We’ve made quite a few trips to Slovenia to go fishing for the Marmorata, a kind of holy grail for the European fly fisherman, and a great excuse to visit Slovenia or the Dolomites!
The reality is that the fish is indeed magnificent, but you can forget about your pretty CDC’s and other flies that fill your boxes. Over there (in Slovenia, at least), it’s with a #6 fly line, a good streamer that will sink to the bottom of the deep pools, and by getting up at dawn that you have your best chance of catching this beautiful trout! But you shouldn’t get too carried away either — while it is a native trout, the fish farms in the Tolmin hatcheries do raise them too… Yes, the ‘Marmo’, as we like to call it, was once on the verge of extinction, but today you find far more of them than 30 or even 20 years ago… It still captures the imagination, and local fishermen pull out enormous ones at the beginning and end of the season.
Another ‘miracle’ of the Marmorata is its presence in Italy. For a long time, Italy was avoided by fly fishermen who preferred to go to Slovenia or the Balkans, as their rivers were in a sorry state — there were few catch-and-release stretches and the trout always ended up on people’s plates (does that ring a bell? Well, it’s not just Italy…). But that was without accounting for the dedication of Italian fly fishermen, who did everything in their power to reverse the decline, and now Italy is becoming one of the best European destinations — and on top of that, the Marmorata is being reintroduced and repopulated there! Here are a few recommended guides for your next trips! For Slovenia and Italy, we can only suggest a few french guides who speak english and have been fiishing those countries for decades : Grégoire Ribert and Marc Boesch, and for Slovenia, Stéphane Faudon, but the list is not exhaustive and there are others! That said, going there without a guide isn’t too risky since there are fish everywhere — but having one does save you a lot of time in knowing where and when to go fishing!
And to learn the history of the Marmorata, nothing beats a short film that explains it all! Bon voyage!