Working it out in Tasmania

As my mates and I conclude another enjoyable week in Tasmania’s Central Highlands, it’s probably a good time for a review.

We always try to go to Tasmania (and most other places) with an open mind. Over four decades fishing down here, we’ve learnt that ‘reports’ aren’t always accurate. Yes, there are a handful of contacts whose intel we’re always grateful to receive. Otherwise though, we tend to look at the fundamentals – especially weather and recent water history – then do our very best to fish with confidence and expectation. This approach has worked well for us time and again over the years. Bad reports are contagious, and it’s no longer surprising to find ourselves the only ones on a given lake, and enjoying good fishing nonetheless.

Only group there?

And this is primarily a lake trip. As anyone even vaguely familiar with the Central Highlands will know, the options are extensive – sometimes to a fault! So, although we have waters which have earned a place as favourites over the years, we also know that in most cases, current conditions, reviewed on a daily basis, are what we need to follow in order to have the best fishing. There’s not much room to get sentimental – if it’s cold, windy and grey, dry fly fishing Great Lake isn’t a good idea; even if on the sunny, mild day before, it was probably the best water in the highlands.

Dry fly heaven on Great Lake. As my brother would say, foam is home!

Not that we (or the Bureau!) always get it right. For example, we were busting to fish Lake Echo, but the day we went there, it was windier and colder than forecast. There was very little food on the water, and with only one rise sighted, after half an hour we decided to cut our losses and try some other lakes.

Being prepared to cut our losses and move, resulted in this brown on the PMX, hard against the bank.

With all of the above in mind, I’m reluctant to give too much detail: this week’s conditions may turn out to be very different to next week’s. In particular, the forecast heat may hurt the fishing on some of the shallower waters, but might also push a lot of terrestrials onto the deeper lakes, ramping up the action on those waters.

But back to what actually happened… always easier to account for than what might happen in the future! Standouts included midge fishing on light wind mornings at Great Lake, stretching out for hours if the wind stayed down and it warmed up.

Penstock impressed on the limited occasions we fished it – always when we were confident of at least half cloud cover. This in turn meant a light but useful dun hatch often occurred midafternoon. We didn’t catch a heap at Penstock, but the quality of the trout was as good as I’ve seen there.

Penstock fish seem particularly chunky this summer.

The 19 Lagoons were looking healthy for late summer. We saw trout everywhere we tried while the light lasted. Again though, conditions matter, and we dropped everything for a dash ‘out west’ when the satellite timelapse revealed a nice big patch of blue sky heading that way.

Big blue sky in the 19 Lagoons – the result of a well-planned dash.

On several waters such as Arthurs and St Clair, the black spinner action was on the cusp of turning on when the wind dropped on mild days – unfortunately usually too briefly for more than a few minutes of high quality fishing at a time. What we wouldn’t have given for an hour of the right conditions!

Black spinner feeders (and Craig’s Hi-Vis Black Spinner) were a thing if conditions allowed.

Which reminds me… the lake trout up in the highlands are about as responsive to surface food as I’ve seen anywhere – and equally, as quick to vanish when that food disappears. It turned out that every trout I caught for the week fell to dry flies. Not because I’m a purist, but because when they wanted to eat the dry, they really wanted to.  A few times, I thought seriously about a wet. But then it would get warmer or cloudier or sunnier or calmer, the fish would rise again, and I’d stick to the dry.

Dry or die? Maybe not, but if there’s a lot of the real thing, it’s hard to argue otherwise!

Speaking of which, for most of the week, I persisted with a big PMX with a smaller paradun, spinner or gum beetle off the back. The PMX is a great sighter, and it often got eaten too. However, it was well worth having the more subtle ‘backups’ on offer. More than few times, I saw PMX refusals turn into smaller fly eats.

And on this trip, the ability to see a trout (rises or polaroided), then to get the fly ahead of it quickly and accurately, was as important as ever.  Yes, we managed to fish up the odd trout by prospecting likely water. However, without good spotting and presentation, to back up carefully thought-out plans every day (and even made on the run during the day), it would have been a much tougher trip.

Justin’s quick, accurate cast at Arthurs scored a take from this sporadic riser.

And cormorants? It sounds like there was an absolute plague of the bastards earlier in the season. However, while they’re around here and there, our rough guess is that their numbers now are about what we would see on a typical trip. The most I spotted at one time was a group of about a dozen on a reef at Lake St Clair. Just as my boat companion Craig and I were feeling pretty discouraged, a hundred metres down the shore, we saw the most daytime rises of the trip. As Craig wryly noted, “Well, looks like they didn’t get’em all.”