Fishing Australia

There has been more written about trout than any other sports fish in the world, and with good reason.  They can be found in hundreds of countries from the rivers of Alaska, in the mountain streams and lakes of Africa, through to small secret spots high up on the peaks of Hawaii!

Trout attract an anglers attention because and they respond to a massive range of baits lures and flies, jump high, fight well, and taste great!  To tease anglers even more, sometimes they are easy to hook and sometimes they are near on impossible to tempt!

Possibly the biggest reason of all that trout fishing fever grips so many anglers is that the best of it is found in magically pristine places far removed from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

Everyone knows anglers are always looking for an excuse to leave responsibility behind to wet a line, and trout fishing does this in spectacular style.

Personally I have long loved trout fishing for all the reasons above.  I even worked as a fly fishing guide for about a decade.

My love of trout fishing has been rekindled thanks to my Hobie mirage drive which means I can spin, troll or fly cast in places I never dreamed of getting too before. That, and I recently got to have another fly fish in Tasmania again where the trout fishing is…well…read on.

Day One of the trip saw us settle in at the small town of Tarraleah in the Central Highlands. Tassie has some 3000 lakes and lots of streams as well, so there’s hardly a square kilometer of the island where you won’t find trout.  Each region has at least a few spots that will fire at any given time.

The island's lower altitude specimens tend to grow faster and fatter than the higher dwelling ones, but the highlands attract more anglers. Is this because of the scenery, or maybe because people sub consciously yearn for a dose of pure mountain air; who knows?

Despite the popularity of the highlands you can, if you like, fish a every day without fishing the same lake twice and without hardly seeing another angler! Put simply the numbers and quality of trout, the variety of fishing, and the back drop is unmatched…even on a world scale!

A quick flick of a lure off the bank at the local Tarraleah tailrace shortly after unpacking on the first evening, saw a 3 pound brown shake the hooks during a two metre high aerial! Soon after, two of his smaller cousins graced our nets.

Heck, if 5 minutes fishing from a well worn local spot was producing such easy fishing, one could only wonder how well the better spots would fish…but we had to get there first.

A bout of gastro that came out of nowhere had me calling trout and Tassie all sorts of names. All I wanted to do was hide from the world and sook. I can handle being hooked, breaking the odd bone, or getting nipped by a shark, but Nausea? Now, that’s no fun...  My crew of course saw the funny side of my pain, as mates often do...

While laying down from exhaustion after one particularly big vomit, some big leaches came out of the wet forest growth and latched onto my neck! Talk about getting someone while they are down.  This gave the crew even more reason to laugh...

They say revenge is best eaten cold.  Maybe so, but I didn’t care for this or karma either for that matter.  I was feeling lousy and reality was that we had to get filming the show on trout and I needed to get better fast!

But things just got worse and ultimately I ended up at the Central Highlands General Practice with an intravenous saline drip and some anti nausea medicine to get me back on my feet.

Marvelous how good it was to feel almost normal again and with the weather starting to fine up, my fortunes were taking a turn for the better. Hopefully the trout would be up to the island's usual standards and then we’d have a real bit of Tassie Magic on our hands.

To be continued next week…

See you on the water.
Rob Paxevanos

Special thanks to Tourism Tasmania (discovertasmania.com), Rob Aitkenhead, everyone at Tarraleah (www.tarraleahlodge.com), Budget Hire Cars, and the Inland Fisheries Service of Tasmania