March 2005
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Picture #4
Picture #5
Picture #6
Picture #7
Picture #8
Wednesday
Tuesday the 8th of March was “International Women’s Day” and that’s mighty fine, but Wednesday the 9th was “Long Johns Day” if only in the Highlands of Tasmania.
A nippy SSW was blowing Antarctic temperatures at 20knots and delivered some punch deep into the underwear. You’d better rug up or your icicles will fall off together with the rest of the brass monkey. I arrived at lunchtime at Arthur’s shore already delayed by a day due to the persistent wind and set up the motorhome and parked the boat. Picture #1. Five days of fishing ahead and maybe the last for the season. The 4-day weather forecast was good.
An hour or so later I ploughed across the white horses into a wind-sheltered bay and laid the line onto the water near some dead trees. Unlike ‘Dirty Harry’ I didn’t feel lucky this Wednesday. Somehow my intuition told me that fish will be hard to come by, when just out of casting range, a trout broke the surface with a loud splash. I drifted closer, cast the line out and tried to position myself even closer with the aid of the cyclops.
The cyclops was still in need of repair, the auto-mode would not work. I had received and exchanged a replacement circuit board that Wayne had sent me and this was the first test.
I pressed the switch to close the distance to the fish, but to my surprise the boat went in the opposite direction. Scheisse, something else gone wrong? I turned the cyclops 180 degree, and ever so slowly the boats direction reversed. Preoccupied with this new problem, I took my eye off the fly when the fish struck.
One hand on the foot peddle - now a hand peddle - and one on the rod (where else), I managed to get him clear of the sunken trees and finally into the net.
A nice 2lb fish packed with gum beetles. Notwithstanding my early success my pessimistic mood persisted and in spite of searching here or there for 3 hours no fish were to be seen, or heard for that matter.
It was time for an early dinner and getting the motor home ready for the night. Around 18:00 hrs with the SSWestly still blowing, it was a matter of ‘across the white horses once more dear friends’. A nice 2lbder fell to the beetle imitation and just on dark three nice fish took a wet fly with zest. Well that was 4 for the half-day, but I still felt uneasy about a good fishing tally in the next few days.
Thursday
Thursday Donger was to come up for the day. I’ll see you at about 10:00 hrs he said. When the alarm rang at 04:30hrs I could hear the waves pounding into the rocky shore and I decided to ‘sleep in’ until 06:00hr. At 07:00 I waded to the boat to evaluate if I should go out for a couple of hours before Donger arrived but when I turned around he was standing at the shore, 3hrs ahead of schedule and keen as mustard. The SSW had lost its punch a bit but the waves were just below ‘white horse status’. We decided to cut across the open water and fish the bay that I had fished the night before.
Two hours went buy without seeing, hearing or touching a fish, despite our valiant efforts. Were the Fish sleeping in today as well or what?
By 10:00 hrs the wind had dropped further and even the open water started to flatten out. The easterly shoreline had now become a very attractive proposition and we wasted no time in cutting across to see if it would be more productive. On the way we stopped and fished a tightly defined wind lane (picture #2) but to no avail. It seemed that there was more foam than food in the wind lane and either the fish knew that or they must have been exhausted from the International Women’s Day Convention.
Disheartened we returned to the motor home for some ‘chow’ and took time out to disassemble cyclops and reverse the plus and minus wires from the main circuit board to the motor to change rotational direction, thus increasing propulsion thrust by a factor of ten.
We were now between some major weather systems, resulting in a ‘glass-out’ (a novel phrase I heard first in Pt Douglas some years ago which denotes that the water is like a sheet of glass – flat, just like the earth).
The air temperature had increased from nippy to pleasant to ‘don’t need Long Johns warm’, time for the gum beetles to practice crashlanding again – a one-way ticket guaranteed.
We noticed a fish rising close to shore and almost within casting distance from the ‘parked’ boat. (picture #3).
We pushed off and in no time lines were swishing across the water. Now there was another rise and another one and yet another one. All hell broke loose as fish were on the move and we could Polaroid to them as they darted up from nowhere to pick up their ‘chow’. It was a race between us getting a fish before they’re cramming in more beetles than they can chew and loose their appetite, let’s face it even trout can only eat so many dozens.
Standing on the ‘flight deck’ with Polaroids we could clearly see that the fish would surface mouth first (wait for it), pick up a beetle and dart back into the green depths. By the time you saw the fish, it is too late to cast, because he is on his way back down again, next time he comes up it will be nowhere near your fly – this style of fishing is described as DIFFICULT.
I had experienced on previous occasions that fish glide up to the surface (see) a bit like a submarine when it surfaces, coning tower, eg. Dorsal fin first, then swim along the surface like a ‘shark’ pick several beetles up before descending again by gliding away rather than diving down steep. If you’re observant, quick and ready, you have just enough time to lay a fly just a meter ahead of them, give it a tiny tweak and thus stimulate a take.
