For details of shows, venues and dates visit Fishing Tasmania.

The featured film is a 45-minute fly fishing travelogue, The Source — Tasmania demonstrating the State’s variety of wild trout waters. Highly recommend it.

As I have said Currawong Lakes is a great place for a group of keen learners to have a go with a good chance of getting some nice fish to hand and seeing a bit of action while picking up much of the skills needed to cast a fly.

Good mates, Leigh, Pete, Craig & Mathew from the Hobart area joined together at the end of April, while trout were still taking dry flies.

Although it was a tough day fish to hand wise, light leaders and aggressive fish making it difficult for the learners to hang onto many, it was still a top day for the boys.

Final tally was one to hand, one to the shore, two dropped, five broken off and three misses.

Above, Pete is on to a good one, taken on the emerger and Mathew gets one on the un-weighted nymph to hand, below, which brings a big smile.

While Leigh and Craig are still stalking their targets along these nice reedy shores, below.

The secret of Tasmanian tailers! One of our special wild trout activities is the trout’s extremely shallow water feeding and cruising display know locally as ‘tailing trout’.

Currawong Lakes is an excellent example of this. With an extended tour party from the US in mid-April we stayed there for a couple of nights.

On the second morning did the pre-dawn fish outing — very spectacular with 2-5lb rainbows and browns only feet from the edge fossicking after snails, nymphs and scud, etc in less than 6 inches of water depth showing back fins and tails. J

ust fantastic. Mak, the most experienced angler of the group, said he had never seen anything like it around the world and we believe this activity to be a Tasmania-only trout phenomenon.

We were so entranced by the fish we didn’t even take a rod with us, as an old Guinness ad said when pouring a glass of stout, ‘I like to watch!’

Well travelled angling trio, Edna, Mak and Melissa spent seven days with us in mid-April and despite a cold start at Currawong Lakes, fished mainly dries and took fish at every location we visited, especially Mak who loves his river and small stream work.

Above, Mellisa is delighted to get the first fish of the tour which was also her first ever trout on the fly, an emerger as well even in these conditions which included (in Mak’s words) ‘Alaskan solid sunshine’ … hail to us!’

After a solid tussle, Melissa finally had something to smile about – well done Meli!

Next up it was Edna’s turn, again a lovely rainbow on the dry, which she very gently returned to fight another day.

Finally after giving the girls a start, Mak breaks his duck with a solid rainbow of his own.

Then it was off to a selection of rivers and streams, all quiet, secluded and with a healthy head of wild Tasmanian trout.

Not every fish went back, all were very keen to try their own freshly caught wild brown trout, simple grilled whole with fresh home-made bread – the favourite Red Tag way.

The sights you see when the (deer) season is over. These couple of very likely lads spent a few minutes walking straight towards us without a care in the world … think they knew they were safe, besides it is very hard to hook and land a wild buck on a #3wt with a #14 emerger!

Mak reckons they were the best wild deer he has seen outside of his old hunting grounds back home many a year ago.

Back on the river Mak sets on another nice wild brown using a grasshopper pattern and then gets onto a really good fish, while the girls enjoyed some time out.

Then Edna brings her last river fish of the trip to hand on a delightful tour.

April is our last month on the rivers in Tasmania, but the dry fly is still working fine as Ian shows only to well with another fine stream specimen to hand.

Early in the day and he is onto a nice wild brown on the emerger.

Having had a good single day with us last season, Mike decided to put a five-dayer together and try some Tassie river and stream variety this time, and he wasn’t disappointed.

With around 30 fish to hand and twice as many to the fly he had plenty of action on all days.

Our photograph above, shows Mike starting out early day 1 and soon has a very healthy wild brown to hand on the dry fly, below.

Whether in runs, top photograph, shallow glides, or deep quiet pools, below, Mike had success. From emergers to dunns to grasshoppers — all took their share of fish.

Over the last couple of seasons, Trevor has become a Red Tag regular, twice a season, on-e in mid spring and again in Autumn, single day each time.

This time Trevor opted for some shallow margin lakeshore stalking, hopefully on the dry, and Currawong Lakes didn’t disappoint.

We kitted him out with a Pro Angler Stalker Master series #5wt, which is a 9′ long 4 pc and rated medium-fast so it has a little forgiveness built in.

Here Trevor demonstrates the smooth bend on the #5wt which resulted in this lovely conditioned rainbow trout to hand.

But, I think his most enjoyable fish of the day was stalking, successfully presenting the emerger to and then releasing this lovely brown.

Earlier in the year Gavin — Mr. Pro Angler — to the uninitiated, sent me one of the new Aire series 6′6″ #2wt 4-piece ultrafast rods to try and it is a beauty.

A number of clients, and myself, have successfully tried it out and it loads fast, handles the light line as it should, shoots line effortlessly and delivers a dry with precision.

That is just the presentation stage, and it has landed up to 1kg+ wild browns in tight conditions and it does it as well as any lightweight rod I have tried.

The short length is very handy down here on Tasmania’s small, clear and delicate streams and rivers where overhead trees form dappled canopies and those fat wild brown trout love to lurk!