With T-dogg too busy dealing with the "T-dogg & stinga" fanclub, which consists of only his father, he left it up to me to write a few things about our recent trip chasing the feisty stream trout around Bright. In my opinion the skill, knowledge and finesse required to trick a trout into taking your fly is far more rewarding than the tattersalls equivalent of fishing in the salt (sit around waiting for luck to win you the jackpot). T-dogg called his prioritization into question on several occasions. Deciding coffee with his boss (Mrs T-dogg) and the Harrietville market were greater attractions than the freestone mountain streams riddled with eager trout.
Forced to explore by myself I drove 150km, to 7 different spots and walked about 2km in total without wetting a line, due to horrible blackberry management around buffalo river. At 1pm I finally found a promising stretch of water on the Ovens river. The water runs pretty quick at these upper reaches so I elected for the royal Wulff in a 14. In the first 30 minutes I had close to 10 strikes and missed each and every fish. If anyone has noticed something similar with the wulff I'd love to hear about it, email me: missed_another_strike@shittinme.com.au
Despite the fish thrashing at this fly I couldn't stand missing them and tied on a red tag, started hooking fish but it didn't have the fishing thrashing like the wulff did. I couldn't express the relief i felt when I noticed a few duns popping off and in this quick water the 'dads favorite' chose itself. Antony from GVFFC gave me a few of these flies many years back, but whilst I don't think I ever used them i only had one left! Success begun immediately. 4/5 fish later T-dogg rocks up with his pug, in shorts with no gear! after I spent 3 hours driving and walking around, finding a nice river, observing the river, how to fish its likely lies and picking the right fly... I give 'the dog' my rod and he pulls in 3 fish whilst his dog enjoys a lengthy butt sniffing session with a few dogs from a nearby campsite. From this point on it was chaos, we went fish for fish until dark, even managing to get some good footage of the strikes (see the links), and all on the one fly! We would have caught about 25 fish, not huge but they are feisty as all hell. One of the most enjoyable days out I've had. This sort of action cant be beaten and no trip is ever the same.
The following day we tried a stretch about 1km downstream. Working our way up we came across a small creak entering the river, we decided to explore what looked like a beautiful spring fed creak, with slow gin clear pools about 2ft deep and a gentle riffle between each. Certain we would sight out trout we snuck up carefully and sure enough there was one right under the feeder stream at the top of the first pool. A small geehi beetle was selected and subtly flicked into the gentle stream, it drifted back straight over the fish, who moved up through the slow moving water, eyeballed the fly for an instant and then walloped it, engulfing it and half the tippet, I love this fishing! We followed the stream up further but found a fence alarmingly guarded with barbed wire. This fence was clearly designed not to stop livestock from getting out, but people from getting in! So after we finally got through it :-/ we realized what it was doing there, 10m upstream was a pond, this was a trout farm. Disheartened we turned to head back but saw a neat splash from a fish in the pond, we looked at one another and debated over the option, until the word 'poaching' was thrown into the conversation, and we scurried back down to the main river. But again it wasn't until about 4pm with the mayfly hatching that the fishing really picked up, and the same fly did all the damage. Like a racehorse of equal caliber 'dads favorite' will rest out his days in a good paddock with a pretty little female fly, and probably end up taxidermic in a museum somewhere. We will be selling his offspring. That's it from me, P-E-A-C-E out...
Forced to explore by myself I drove 150km, to 7 different spots and walked about 2km in total without wetting a line, due to horrible blackberry management around buffalo river. At 1pm I finally found a promising stretch of water on the Ovens river. The water runs pretty quick at these upper reaches so I elected for the royal Wulff in a 14. In the first 30 minutes I had close to 10 strikes and missed each and every fish. If anyone has noticed something similar with the wulff I'd love to hear about it, email me: missed_another_strike@shittinme.com.au
Despite the fish thrashing at this fly I couldn't stand missing them and tied on a red tag, started hooking fish but it didn't have the fishing thrashing like the wulff did. I couldn't express the relief i felt when I noticed a few duns popping off and in this quick water the 'dads favorite' chose itself. Antony from GVFFC gave me a few of these flies many years back, but whilst I don't think I ever used them i only had one left! Success begun immediately. 4/5 fish later T-dogg rocks up with his pug, in shorts with no gear! after I spent 3 hours driving and walking around, finding a nice river, observing the river, how to fish its likely lies and picking the right fly... I give 'the dog' my rod and he pulls in 3 fish whilst his dog enjoys a lengthy butt sniffing session with a few dogs from a nearby campsite. From this point on it was chaos, we went fish for fish until dark, even managing to get some good footage of the strikes (see the links), and all on the one fly! We would have caught about 25 fish, not huge but they are feisty as all hell. One of the most enjoyable days out I've had. This sort of action cant be beaten and no trip is ever the same.
The following day we tried a stretch about 1km downstream. Working our way up we came across a small creak entering the river, we decided to explore what looked like a beautiful spring fed creak, with slow gin clear pools about 2ft deep and a gentle riffle between each. Certain we would sight out trout we snuck up carefully and sure enough there was one right under the feeder stream at the top of the first pool. A small geehi beetle was selected and subtly flicked into the gentle stream, it drifted back straight over the fish, who moved up through the slow moving water, eyeballed the fly for an instant and then walloped it, engulfing it and half the tippet, I love this fishing! We followed the stream up further but found a fence alarmingly guarded with barbed wire. This fence was clearly designed not to stop livestock from getting out, but people from getting in! So after we finally got through it :-/ we realized what it was doing there, 10m upstream was a pond, this was a trout farm. Disheartened we turned to head back but saw a neat splash from a fish in the pond, we looked at one another and debated over the option, until the word 'poaching' was thrown into the conversation, and we scurried back down to the main river. But again it wasn't until about 4pm with the mayfly hatching that the fishing really picked up, and the same fly did all the damage. Like a racehorse of equal caliber 'dads favorite' will rest out his days in a good paddock with a pretty little female fly, and probably end up taxidermic in a museum somewhere. We will be selling his offspring. That's it from me, P-E-A-C-E out...
LATCH
T-DOGG & STINGA
T-DOGG & STINGA
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