Nadica and Igor Stancev, professional fly tyers.
My wife Nadica and me are professional tyers since 1991. We have won 43 prizes on major International competitions like the Mustad Scandinavian Open, the Slovenian Open Fly Tying Competition , Brinkhoff's Flytying Competition, the Irish Open Fly Tying Championship .
We participate in 7 books with our own fly patterns. Our flies are distributed all over Europe .
I tied my first fly on age of 12 only by my hands, than I didn't know that there are tools, except scissors and needle.In the same time I started with flyfishing on one mountain creek where my grand parents have a house.Today I can still tie some flies without use of vice and I demonstrate this at flytyingshows.During high school and studys of electrical engeneering, I had my pocket money from tying flies.
In 1991 I have met Nadica and we find out that both of us like the nature and we are amaized of water insects.

Our big passion is macrophotography.We take photos mostly of insects which are food for the trouts, and this close observing helps us a lot in creating their imitations. Both of us are with tendention to involve as much realism as it is posible, for example fishing flies can be semy realistic, because they need to have some ather characteristics as floatability (or oposite) and durability, but competition patterns like those for superealistic category are real chalenge to represent our tying skills, our knowledge of the insects, experience, skilfulness . All this with combination of selected materials and the use of the best hooks are the source of our highest quality flies.

Even Nadica is dipl.ecconomist, her talent for painting and designing of clothes was sussessfully transfered in to flytying. Today she is one of the best creators which is proved with nomerous prizes from different jurrys, and I'm glad that she is my partner not my competitor.

Fly tying, by the way, has a long tradition in Macedonia, traveler and writer Aelianus wrote in 218 before Christ about the work of some Macedonian flytyers! One fly, the Hippourus, used to have a body of red wool and two cock neck feathers wax coloured for wings . This fly was used for fish with "red dots", obviusely trouts were mentioned here.
Nearby rivers

The Treska (which means 'fever') flows about twelve kilometres from Skopje, where we live.
The river holds trout and some 'white fish' and we go there to collect insects and to do some fly fishing together. We have a collection of some 300 pictures of waterinsects and terrestrials which we use, next to some British entomology books, for our flytying as well. Another river we used to go to is the Radika River, some 120 kilometres from Skopje, one part of the river flows thru proteced area (national park) where fishing is not allowed. It holds only brown trout .

On the natural and manmade lakes in Macedonia, fly fishing from boats for whitefish is a popular sport. And a true sport it is as some of these fish can be up to five kilogram in weight! The most beautiful of the three natural lakes is Lake Ohrid, it is from glecher period, with 286 metres it is the deepest in Europe.
Our work has found recognition in 7 different books and one agenda. Mr.Darrel Martin had a section on our work in his latest book. Paul Krogvold form Norway has included some of our flypatterns in his 3 books ( 1st for dries, 2nd book for nymphs and 3rd for streamers).

Nicolas Ragoneau released French book with 1500 patterns, which holds some twenty different patterns by the us. On his second book our patterns are on the cover pages, whish is great honour for us, because many famous fly creators are participating in the book
Latest book where we are participating is from Italy. Also in Italy we are invited to be part of Jury at Tuscany World Fly tying Open Competition 2005.


Even though we need visa to travel abroad we have been tying on shows in Slovenia (1997 until 2000), Norway (1998 and 1999) and Germany (2000until 2003). New Jersey (USA) 2002, Holland 2002 ,
Paris show , which is biggest in Europe with 15000 visitors in 3 days, 2002, 2003, 2004, soon we will be presented on British Fly Fair 2004...

Tying flies is our life and living , I could find work as an electrical engineer and Nadica as a dipl. economist, but we love this 'fine art' and working together, so much that we have no plans to change our 'way of life'. A way of life that we hope will bring us another prizes and contacts with our colleagues worldwide.