The Macedonian Fly

Fred Buller has come up with two possibilities for what the Hippouros might have been and three possible dressings for the Macedonian fly.

The first dressing is by David Beazley, one-time curator of the Flyfisher's Club. David's fly is shown on the right. On the left is a female Therioplectes tricolor, which is a type of horsefly found in Macedonia - could this be the Hippouros fly?

The other possibility Fred suggests is that the Hippouros was a species of drone fly, perhaps Episyrphus balteatus, shown below on the left. Fred asked Kenneth Robson, the editor of The Flyfisher's Journal, to tie his interpretation of the Hippouros fly assuming that it was a drone fly, and the two patterns Kenneth tied are shown below on the right.

These patterns used to be the only game in town when it came to reproductions of the Hippouros fly and rather fine they are too, but inevitably, there are other theories about what this fly may have looked

like. John Betts, for example, thinks that the Hippouros may have been a species of dragon fly, given the reference Ælian made to it's habit of eating other insects. John's exertise in the area is so great that anything he says has to be taken seriously, but it doesn't explain what the Macedonian fly was tied to imitate. Fortunately, there is another alternative, introduced to me by Dr. Goran Grubic, professor of the Faculty of Agriculture in Zemun, which is part of University of Belgrade. This is a fly which is now in my possession and which was tied by the late Mr. Dusan Pendzerkovski of Bitola, Macedonia. Professor Grubic's father fished with him in the south-eastern part of what is today known as Republic of Macedonia, some 10 years ago. According to Professor Grubic, Mr. Pendzerkovski:
...was also using the Ælian method: he used to cut his hazel rod on the river bank, attach some 10 ft. of mono to the tip, and one or two flies on the end of the line. He was very successful fisherman. Unfortunately I had no opportunity to meet him. As far as I know there are no such "old time masters" in Macedonia anymore.

These patterns used to be the only game in town when it came to reproductions of the Hippouros fly and rather fine they are too, but inevitably, there are other theories about what this fly may have looked like. John Betts, for example, thinks that the Hippouros may have been a species of dragon fly, given the reference Ælian made to it's habit of eating other insects. John's exertise in the area is so great that anything he says has to be taken seriously, but it doesn't explain what the Macedonian fly was tied to imitate. Fortunately, there is another alternative, introduced to me by Dr. Goran Grubic, professor of the Faculty of Agriculture in Zemun, which is part of University of Belgrade. This is a fly which is now in my possession and which was tied by the late Mr. Dusan Pendzerkovski of Bitola, Macedonia. Professor Grubic's father fished with him in the south-eastern part of what is today known as Republic of Macedonia, some 10 years ago. According to Professor Grubic, Mr. Pendzerkovski:
...was also using the Ælian method: he used to cut his hazel rod on the river bank, attach some 10 ft. of mono to the tip, and one or two flies on the end of the line. He was very successful fisherman. Unfortunately I had no opportunity to meet him. As far as I know there are no such "old time masters" in Macedonia anymore.

Now the key thing about this fly, apart from the fact that it was fished by someone who came from Macedonia itself, is the colour of the hackle. Yeah, that's right - it is brown. Ancient beeswax was not bleached the way the stuff we use today is; and if you get hold of any 'natural' beeswax the first thing you will notice about it is that it is a non-descript muddy colour that isn't hard to counterfeit with barnyard rooster hackles. This fly has been the subject of long discussions, as apart from the rib, it is pretty close to the description Ælian gives.