Some people refer to this as ‘induce a take’. It sounds so much more professional but it is a lot of bovine excrement if you ask me. This feeding method/behaviour is apparently pigeonholed as ‘sharking’, a phrase I was not familiar with until Donger enlightened me – Donger reads a lot! Well you learn something new every day. So whata ye know, we have trout in Tasmania that do ‘sharking’.
Back to the task in hand, I was lucky to strike the first blow and got a nice 2lb brown, which was, upon inspection, already chockers with gum beetles – time was of the essence.
I just finished cleaning my fish, when Donger went into ‘French mode’ - again. His fish took him way out and I remember him shouting “look at my backing… he’s taken me out to the backing”. The fish, going like a steam locomotive, by now had taken 50m line and backing off him and headed for the trees, by now only meters away from it and probably his salvation. Donger requested motor assistance, but before I could reach for cyclopses ON - switch, the fish had run out of steam, if you believe that this was a steam-powered fish.
Winding and pumping and pumping and winding Donger finally got his backing back onto the reel and got the first glimpse of his quarry. A nice fish, but by no means anywhere near a trophy fish, so where did all this power come from, you guessed it – foul hooked! By the time the fish was close to the net we could clearly see that the fish had managed to hook himself right at the vent. Well how would by feel if you had a hook right up your arsenal at a dinner party? No wonder he was able to take Donger to the backing.
Etiquette demands that a foul hooked fish has to be returned to the water but we figured that the fish just did not know etiquette and now in the deep freezer they are so hard to tell apart, we don’t know which fish should be returned.
We fished on with great enthusiasm but the number of beetles’ crashlanding on the water grew exponentially with time and I remember reaching into the water and picking up a ‘clump’ of 7 gum beetles trying to climb on top of each other as they floated along. Once on board, they dispersed in all directions and within a few minutes had taken off again, only to crash-land back where they came from and to be what they were before – fish tucker. The newly formed Tasmanian Inland Fisheries Inspector Licensing Squad (TIF-ILS) came to inspect us for roadworthiness – just kidding Picture #4 (I say just kidding in case they surround my house and threaten to deport me to Woomera – just kidding – I’m saying just kidding…)
Within an hour the fish could eat no more or so it seemed and stopped feeding. Maybe it was the slight northerly breeze which had developed, but whatever the reason, it was a terrific and exiting afternoons fishing, demanding quick action, at times accurate and long casting, and we hadn’t moved more than a 100 m in an hour.
The northerly breeze firmed up, forecasting or confirming that a new weather system was to take over with predominant northerly wind. In the next 4hrs we did not see or take another fish and the prognosis until dusk was not good. Donger decided to leave as he had a 2 hr drive home, and TV waits for no man or woman. Well consider this we fished for 10 hrs, delivered probably 2000 casts each and caught one fish each. Not the success story one would write home about.
Donger left, but I was not done yet. After dinner I went back out again and considered that my ‘prime time’ was yet to come.
Still fishing the beetle imitation, I was hoping to pick up a few stragglers needing ‘topping up’ with there dietary requirements. Indeed four fish ‘rose to the occasion’ but did not ‘sit down for dinner’. Bad table manners if you ask me.
I changed to the small wet I caught 3 fish on last night, but an hour later I had to concede that tonight was just not last night, whatever the reason. Fish can be so unpredictable. It got dark, very dark as in pitch dark. Close by an ‘ironmonger’ trawled up and down with his navigation lights ablaze. I stowed my rod away and decided that tomorrow was another day. Still, it was a beautiful calm night, so why did that fish just rise 3 m from my boat? I unrolled the line and set the two dries onto the water. It took him only 10seconds to find one of them and one was all I needed. It was a good fish and in the pitch dark I was unable to see him and played it extra ‘cool’ before putting the net under him or where I thought he was. He weighed the best part of 3lb including enough gum beetles to fill the proverbial bucket. An unexpected bonus but still only the second fish in 14 hrs fishing and yes tomorrow was another day – same shit?
Friday
Friday morning came and the first big decision of the day was: do I drink the coffee or take it intravenously? It was a tough decision; most of my nerves voted for intravenous, but in the end the oral method was the well-proven and less risky alternative and all things considered, made more sense.
With thermal cup in one hand and the torch in the other, I proceeded to the ‘one birth marina’.
Fog rolled onto the water from the barely noticeable easterly breeze. Stars were not visible and dawn had not yet wronged the sky. At 05:09 precisely I pushed the boat out of the parking lot and switched cyclops on to pull me ever so gently into 2m of water. ‘Glass-out’ and fog go well together as I floated silently along the shore. Something was wrong with my cast, my line wouldn’t shoot. The torchlight pierced into my eyes, blinding me momentarily - Scheiss. Somehow the line had twisted and formed a loop around the rod tip.
