Red Tag Trout Tours has been featured in The Australian in an article by Anabel Dean
Somebody is out there waiting for your hatching nymph,” says Ray Curran, eyes riveted on the tiny pink tuft drifting on a millpond. We’re standing waist-deep in waders in Tasmania’s Macquarie River on the kind of drowsy, insect-droning day that would induce a stupor were it not for this man’s unshakeable optimism.
Curran is an experienced fly-casting instructor so there’s no doubting his tale about wild brown trout that erupt from the water, curve into the air to hang at the top of an arc for a breathtaking second, then descend as mercurial shadows in the depths. I cannot imagine how a lure less than a centimetre long, mimicking the larval stage of insects, could excite such madness, but myriad tiny bugs drift in the warm air, and Curran is pointing urgently under a bended willow.
This waterway runs through the Tasmanian northern mid-lands, clear as gin in parts, murky as a swamp in others. “Now!” Curran exclaims, pointing at circles of rippling water that look as if a shower of pebbles has landed on the surface. Flicking my thin carbonite rod behind me, then swiftly forwards, the line unfurls to rise then fall.
The fly hovers on its gossamer thread in the glare of the sun, then pings off Curran’s sunglasses, hooking his pocket with impressive precision. Snagging my guide isn’t the done thing and he’s mentioning the “c” word (“concentration”, that is) again while delicately unpicking my hook from his vest.
“Try for the midstream,” he suggests. I cast again, watching the loop of line dance in the breeze, then plop limply into a reed bed. “I’m so sorry,” I say, mortified by an appalling lack of technique. “Don’t say sorry,” replies Curran. “You’re excited and I don’t blame you.”
This infinitely patient instructor, who worked for decades with the Tasmania police search and rescue squads, has happily angled for trout for over 30 years, but surely he’s delusional, thinking I’ll hook the catch of the day.
Tasmania lures a steady stream of anglers for some of the best fly fishing in the world. They include celebrities, novelists, billionaires or heads of state who choose to benefit from a guide with insiders’ knowledge of favoured fishing spots in the network of lakes, creeks, estuaries and private fisheries across the island state.
The Macquarie River is little known (unless you’re an angler or a midland local). It flows through the historic town of Ross, reaching its confluence with the South Esk River near Longford. The stretch we meander along, on the outskirts of Ross, is only accessible for fishing to the occasional shearer, farmer, or Red Tag Trout Tour client (like Scottish comedian Billy Connolly) by permission of the owner of the sheep farm through which it flows, Jon McCure.
Today, Curran is teaching me and McCure’s teenage son, Hugo, an eager first-timer taking to the sportlike, well, a duck to water. He’s never seen the river like this before, and he’s thoroughly engrossed, with no iPhone in sight.
We wade upstream silently, seeking the delicate balance between too much and too little power in the graceful flick and whip of the cast.
Curran uses what he calls the Goldilocks approach. “It’s neither too strong nor too soft, but in the middle — it’s just right — same as porridge”.
But fly fishing isn’t just about catching fish. Curran spells out the acronym KOCPIT. “Knowledge. Observation. Concentration. Positioning. Imitation. Timing. “This is the secret to fly fishing,” he says, ticking my arm back and forth like a metronome to feel the casting rhythm. He carries boxes of flies, concoctions of feather and silk and fur, artfully constructed facsimiles of delicate nymphs designed to deceive and entice, from “emergers” like mayflies or midges poised to break through the water’s surface, to dry flies that float like insects upstream.
“Some days,” he says, pulling out a grasshopper fly, “the fish will want this. Other days, they’ll ignore everything you offer, and that’s the beauty of it.”
He demonstrates how to choose the right fly with such meticulous attention to detail that it triggers a memory of Ernest Hemingway’s hero in The Old Man and the Sea, who waited 84 days to catch his fish.
And that’s exactly the right moment to propose “Lunch?” We bask on the river bank with a Thermos of coffee and pies from the woodfired oven of nearby Ross Village Bakery (going since the 1860s). A lazy afternoon stretches on.
There a flicker of a fish, and when the wind whips the surface into a frenzy of wavelets, driving the insect life from the water, our quest ends. “You’re getting the hang of it,” soothes Curran, taking hold of my rod to trudge along the old railway line, across yellow fields dotted with sheep, towards a handsome convict-built sandstone homestead next to its own small lake.
We will stay the night here, at Old Wetmore, which dates to settlement by Europeans in 1824. We enter via a courtyard, then open the heavy timber door to find a kitchen furnished with rustic flair, a fire laid, and the long table ready for a communal dinner.
We dine on roasted venison, entertained by Curran’s anecdotes about fly-fishing addicts, including women, who have taken to the sport in droves. Enthusiasts travel the world in pursuit of their passion, but many, like us, have nothing to show for their efforts apart from the reflective experience of passing time.
Wild brown trout are cunning, and for Curran, the greater the familiarity, the deeper the mystery. The unattainability of perfection brings with it the means of mindful relaxation. And more than that, the simple imagining that in this game of chance and hope, there’s a wild trout, somewhere out there, just waiting for me.
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