Jim recalls some classic New Zealand flies, many of which probably warrant more use today.

In the 1960s, I remember a selection of flies imported by the well-known Melbourne-based distributor, JM Gillies. They were tied by Bill Hamill in New Zealand. The flies in question are not so popular now, and have mostly passed into history. I suspect they have been superseded in anglers’ minds by more modern patterns, tied from more modern and available materials. For example, Woolly Bugger variants, Zonker patterns like the late Bill Beck’s famous Cat Fly, and a myriad of other wet flies. However, I recall some wonderful fishing with these old New Zealand patterns.

A set of these historical flies are in a display case in my shack in Tasmania. I often think how rarely you hear of flyfishers using them today, but way back then, they were extremely popular. My small display leaves out two flies also tied by Hamill which were also important: the Taihape Tickler and the Craigs Nighttime.

These were tied with the dark blue feathers of a New Zealand bird called a Pukeko, which we know in Australia as an Eastern Moorhen (either the same bird or closely related). Both flies were extremely popular after dark on Lake Eucumbene in the halcyon days of the 1960s. The Taihape Tickler had a scarlet red body, the Craigs a black body. To my mind they were, at the time, the very best mudeye patterns – fished on dark moonless nights. Way back in those days, we liked the first week after a full moon in late summer or autumn. If there was a clear night with a moon, the best fishing was before the moon rose above the mountain ranges. Once the moonlight reached the water, the fishing died away. However, in the first hours after twilight but before moonrise, the fishing was amazing, often giving an angler the then legal bag limit of 10 trout, averaging three pounds or more.

One trick was to fish over the flooded bed of the Eucumbene River where it wound invisibly through in the top end of the lake. Anglers waded into the lake as night descended, in order to cast out over the river channel. Misjudgement could mean a swim in freezing water!

A very slow retrieve was used, and the trout took the fly slowly too. One would push the rod forward to give a moment of slack line, and then lift the rod and strike. In practice, it was quite hard not to instinctively striking immediately, and the correct action required discipline and self-control!

In those days, it was not unusual to see a dozen anglers or more lined up along the flooded banks of the river. One night, I remember the surprising sight of a recently-caught rainbow moving backwards up an island bank in the moonlight. A pencil torch revealed a water rat with a white tip on its tail, trying to steal a meal! Interestingly, back then most of the fish were browns, not rainbows.

The popularity of the Taihape Tickler and Craigs Nighttime meant that there was a demand for the right feathers from fly tiers. The problem was, the Eastern Moorhen was totally protected in Victoria. However, the rice farmers in New South Wales could get permits from the Rice Marketing Board to shoot limited numbers of them as vermin. The Board even supplied the farmers with subsidised ammunition to shoot them and other rice-eating waterfowl. In my days in the tackle trade, I purchased a hundred capes from a rice farmer near Griffith, and then got into a wall of trouble selling them in Victoria. Although I had the necessary copies of the farmer’s documentation, the officers of the Victorian Fisheries and Wildlife Department at the time were having nothing of it, and threatened court action. I claimed a clause called free trade between the states, and eventually peace was restored. We didn’t purchase any more capes from the rice farmer, although I did hear reports of some ‘roadkill’ capes afterwards.

Today the feathers are nigh on impossible to obtain, and any commercially-tied versions use substitute dyed feathers. Anyway, as is often the case, I have digressed and will get back to the main topic.

The two most popular patterns from Bill Hamill were the Hamill’s Killer and the Mrs Simpson. I think the latter was named after Wallis Simpson, the woman who the King of England abdicated his throne for and married. This astonishing news was headlined around the world at the time. To this writer, the Mrs Simpson was an outstanding frog pattern.

When, in spring, the waters of Lake Sorell in Tasmania filled, and the water backed up into the many swamps, the trout moved into the shallows to feed on frogs and tadpoles. Lake Sorell at the time was milky (though not the terrible discolouration of recent years) but fishable out in the main lake, with some wonderful black spinner fishing from a boat in the afternoons along the edges. However, back in the swamps, the water was gin clear. The method was to dap a Mrs Simpson into a clear hole in the weeds and watch the leader very carefully. Any movement meant an ensuing strike, and then the fight was on to control the trout in the weeds. Quite a few fish were decorated with a lost fly!

The other water where the Mrs Simpson worked well for me was the now drained Lagoon of Islands, also in Tasmania. At dusk, the fly was fished along the weed-free edges of the lagoon. It was amazing. Casting into the laneways of open water at last light would usually result in one or two major explosions. The eastern shore had a sandy edge, and was the best area on calm nights with little or no breeze. Another jutting point at the southern end, near where the creek ran in, was a top spot too. Many fish were lost. The trout were huge, and I remember one night with the late John Philbrick taking three or four large trout, all over seven pounds.

Both the Hamills Killer and the Mrs Simpson were both outstanding flies in rough rainy weather. Fished with a medium retrieve along the edges of many waters would often result in remarkable fishing. As I write this I think of days at Moorabool, Malmsbury, Cairn Curran, Tullaroop, and particularly, the Howqua Inlet on Lake Eildon before the carp infestation.

I also recall the grassy shores at Eucumbene, Tantangara and the Three Mile Dam in NSW, and of course the outstanding fishing in Arthurs Lake in Tasmania before the algal blooms that developed there some twenty-five years ago. To me, fishing the rough windy shores was often better than the lee shores – although much more uncomfortable. Before I owned a boat, I had an amazing afternoon on the back shore of Little Pine Lagoon in an easterly rain gale, a Hamills Killer giving me a bag limit of twelve trout as waves crashed into the shore. (These days, such conditions find me in the shack, cooking a batch of muffins with coffee and sitting in front of the log fire, telling stories of the days of yore with other old fogies!)

In my opinion, the Hamills Killer had to be tied just right to work properly. I’ve seen many commercial copies with the grey partridge feathers dyed with the wrong green colour. The one in the collection pictured at the start of this piece is the right colour. I might seem a bit pedantic on this but to me the colour mattered. Most of my mates would tell you I’m barking up the wrong tree. But I would say that at the very least, if you’re not 100% happy with the fly you’re fishing, then you’re probably going to fish negatively and you’ve very little chance of catching a fish.

It is probably hard to find some of these vintage New Zealand flies today. A few stores still stock them, though often they are poor copies by comparison to Bill Hamill’s originals. The Mrs Simpson was/is tied with cock ringneck pheasant rump feathers, and is still often available. You might also discover an old specimen of one of these vintage flies in your uncle’s, dad’s or some other old bloke’s fly box. Knot it on and give it a try. You might just get a surprise or two!