A few casts later I checked the ‘nymph artillery’. One knot too many – Scheiss and Scheiss again!
A casting knot in the tippet between the two flies, ON comes the torch; ON go the glasses, which immediately fog up – great day in the morning, what am I doing outside the bed? After several minutes of fiddling with tweezers to open the knot I decide to pull it and break it off. The line cut into my cold wet fingers and the knot wouldn’t break, so on with the fishing. In my defence I have to say that I immediately loosen the drag and swore to play any fish softly, gently and carefully into the net. With the absence of nearby trees this would not be a problem.
There is no prize for guessing what happened next, a few casts later the fish struck. My choice of nymphs, combined with the figure eight retrieve, had worked. I walked him around the boat a couple of times, he was a ‘goodin’ and went deep into a penny weed bed, putting extra stain onto the system and as the strain increased to and past breaking point, he went from ‘goodin’ to ‘goner’ in a split second. Disappointed I checked the rig but found – a bit to my relief - that not my casting knot, but a knot higher up the leader had failed and both flies were now on a trip though the lake. Well it shows, you should practice what you preach. When I went ashore 3hrs later for breakfast I had lost the only fish, which would have made the early morning worthwhile.
The rising sun lifted the fog and showed the colours and light reflections so unique to this lake. Picture #5 #6, and the best picture cannot do justice to the panoramic view unfolding before you, and the smell, the air, the mountains and everything around you.
After breakfast it was a waiting game for breeze, warmth and the almighty Mother Nature to schedule flying lessons for gum beetles. She didn’t schedule and they didn’t fly and the fish didn’t want to know me. Worst was yet to come, my intuition from Wednesday that fishing would be tough was the understatement. Doug from a close by shack, although an ironmonger, came ashore after trawling for 3 hrs and using live mudeyes while tied to a tree for two hours had not gotten a single fish.
Just to clarify, Doug was NOT tied to a tree for two hours fishing with live mudeyes, his boat was tied to the tree with Doug inside, and he was fishing for two hours with live mudeyes. But then you knew what I meant? You’ve got to be soooooooooo careful nowadays not to imply American Terrorist Interrogation Tactics to Senior Tasmanian Coalition Partners.
So far Friday did just not pan out to be another day in the office, but a day when the toilet system backs up, the carpet gets flooded, electricity has a black-out, the telephone has a ‘grey-out and the Internet has a virus up its wipe-out. In medical terms it’s a double quadruple bypass. I have to give myself full marks for perseverance, even if I have to say it myself. But then what else are you going to do in the highlands but eat, sleep and. …fish.
Come 18:00 hrs the evening show was ready to commence. Passing Doug’s boat, he was again tied up to the (same) tree – that’s Dougy the shacky - and fishing with live mudeyes, I worked a narrow but well-defined wind lane and caught a nice hen fish, still feeding on gum beetles and ‘full of it’. The main wind direction had been northerly since Thursday afternoon and had steadily increased to 15knots or so. As the evening progressed I went back into the sheltered bay I had fished previously, but by pitch dark I had not managed to get even close to a fin, yet alone a fish. One fish in 16hrs? That’s not poor, that’s a disaster and I was not alone in coming ashore with an empty bag.
Saturday
Saturday mornings clear sky showed the Milky Way is all its glory. I could not help but to look up into the sky and observe the stars, the occasional streak of light caused by meteorites disintegrating in the upper atmosphere and the silent passing of satellites, licked by the very first sunrays even before dawn scratched the darkness of the horizon. As I ‘nymphed’ my way along the shore, my neck got stiff from looking up, this was awesome it made one feel so small, so helpless and so insignificant, fish, what fish?
The pumping engine brakes of log trucks; 10km away across the lake polluted the pureness of the morning, as they carry the old growth forest on their back to the woodchip mills. What a travesty we inflict on our “renewable” natural resources. Renewable? Yes in 100 years time, when there is nobody around to admire them and nothing left to live in them.
The fish that took my nymph that morning was either smart or lucky. My only consolation was that the leader did not break, no weak knot, the hook simply did not penetrate and the fish lived to procreate another season. At breakfast time the score was: Fish ALL: The Trout Whisperer NONE.
In hindsight, Saturday turned out to be another Friday in the office, backed up toilets, flooded carpet, I would like to spare you the rest but it got worse. Overcast, very overcast (and that can be a good thing) and heavy overcast (that can be not such a good thing). From heavy overcast you can go only to precipitation – that’s what Brendan calls it on the ABC radio report. He uses other words too like showers, downpour etc. I’m not on the ABC so I can call it what I like, pissing down like there is no tomorrow. That’s when I went back to fish some more.
