Fly fishing

Four Springs. After a couple of short drifts and no action, we moved further across the lake and spotted a wind lane. Kylie kept in touch with a slow retrieve to get a solid hookup on her first Tasmanian brown trout.

Between Christmas and new year, warm breezy conditions put a number of beetles on Great Lake, and coupled with a nice cloud cover, lead to good surface activity. Harry and Jim twitched large hopper style dry flies to land a number of fine, hard fighting brown and rainbow trout.

Carey was on the hunt for wild browns in bright conditions on Great Lake. Big bushy flies are drawing the Great Lake fish up in the absence of any significant beetle hatches. Most essential is allowing them to take the offering and begin descending. Carey locked up on this wild brown in a wind protected bay, not far from shore.

We were on Penstock Lagoon, in Tasmania's central highlands, working from the shore during a very modest dun hatch. Jonathan's controlled, accurate casting with an emerger mayfly pattern, on a relatively short line, to risers that came within reach, produced tow outstanding brown trout for the session.

A mild to warm day and light winds, yet the water temperature was very cool as the water had spent the previous few days rising. We used small dry flies and small, unweighted nymph in this short session. This pic shows Fred creeping up on just a few fish sipping gently in calm conditions.

Just prior to Christmas John enjoyed the mayfly activity on Penstock, with a number of modest to reasonable rainbows and this typical fine brown trout.

Stuart pleased as punch with a Penstock brown trout around 4lbs that sipped down a small dry fly right in against the shoreline in 4 inches depth of water. The fish tore off to the middle of the lake and took some work to eventually land.

Mickey refined her casting skills along the main flow of Brumbys Creek and landed her first wild brown trout. Bob fished up to a backwater to find a good fish showing occasionally and very subtle. We waited for an opportune moment and lay the fly out in ambush. Suddenly it was gone and a few minutes later Bob landed and released a fine Brumbys Creek brown trout. Here's Mickey with her fish.

Never having fly fished before, Greg spent two days with us. We sampled both rivers and lakes while we worked on the basic skills. We found fish feeding on grasshoppers on the Meander River, caught and released several brown trout using a size 14 Royal Wolf. Some of these were in tricky spots, others out in the open water.