage Kossler were the convincing winners of first and second places. Blagaj and the River Buna made a surprising but a good choice for a competition venue, I think. There are hotels aplenty in Mostar. I don’t think we can still describe Bosnia and Herzegovina as a completely failed state, but despite all our nation-building efforts the place is hardly thriving and tensions persist. Politically it does not function, rather like Northern Ireland. What they do have are mountains, rivers and forests. There isn’t much going for Bosnia and Herzegovina these days with the exception of tourism and it’s good to think of people enjoying their fishing in formerly troubled places.

Let’s hope the rain in the UK stops for a bit and tight lines for some grayling!

Oliver Burch 

Wye Valley Fishing