Next month will be the start of the mayfly hatches around our rivers and lower lakes.

If you want to have a go at bringing a sucessful fly you tied yourself, in my view the Dark Brown Emerger is one of the best.

Also a great all round fly for the majority of the season

Hook: any size #14 – suitable for straight backed nymph ties
Tail: a few dark brown cock hackle fibres
Body: Dark Brown Antron or similar body material
Ribbing: fine copper wire
Post: white calf-hair (or equivalent)
Hackle: parachute tie of ginger cock feather.

This is a durable and very visible ‘in the surface’ mayfly emerger pattern that can bring up polaroided patrolling fish, deceive bubble-line lurkers and attract mayfly risers.

Also check out Tassie’s Dangerous Dozen Flies. All irresistible to Tasmania’s famed wild brown trout.

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.

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!’

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.

No just Adrian (left) and Rob (right) working a quiet corner.

After an introductory tour in September, the boys came back in late Summer to try their hand at ‘hopper time. As you can see they had their fair share of tight lines with some very nice wild browns to hand.

Above: Rob knows the fish is there somewhere and finally gets it to hand.

Meantime Adrian is demonstrating some fine high stick control on a couple of his own first up and then this lively one below.

Finally, sharing the water Rob? I thought that one rose on my side of the bend!

The February top fly fishing continued with Graham’s extended trip and I think he enjoyed the heritage setting of Somercotes almost as much as his tradition of using his Tasmanian friend, Peter McKean’s, beautifully handmade cane rod to bring a very good number of local wild trout to hand.

On day 1 he was into action, above, picking up a shadowy lurking brown sighted surface feeding under the overhanging bush.

To highlight Graham’s love of the traditional, in this shot, above, you can see his Bakelite (circa 1930s) single action fly reel and dressed (imitation) silk line.

The result of this action was this great conditioned typical Tasmanian wild brown, Graham does not have small hands and this one would have been 17″+.

Finally these balanced cane rods have a beautiful bend on them when handling our wild trout, this shot shows the complete arch from the very butt.

Ken was here a few years ago for a couple of days catching up with extended family and was determined not to miss out this time back.

Only had the one day, but as you can see he got among some nice lively Tasmanian wild brown trout.

Ken steers this one out of danger and ended up with 9 or 10 to hand for the day.