Jim, and son Brantley, had a top time ‘catching up’ on their recent tour. Jim has fly fished for quite a while and was keen to see if Brantley would enjoy the experience as well.

While Jim (bringing it to hand, above) took the honours on day 1 with a nice 4lb wild brown trout at Currawong Lakes, Brantley soon picked up the importance of presentation and was top rod on the rivers both day 2 & 3.

Brantley is justifiably happy with this very nice Tassie wild brown for his first trout on the fly – dry (‘hopper pattern) at that!

He then topped that off by outfishing Dad on the second river day with fish like this one, catching them on a 2 to 1 ratio!

Finally showing a mastery of all aspects of the art, Brantley helps Dad out by netting one of Jim’s feisty browns.

Alway a bit reluctant to put strangers together for a trip, but when respective partners to Daniel (South Australian visitor) and Sean (recent Tasmanian) both picked the same day early in January as an introductory fly fishing workshop day it couldn’t have worked out better.

Not only did the guys get along fine, but each got more out of the day than they expected, with a sound introduction to casting, dry, wet and nymph fly fishing techniques and plenty of fish action.

Sean is delighted with this nice rainbow, first fish for the season on a ‘hopper pattern – just one of many to hand for the day.

We even managed to get Daniel onto the river for an hour or so at day’s end and he not only caught his first ever wild brown, but did it on the ‘hopper dry – becoming the first wild trout taken on a grasshopper this season.

Now living in West Australia, but still a keen fly fisher, Ewan was in search of some wild trout during his recent visit to Tasmania.

He Found one of many to hand over his tour in this well formed ‘bubble-line’ seen above.

A very plump wild brown trout brings a well satisfied grin to end the last trip of 2011.