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.
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.
One of a number of tour options we have at Red Tag Trout Tours is a short day teaching workshop close to Hobart for those tight on time (less than 30mins drive) that allows us to give beginners a go at a variety of fly techniques on still water.
Here Steve, self confessed heavy metal salty for many years, quickly gets to grip with a decent delivery, despite the ‘breeze’ in the background, and is soon laying out some nice casts on the water.
Although getting a couple to the fly, none came to hand, this time the fish had the last laugh!
However, Steve definitely has caught the ‘fly bug’ and is heading back with Dad another day to get on the streams.
Jon was our next introductory 3-day workshop ‘Tagger’ and besides getting some great fish at Currawong on day 1, he also took the first wild brown river fish of the season in the backwaters on the lowlands rivers.
This lovely brown is less than three years old and is one of the wild spawned browns in the creeks at Currawong Lakes.
Here Jon breaks the wild river fish duck for the season, a very fit brownie approx 2lbs, full of vim which took a slightly weighted Tasmania fur fly (red tag version) fished just below the surface.
Another top conditioned early season brown, lurking alongside the bank to Jon’s right.
This one picked up on a brass beadhead nymph. This section will dry up in the next few weeks, just shows that fishing the flooded backwaters can be quite productive.
This was still August, late Tassie winter!
In addition on day 3 we saw the first mayfly hatch out in a quite, sheltered back water. Trout didn’t take it, but further inspection revealed many well advanced nymphs so close to go.
Here are just two stills from an action-packed video from the Bentleigh Pro-Angler team.
Click here to view the YouTube video.
Gavin & Eddie, from Pro Angler, Bentleigh, had been ‘talking’ about coming over to film and fish in Tasmania for our wild trout, ever since Tourism Tasmania and Red Tag Trout Tours have been presenting our Pro Angler/’Tasmania’ nights for some five years or more.
Well, they finally made it earlier this year along with assistant Stuart, and Wow!
After 60 fish to hand over four days, four different waters and more than 75% return on the dry fly. They can’t stop talking about it! Three days on a wide variety of rivers, and one day at Currawong Lakes, in total probably 120+ fish to the fly, they have video show footage par excellence.
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Returning angler Vincent brought Paul down to Tassie to learn the art of the fly. Day 1 sees Vincent is very pleased to get this stalked riser at Currawong Lakes under control.
Then on day 2 Paul achieves the ultimate, sighted feeding on ‘hoppers under the bank, perfect presentation of the dry imitation, timed strike and this is the result, a top quality wild brown river trout and a grin to match.
Brothers Greg and Chris from the USA, with their families had a wonderful couple of days, overnighting at Currawong Lakes.
Both got early rainbows ‘to order’, as these were to be part of a top dinner prepared by Fiona at Currawong for the family feast that evening.
Next day Pam caught her first ever fish and on a dry fly at that. Much to her delight.
New Red Tagger Roger had his first day with us on Currawong Lakes and what a day it turned out to be — with this ‘trophy’ sized fantastic rainbow weighing in at 8+lbs.
Taken on a #14 unweighted dark brown nymph placed just in front of it as it was ‘tailing along the shore line near the taller reeds to Roger’s right, it took off with one almighty charge out towards the middle of the lake. He did well to get it to hand on a 4x tippet.
