Lake Hamilton Fyans Club Trip

Having never fished Lake Hamilton before, I was getting rather excited about prospects of fishing new water in Victoria. I did my homework and googled any useful bit of information I could find about this rarely visited water for most Melbourne based fly fishers. The phone rang about 10 pm the night before the trip, it was Glen from the fishing club: "Alex, how do you feel about going to Fyans instead?" he asked. Hmm... with the number of good reports from this once renown Victorian trout fishery the answer was easy... Hamilton would have to wait for another day.

We set off in the direction of Grampians after business hours on Friday. Battling the Westgate Freeway traffic got us thinking ahead of the weekend to come, catching a trophy trout seemed an easier proposition at the time. We arrived at Lake Fyans Holiday Park after dark, and the dropping temperature had us quickly on the job of setting up Glen's camper trailer. I was looking forward to a warm cup of coffee once it was all set up, but the little bit of sweat I worked up had me reaching for a beer instead (any excuse will do!). Daryl and John soon joined us with fresh reports from their first session. One rainbow and a missed take, an encouraging outcome for a short first session. I toyed with the idea of a night session, but a good fishing DVD and a couple more beers quickly put that idea to rest.

In the morning we eased ourselves into the weekend, quite a change from a busy week in Melbourne. We didn't start fishing till mid morning, once the fog had lifted and the day developed into a beautiful blue skied winter day. Glen and I fished from our float tubes, while Daryl and John used John's port-a-bote. The fishing was a bit slow, with not many signs of fish, but the option to cover likely looking water from the float tubes and knowing that the next take could be a good one kept us motivated. I came across a spot that looked like it just had to hold fish. The first cast was a foot too long, the fly landing in the reeds and hooking up, instead of just in front. This is when you wish you turned to more of Daryl's casting practice classes. The next cast was just where I wanted it, right in front of the reeds. After waiting for the fly to sink, I started my figure of eight retrieve. About a meter from the reeds my weighted Mrs. Simpson was hit hard. It was my first solid fish from the float tube so I made the most of it and let the fish go for its runs and jumps. Soon enough I netted a silver rainbow of about a pound and a half, not a trophy, but it definitely put a smile on my face.

After not being able to reach me on my mobile, Glen made his way towards me to check how I was going. He got three rainbows up to 10 inches and was having some fun following a school of similar sized fish that were holding up near the surface. While we were chatting and contemplating what time to go for lunch I got another hit. This time it was a darker and a slightly bigger rainbow. I was lucky enough to have Glen in close proximity to capture it all on his camera...

The weekend continued to be a memorable one, with great weather, good company and fishing making it all worthwhile. Even though none of us got a real trophy the fishing was good enough to entice me for a return trip to one of the favourite lakes that has been overlooked in recent years due to the drought and poor management. In fact, I have my cabin booked for a return trip in two weeks time. Till then...

Bream on Fly, Anglesea River

Fly fishing for bream on Anglesea River, using bread flies.

Queen's birthday long weekend

This year Andrew and I decided to mark the end of trout fishing season by fishing one of our favourite rivers in the Snowy Mountains region, the Eucumbene River. The idea was fuelled by some excellent reports of monster browns being caught in the area and with the recent rains a good chance of finding some early spawning rainbows. Andrew's dad, Ian, liked our plans too and decided to join us for this trip. Ian and I left Melbourne early on Friday morning, and found ourselves fishing the Eucumbene by 3 pm. The early signs were a little discouraging, snow covered banks made for beautiful scenery, but made the going slightly uncomfortable to say the least. Our first session resulted in one tiny trout and frozen fingers and toes.

