December 2012

David had the gear and some casting lessons and was keen to master the art of catching a trout on the dry fly. A little time spent on stream craft and approach had David placing some well controlled casts at rising fish. Not too long and David landed his first wild river brown trout on the St Patrick's River. And then another and another....

Tom's guided fishing tour was a surprise birthday gift. He and friend John came to learn more about loch style and dry fly techniques. This is Tom with a fine brown trout from Woods Lake.

Another fine example of Tasmania's wild brown trout in food-rich environments. Simon had fun with a few rainbows and this nice brown using dun emergers.

During the absence of any major dun hatch, with hardly a fish showing, we opted for the bead head nymph over the weed beds, which resulted in two nice brownies. Peter kept in touch with the nymph nicely as he twitched it along, and responded quickly to the take.

Stewart takes a great delight in the dry fly, and we worked on some bow and arrow casting to get into some tight places. On bright hot days a lot of fish will be moving freely in the shade. Here Steward caught and released two browns on the dry in quick succession by covering the water well, especially getting the fly close to structure like logs and the bankside vegetation.

Tim enjoyed sight fishing to wild river browns on the St Patrick's with small grasshopper imitations. Tim covered sippers in the shade and polaroided fish in the open sunny sections and was able to bring a few fish to hand.

Reliable even in the toughest of conditions, Arthur's Lake produces the first ever trout for David. This brownie took a well placed cast in amongst the sticks.

Enjoying several days fishing Tassie's rivers and lakes, Jon was particularly pleased with this lovely Western Lakes brown. In tough light with windy conditions, this beauty took a parachute hackle red spinner.

Stalking with a dry fly to big wild brown trout over sandy bottoms. It's December, summer in Tasmania. Visiting from the UK, Alec Tarrant is an experienced fly fisher, frequenting salty waters for species such as bone fish and tarpon. Alec is keen to find out if Tasmania's wild trout fishing offers the same heart thumping excitement. Alex is staying at Ross in the northern midlands. I meet him at his accommodation, Somercotes, and we head east to Lake Leake. Lake Leake's current water level is around 200nm below spilling. This time last year the lake was very low. Fortunately [...]

An accomplished wet fly fisherman, John wanted to develop his dry fly skills, which he did, landing a number of browns, including this fine trout, using one of our favourite flies, the Tups Indispensable.