You might be going to give this nice brown a kiss, but we're not throwing her back Barry "Bazza" Kerr! This trip was a change from my usual 'waving the wand' with us spending our time trolling the dam. This was a learning experience for me with us using what I referred to as christmas decorations, but in truth called Ford Fender rigs. For those not familiar with these, they are metal plates about 3 inches in length with reflective surfaces that rotate and send out beams of light in every direction as they are trolled through the water. Attached about a meter behind these is attached a worm, dragon fly nymph, or in my case a Tassie Devil lure. In the case of this fish I had a pink Tassie on the rig which after an hour of dragging across the lake had not produced a fish. I switched over to a yellow with black stripes (which the guys in Tassie on our recent trip said were producing all the fish their) and within 5 minutes we had a hit and catch of the brown pitured above. Our host Chris "TOR" Davies (pitured top) put the trip together and had the unenviable task of weathering the weather through cold, wind, rain and temperatures that had our teeth chattering in the front end of the boat. While the fish were sparse, the food, laughter and hopsitality were plentiful and made the trip a memorable event.
Couple of nice ''breakfast' fish (above) caught in the Meander River by myself.
My Mate Colie and I made our annual pilgrimage over to the Great Lakes in Tassie the weekend of Melbourne Cup. This years trip wasn't as near fruitful as previous years. It seems that crews trolling lures (Tassie Devils in yellow body, black strips) cleaned up with catches of 20 plus fish per boat per day being common. Being die-hard fly fisher folk, we slogged it out through hard and testing conditions. Our first two days saw bright, clear and cloudless days - unfortunately by the time we saw the fish, they saw us and headed for deeper waters. Fish proved to be very spooky under these conditions. Our third and forth days saw cloudy, windy, blustery days which made it difficult to keep our flies under control. By the fith day (and some couple of thousand casts later) I had worn my skin down to the flesh on one of my fingers through pulling the fly line over it - ouchy!
You might be going to give this nice brown a kiss, but we're not throwing her back Barry "Bazza" Kerr! This trip was a change from my usual 'waving the wand' with us spending our time trolling the dam. This was a learning experience for me with us using what I referred to as christmas decorations, but in truth called Ford Fender rigs. For those not familiar with these, they are metal plates about 3 inches in length with reflective surfaces that rotate and send out beams of light in every direction as they are trolled through the water. Attached about a meter behind these is attached a worm, dragon fly nymph, or in my case a Tassie Devil lure. In the case of this fish I had a pink Tassie on the rig which after an hour of dragging across the lake had not produced a fish. I switched over to a yellow with black stripes (which the guys in Tassie on our recent trip said were producing all the fish their) and within 5 minutes we had a hit and catch of the brown pitured above. Our host Chris "TOR" Davies (pitured top) put the trip together and had the unenviable task of weathering the weather through cold, wind, rain and temperatures that had our teeth chattering in the front end of the boat. While the fish were sparse, the food, laughter and hopsitality were plentiful and made the trip a memorable event.