The following morning things didn't look like improving much. Our best efforts seemed to be rewarded with fish just big enough to take our flies. Around lunch time I was ready to throw in the towel, but then we saw another fisherman pick up a nice rainbow from the water we had covered only 15 minutes earlier. Ok, the fish were there, it was time to think about what we were doing wrong and start catching some fish. The next bit of water I came across was a deep narrow gutter, almost not worth fishing with regular nymphs. I dug into my fly box and pulled out the biggest, heaviest fly (bomb) I had from a Tongariro trip a few years back. Casting it on a 6 wt rod was close to impossible, tight loops were swapped with roll casts and all forms of flicking and lobbing necessary to get the fly into the water. My first flick resulted in a solid 1.5 pound brown. Few flicks later a 2.5 pound spawning rainbow, followed by a PB of three fish in three casts, all fresh run rainbows of about 2 pounds. Andrew and his dad enjoyed similar kind of success, with his dad, as usual, catching a few more than us. Our good form continued on the lake as well, where the night before we couldn't tempt a single take, this night we all managed to land a couple of fat rainbows each. It was certainly starting to look like a fishing trip now.


On Sunday morning, armed with the knowledge from the day before, we marched to our favourite spots and continued from where we had left off. I caught up with Andrew mid morning and found out that he was doing quite well. He had already landed 6 good fish. I too was having a great time and was stuck in battle with my number twelve. What followed was border line ridiculous. It seemed like I was hooking up on every cast. By lunch time I had landed about 25 fish. Prolonged fights provided by the freshly run rainbows and having to dash 100 m downstream to land each fish on a gravel beach seemed to be the only limit on how many I could catch. That day we totalled over 50 fish. To quote one of my favourite lines from Hustle and Fish, it was one of those truly epic days that you have every now and then.


On Monday it was time to go home, but not before one more short session on the river. We could only afford two hours fishing, but it was enough. In that time we caught over 20 fish between the three of us with Ian landing 11 and hooking a better than average rainbow on the very last cast of the trip. Like I said earlier, it was truly epic. Oh yeah, I also lost a lens out of my Mako sunglasses and the drag on my Lamson ULA reel gave up the ghost. Somehow this didn't seem to bother me one bit...

DIY Fishing Spots

There is saying along the lines that things are always more satisfying when you do it yourself. As I discovered on the weekend, that rings true to finding new fishing spots too. While going over the many possibilities to fish over the Easter weekend, knowing that all of them would be overrun by campers, I noticed a road to a river I've wanted to fish for a while, but never knew exactly where to access it from. My decision was made. Even though the drive should have taken only 2 hours, it took me well over 3 to find a good walk in spot to the river. Once I did, I was rewarded with at least a couple of k's of river full of fish and free of other fisherman. The trout were very keen to take the dry which made it for an even better day. The only hindrance on the day, was being unable to walk out of the river to the road and having to traverse my way downstream to the exit point (walking downstream always seems to be a lot more slippery).

This already great day was made even better when I stopped on one of my favourite streams which I haven't fished since the 2009 February bush fires. The stream still seemed to be showing the effects of the fires and even though I decided I wouldn't fish it properly I thought I'd give the run above the road bridge a quick "once over". This resulted in a fatty little brown taking a dry on the first cast. What a day!

NZ South Island, the trip that almost wasn't

With one hour to go at work I excitedly rang Julia to go over the last few items for tomorrow's trip. It was Wednesday afternoon and we were flying to New Zealand the next day. Jokingly I remarked on how long it took me to find my passport and how close I was to calling her to cancel the trip. At this point Julia realised that she still hasn't packed her passport. What followed was total shock and disbelief. The realisation that her passport had expired a month ago hit hard. We spent the following 12 hours agonising on what would happen tomorrow and what if we couldn't get the passport renewed before our flight. Well, we shouldn't have. Even more unbelievably the Australian Passport Office had her passport ready in only 4 hours.

The first night of our trip we spent in Christchurch. Having arrived there on a school night we were surprised by the number of drunken louts on the city streets. These scenes made Melbourne's King St on a Saturday night look like a well behaved quire boy. They say things usually look better in the morning, I wish I could say that for Christchurch. I guess you got the picture, we were not impressed by Christchurch, but thankfully from then on everything was better, much better.

The next two nights we we stayed in Franz Josef, staying at YHA. This reminded us both of our younger days, except that this was possibly the nicest hostel I've ever seen. Here, we did a full day guided glacier walk which was definitely the highlight of our trip and provided some awesome photos.

