Every year I look forward to going to Tasmania some years New Zealand but mostly Dorothee and I are drawn to the huge number of diverse lakes and streams of our most southern island state.
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After a year of staring at tropical fish and true to my roots I needed a Trout fix, bit hard for Northern fly fishers to understand but for Dorothee and I the attraction is the environment, the animals and the people in the highlands that keeps us going back.
This year was no different but as like many times over the 30 yrs of visiting the conditions can be as varied as the places you visit.
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Penstock Lagoon
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Great lake, Penstock lagoon, Lake Samuals, Laughing Jack Lagoon, Bradys lake, lake Binney and Lake Big Jim.
These were the lakes we fished with friends over an 8 day period and as much as I would have liked it to be excellent in catching it wasn't in fact it was as hard as I had seen for a few years some fish but not many.
Dottie trying to put 2 kg through a size 20 hook eye during a spinner hatch
The reason it seems was the beautiful weather, the hot and still days warmed the surfaces of most lakes there were no Jacids no dun hatches no beetles and very few spinner's about.in other words no food, the fish stayed down and all sorts of drys,nymphs wet fly's etc were not working.
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How beautiful is the Bumblebee
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I spoke to a number of guides like Chris Bassano and Peter Hayes who with their intimate knowledge of their waterways managed to find some consistent catches for their clients,others like Fly life's Rob Sloane told me they left Lake Dee and went home because of this.
Probably like everywhere the water was unusually warm and with that the dissolved oxygen levels in the top water layers would be low,Tassie is not the only place experiencing this change in recent years.
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A misty Lake Samuals
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But like most stories there was a twist to the trip into the highlands. Our good friend and local guide Greg Beecroft had invited us to stay and was taking a break and fishing with us, what came from left field was when one of his friends had to leave unexpectedly and we needed to look after the dogs.
Now that seemed simple enough, Dotty and I love dogs so we can feed them play with them tie them up and when we come back from fishing take them for walks "wrong wrong".
They have to come with us 24/7 right, we thought at least they were very well behaved, 2 beautiful (huge) German Shepherds named Chloe a 12 yr old and Ruger a 6 yr old.
Now Greg's boat was a great boat, narrow and especially good in cruising or drogue managed on the wind drift conditions often experienced but Chloe and Ruger were not Jack Russel's so space suddenly represented a new challenge, on one special day another friend Dave Billings came for a social fish as well.
Four Fly fishers two Dogs and a great deal of compromise
Hugging them or cuddling them Ruger especially still managed to put his size 16 paw on my line or just as often stand, stretch and lay down on my line.
On 5 days we managed to refine the situation somewhat, if they got hot, in the water they went absolutely no consideration to the rising fish or delicate calm polaroiding going down it was really all about them.
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A new dimension in line taming
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One day and with strong wind conditions the fish came on Dottie Greg and I caught 9 fish often with the line going one way while frantically tugging a flyine buried under a 60 kg mountain of fur or wrapped around a back leg a known trouble spot( even erect ears posed a threat) . and they were just as excited when a fish got caught as you were.
THE CHALLENGE THE TEAM
Did we enjoy this ? we loved every minute of it a new level of symbiotic fishing because they alerted us to every Musk Duck, Swan, bumblebee or platypus that invaded our space (according to them anyhow) you can imagine Ruger chasing a bumblebee in the boat it happened !!
It was a sad day when they had to go back who's owner asked innocently "hope they weren't a problem" 😮😮
