Bill and Gillian practicing on some of the sheltered lawn areas we have to get started with the basics.

The workshop soon progressed through the still water fishery and onto the river/stream work for a more extended and successful second day.

After a short time learning to read the currents and drift patterns, Bill soon brings a small wild brown trout to hand.

Then it was Gillian’s turn to hook up.

Bill ended up with five to hand and Gillian three (but who’s counting), plus a number of other chances and misses, etc. A good introduction to stream fly fishing all round.

Red Tag Trout Tours now has its own stocked teaching water which allows us to do the complete workshop from lawn intro casting, to on water exercises, to still water techniques and finally wild river browns. All at the one location.

It also includes heritage accommodation and all the add ons for extended stay workshops.

Top: Alison and Tim are the first on the new water after the initial lawn session.

Tim searches the wing riffle edges to see what is hiding under the ruffled surface.

Next it was down to the river for a relaxing lunch – well it would have been relaxing but for a rising trout getting started on emerging mayflies.

“Act nonchalant”, said the guide, “we’ll lull it into a false sense of security”.

So after lunch, it was onto the river to the sighted fish, second cast and Tim does it all – dry fly (emerger) right in its feeding lane, down goes the fly, up goes the rod and just like that, Tim has his first wild brown to hand. Thumbs up all round, Tim’s very nice brown to start his fly fishing life.

Client happy, guide happy and we didn’t even have time to put the waders on!

To finish off an action-packed great day, Alison gets her first ever wild trout on an emerger.

Being from Queensland, Alastair doesn’t get much time on the small streams and lightweight gear so a couple of days was ideal to fine tune the reflexes and bring some nice wild brown trout to hand.

Above, a quiet corner early on day one searching for an elusive mayfly sipper.

This was a nice day hatch, but somewhat frustrating on hookups and takes. But still a good warmup session for day two.

This was more like it, early success next morning followed by an active day of takes and fish to hand or net.

Another good ‘net’ result.

End of October saw the first Red Tag/Pro Angler tour get underway with Phil W. and Phil O.

As you can see from the apparel, weather conditions were not that kind to us and nymphing rather than dries were the go most of the time.

We still saw Phil O. get his first rainbow on the fly.

And Phil W. was soon among them with a nice wild brown trout. Both were taken on a small bead-head nymph.

When hailing from north of Darwin and being a salty heavy metal ‘heaver’, wanting to ‘sort out his casting’ and catch a wild trout in a river somewhere, thought I was in for a bit of a challenge this day with Janzten.

No such worries, here he is laying out the best part of 40 feet of line after 15 minutes on the lawn and 10 minutes on the water. He had a natural feel for timing and loading the rod, and with a little application of ‘delicate’ power, things just clicked.

Not long after, natural hunting skills combined with new casting confidence results in a nice rainbow to hand.

Then onto the river and the first wild brown from pool one makes a nice entree for dinner.

After a number of other wild browns were released, the result was a top day, steep learning curve achieved and casting confidence acquired.