From Franz Josef we made the long drive south to Te Anau. The drive was kept interesting by some great scenery and an unexpected stop at Stu's Fly Shop. I bought a "Fish Before You Die" t-shirt here, which I refused to take off for the remainder of our trip.
Unfortunately NZ's infamous westerly winds played havoc not only with my fishing plans, but also with other activities on our trip. Our sea kayaking tour of Milford Sound was canceled due to the weather, but we still got to experience the Sound in all it's glory from a small tour cruise ship. The usually boring tour guide commentary was kept interesting with the skipper's fishing stories.

From Te Anau we drove to the final destination of our trip, Lake Tekapo. The scenery around Lake Tekapo is simply magnificent, and what made it even more special was that we could enjoy the scenery from every room of our apartment. I finally caught my first South Island trout at Tekapo, it was no monster, but a tick on the to do list nonetheless.

As is always the case the trip came to an end much earlier than we wanted it to. For both Julia and I it was the most enjoyable trip and we are already planning our next SI visit (although, might land at Wellington next time).

Fishing Update

Admittedly I have been a bit slack in maintaining my fishing records in the last couple of months. This is not due to a lack of fishing reports, but only to a bit of laziness on my behalf. Here are some events that might or might not have happened...

1. NSFFC Trip to Lake Eucumbene, Australia Day 2010

Fishing wise this was a tough trip with not many fish caught. After putting in a lot of hours on the lake I was rewarded with a couple of "football" rainbows. Thankfully river fishing was much easier. Fishing new waters on the Bidgee was awesome fun with regular takes on hopper patterns and numerous fish spotted. The highlight of the trip was seeing Dicko hook and land his PB trout, a 5 pound brown. It was a beautifully coloured fish, great work mate!


2. NSFFC Trip to Timberlake, Valentine's Day 2010???

Fishing on Valentine's day, yeah I am one lucky man. Thanks babe.

This was my first time targeting natives and a real opportunity for an encounter with the monster of the Australian freshwater fish species. Over the weekend I met many a new faces and learned as much as I could about fly fishing for natives. My efforts were rewarded with a small cod that nailed a whistler. This little fella was never going to break any records for its size, but being my first cod on a fly it brought out a huge smile on my face. Mission accomplished, new specie on a fly!


This must have been its momma , maybe next time...

Rubicon, First Fish for 2010

Past weekend saw me hit some of the waters close to home with Mark, aka Dicko, from the fishing club. Our plan was to fish Goulburn River, unfortunately it was still running dirty from the rains we received on New Year's Eve. To my surprise Eildon Pondage was no different. This left us with only one option, Lake Eildon. We found some nice looking water where we both quickly picked up a couple of redfins, but we quickly grew bored of this, we needed some trout. We decided to check in at the Goulburn Valley Fly Fishing Centre. On Antony's advice, we hit the Rubi. What a great advice it was, the river was the only fishable running water we saw in the area for the whole day. In a two hour session we both hooked into some 30 cm plus trout and landed our first Mr Speckles for the New Year. Oh yeah, my first fish on the x-mas pressie too, the Waterworks Velocity, niceee...

Lake Eildon Camping Trip

After years of neglect it was time to pull out the old family tent from under the house and put it to some good use. The first camping trip for Julia and me together seemed to be just the occasion for this. With the car loaded to the roof we set out on our mini adventure to Eildon National Park. As we did not have to be at the camp site till midday we took the longer route through Yea, via the historic Cheviot tunnel. A little detour definitely worth taking.

Lake Eildon looked picture prefect as always. It's famous "serenity" was somewhat diminished by the number of cars and people present. This was the biggest number of cars I've ever seen on a boat ramp. A camera with a wide lens was needed to truly capture this, as the cars continue on either side of the above photo.

Once put up, the tent looked surprisingly good for it's age. It's big size meant camping in style, or "glamping" (glamour camping) as Julia called it. In fact the tent did so well that I decided to scrap my plans of selling it.

Both Julia and I enjoyed this short camping excursion and have decided to do few more of these in the near future.