Hoping that the rain would bring an end to the drought (the fish drought that is) I put on the heavy Gortex gear and kept going. It might be possible that the rain would cause an attitude change in the fish because insects were force-landing on the water. Indeed I saw two fish take advantage of the situation and started to feed on what appears to be midgets, but one fish was out of range and the other was not interested in my beetle imitation.
No there was nothing to write about for the late, late Saturday dusk event, coming home and kissing the two fisheries inspectors on the nose, and hoping Sunday would be another day.
Sunday
Sunday was another day it started harmless enough like the previous days, but quickly that northerly established itself and made life difficult. The morning session was another ‘blank out’. Despite a stroppy northerly midmorning, I fished an exposed shoreline with the cyclops moving me right or left between dead trees. The boat was sideways in a swell and behaved like a bucking bronco. I would like to have seen conventional designs perform in this slop. Several fish rose to the fly, some just ‘shadowed’ them to the boat but no fish was bold enough or willing to ‘have a go’. I drifted about 2km before I returned to where I started but this time I put the drogue out to slow me down. Using the drogue is a mixed blessing, it can be helpful in stabilising the boat and slowing you down, on the other hand, in particularly in shallow water, it gets snagged easily and you’ve got to frig around pulling it off tree stumps or rocks with the only free hand you have – the other one is holding the rod.
The first fish was most likely a ‘maiden’ fish and was put back to get ‘defrocked’ in a couple of months.
The next one was a nice 2-½ lb fish that took the imitation beetle and subsequently landed inside the boat. The next fish gave as good as he got. He took the fly and headed at a great rate of knots towards the trees and in the same direction the boat drifted. Cyclops came into his own this time. Fighting against the drift, the wind and the drogue, he had to keep us not only clear of the trees but also back into the open water just in case the fish was going to make another run. The auto pilot function was really needed now. I wasn’t going to give up nor the fish, although he had more to loose than me. He was firmly hooked into the very top of his dorsal fin and was able to fight with all his 2-½ lb. Etiquette? What etiquette? I was working too hard for etiquette to come into it. Besides I made a point in my book that fish that fight to the bitter end do seldom survive especially in a lake.
Well, even Doug admired my two fish, when I returned at ‘the parking lot’. He on the other hand “didn’t get a bloody thing, not even a touch” he said. I know only to well what that is like.
Before the sun settled in the west picture #7 (or was it East? - Just kidding) I was out again, a bit of chow and an hour kip refreshed the reflexes. The northerly still ‘stroppy’ at 15 knots plus, I went into THE calm bay I’ve been fishing whenever the wind was uncomfortable. It happened to be protected from the SSW and the Northerly and being completely covered with a weedy bottom it was a good bay to fish. If fish were to be caught, they were here.
When I laid the fourth cast down, the water exploded and I nearly cacked myself. A heart stopper of a take, he must have thought he was late for dinner. My hopes were high, the forth cast and a nice 2lb fish in the bag. I must assure you that all but one fish (the maiden fish) were 2lb or more, I weighed them all when I got home – just for my own sake.
Well for the next 2 hrs I changed from dry to wet to dry to wet. I must have made more or less 10 000 casts in the last 5 days and I was feeling the pinch. Disappointed I went back to my trailer, winched the boat up and called it a day, a long day, a good day – being alive in the Tasmanian Highlands is always a good day – but I had better days.
Tomorrow is another day.
Monday
I have to confess that Monday daybreak did not sound very encouraging. Bed was the place to be, but I am NOT a defeatist. I got up at sparrows fart or just before then, got my tracky on and ‘torched’ my way to the shore. Rough, in fact too rough for my liking. I decided – in light of the poor results I had experienced with the early morning torture - to give it a miss and climbed back to a well-deserved sleep in. By 09:00 it had calmed down to an acceptable 10knots but hey there was an end in my suffering, humiliation, shoulder, wrist and back pain. A No-show, it was a bit of an anticlimax to end of the season. I would have liked to finish off with that 5 or 6 or even 10lbder, but hey, there will be nothing to look forward to next season.
Shortly after 10.00 it was going home time.
But as we all know, when you come home it just starts all over, especially at the end of the last trip for the season. Picture #8.
If you’re into statistics here they are:
At the end of the trip I had caught 14 fish between 2lb and 2-½ lb clean.
I had fished approximately 72 hrs, that’s 5hrs per fish
And made about 10 000 casts, and more in my sleep.
That's about 700 casts per fish
I slept 1hour (or so it felt)
I wish you all tight lines
Work is for people who don’t know how to fish
If you would like to contact me for comments or contributions click here: thetroutwhisperer@bigpond.com