Robert and Peter (regular Father & Son ‘red taggers) get good nymphing results.

Robert hooks up a nice rainbow

Peter controls a very good rainbow on his cane rod

Both caught on the unweighted nymph in tough conditions.

Mitsutoshi, from Japan, is off to a rewarding start stalking some plump young wild browns in small waters.

It can be tight going at times, but then that is the fun in fishing small waters.

He covered three rivers in three days and to have success on each from his first visit to Tasmania was a top effort.

And sometimes just getting your fish catching fly back from difficult situations is reward in itself.

More fun on day three river.

Tom, from Washington, DC, came back again (for the second time in less than a year) to do battle with Tasmania’s trout and picked up this nice rainbow in tight conditions.

Being very cramped at times this little stream was ideal for the #2wt. It was the first time Tom had fished so light.

This was followed up by a number of wild browns as in this action.

Very pleased to have outwitted this one with some tight roll-casting presentation and neat rod control to bring it to hand.

Graeme, father on the right, and sons, from left, Nick, Chris and James had a great two day introductory fly fishing adventure.

Unbeknown to Graeme the boys had put together a combined fathers day/birthday gift for him — he had no idea what was in store ’till he met the guide at the Hobart airport arrivals.

Although it is unusual for Red Tag to take a group of four, as a family this turned out to be a most enjoyable experience for not only the clients but also for myself.

All were beginners and each sighted fish to cast to, had fish on and both Nick and James got fish to hand.

James got more than a taste of success on day one. This top conditioned wild brown was a delicious entree for dinner that night.

His first ever trout, taken on the darchutek brown para emerger, sighted, stalked and caught in an afternoon mayfly hatch. Doesn’t get much better than that!

Next morning, at Currawong Lakes, Nick was into this fish — a 3lb+ rainbow, took him darn near to the backing three times and gave him the top fish for the trip.

The ‘black spinner’ mayfly was out and about by mid-October.

The tough thing for these fellows is consistency of weather in spring. Warm afternoons and light winds and the love life.

A cold shower or two and the hatch stops or they get blown off the surface too quickly for the fish.

However, it always delights the dry fly enthusiast to see them out in numbers as Andrew discovered with this delightful wild brown picked up on the mayfly emerger.

Kyle enjoyed this 23″ wild brown trout while recently fly fishing a lowlands high flow stream in central Tasmania. It was the best brown Kyle has landed to date.

Although hoping for an early hatch to bring the fish up, Kyle had to settle for picking this guy up in the shallow backwaters on a wet. Gave the #4wt a bit of a work out.

Good flow in the river, but not in flood levels would indicate that we will have an early mayfly hatch this year.

Excellent wading conditions for such an early period in the season.

Both these river shots were taken in mid-September (early spring), which would indicate an early hatch this season and early October to mid December could be one of our best dry fly periods for some seasons.

That is saying something since last year was such a consistent and quality fish one.

Already many nymphs are in the waters and with a few days of upper teens (16-19°C) afternoon temperatures between now and the end of September, look out.

Two other positive signs are early and active swallows over the water and the ‘old-timers’ down here say early wattle blossom means warm spring and dry summer — made for early mayfly hatches.

At this stage, some top October and November slots are still open on our books — check out the calendar and don’t miss out.

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 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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