The Tara is “the longest river in Montenegro”, in the words of a World Bank study of the Drina basin published in 2016. This article follows it from its source to its mouth. It is geography, with every figure set beside its source.

It is written so that a visitor can place two towns on the river: Kolašin and Mojkovac. Those are the two sections of the Tara that Montenegro Fishing guides.

Where it rises

The World Bank study puts the source of the Tara on the Komovi, at 1,530 m.

Wikipedia names the start more exactly: the meeting of two streams on the Komovi, the Opasnica and the Veruša. A 2024 state monitoring report (Mrdak and others), citing an earlier work, names the same two streams and writes the first as Opasanica.

How long it is

The sources do not agree, because they do not start measuring at the same place.

The World Bank study gives 141 km.
The 2024 report, citing Radojičić (2005), gives 144 km from the meeting of the two streams, and 156 km from the highest springs to the mouth.
Wikipedia gives 143 km in its text and 146 km in its summary box.

The Tara page on this site uses the World Bank’s 141 km.

Two more figures give the scale. The World Bank study puts the river’s catchment at 2,040 km². The 2024 report, again citing Radojičić, gives a fall of 1,050 m from the springs to the mouth, which is 6.7 m in every kilometre.

The upper river, down to Kolašin

The 2024 report sampled one place on the upper river. Its coordinates put it upstream of Kolašin. The report classes the river there as a small mountain limestone river of medium altitude. It describes fairly fast water, pools and riffles, a bed of large rocks and stones with sand in the pools, and willows on the banks.

Kolašin is the upstream town of the two.

Kolašin to Mojkovac: four widenings, three gorges

Between Kolašin and Mojkovac the river keeps the northward course it already has, by the World Bank study. The valley widens four times on the way, and three gorges join the widenings. The study names the four: Kolašinsko-Bakovićski, Trebaljevski, Sjerogorski and Mojkovački.

Three tributaries come in on this stretch, by the same study: the Svinjača from the right, the Plašnica and the Šatornica from the left.

At Trebaljevo, between the two towns, the 2024 report gives a mean flow of 25.0 cubic metres a second (m³/s), citing Radojičić.

Below Mojkovac: the canyon

Below Mojkovac the river turns north-west and enters its canyon. From the mouth of the Bistrica to the end of the river it runs inside Durmitor National Park. The sources are the World Bank study and the 2024 report.

The river is larger here. The 2024 report gives a mean flow of 34.2 m³/s at the mouth of the Bistrica. The World Bank’s gauge at Đurđevića Tara, in the canyon, has a yearly mean of 55.8 m³/s. The guided sections are upstream of that gauge.

Šćepan Polje: where the Drina begins

The Tara ends at Šćepan Polje. There it meets the Piva, and the two rivers form the Drina. The World Bank study and Wikipedia both say so.

The 2024 report gives a mean flow of 79.4 m³/s at Šćepan Polje. Set beside its mean of 25.0 m³/s at Trebaljevo, that is a little over three times as much water.

Its water through the year

The World Bank study describes the Tara as a river of snow and rain. The water is highest in spring, with snowmelt and rain. It is lowest late in the summer. It rises a second time late in the year.

The figures for each month at the canyon gauge are in a separate article: Snowmelt to summer low: the Tara and the Lim through the year.

What the sources do not give

The height of the river at Kolašin or at Mojkovac. No source read for this article states it.
A gauge with monthly figures at either town. The one in the sources read is in the canyon.
The length of each gorge and each widening. The World Bank study names them and counts them, and no more.
One agreed length. The five figures above start from different points.

What lives in the river is on the Tara page. To ask about dates, send a booking request.

From the Komovi to the canyon: the Tara’s course, source to mouth