With the spring issue of FlyStream put to bed, I grabbed a rare break in my September work calendar and headed to Tasmania for 4 days. Initially I planned to have a crack at the sea trout, but the reports on that front weren’t encouraging.
The beautiful Vale River valley.
Instead, I decided to concentrate on stream fishing. Despite it being pretty early in the season, Rainbow Lodge guide & FlyStream regular Christopher Bassano had passed on the welcome news that many northern Tasmanian rivers were already in great shape, with even some dry fly fishing possible.
Not the biggest fish of the trip, but a seriously pretty one and on the dry!
As it turned out, I got lucky with the weather – fine and mostly sunny every day – and I had a ball fishing the Vale, Mersey and Meander rivers. Everything looked great. Flows were certainly up on summer levels, but all three rivers was fishable and clear. And yes, good numbers of trout came up to the dry, particularly a size 12 Stimulator.
It might be only September, but there was lots of great looking water like this on the Mersey.
I caught numbers of fish each day, with the best session seeing a dozen come to hand. I also had a brief dabble in the stillwater at Four Springs Lake to see if I could bump up the trip average size! The plan almost worked when a huge fish followed but refused my Woolly Bugger. Overall, a great trip; my only regret being not enough time to fish more than a fraction of the waters recommended. If you’re looking for a Tassie break, I’d say there’s definitely no need to wait for summer, it’s well worth fishing right now.
