I travelled a few hours south to have a day or 2 on the Waiau with my good friend Guy. We got to the river with great expectations because it can fish very well late in the season. Guy was into one almost straight away while I was rigging up. He lost that fish. We struggled from then on. Guy hooked 3 or 4 and landed one, I hooked 2 and landed one. That was our tally of events for the day. We tried a range of methods from dry and nymph combo’s to swinging nymphs to swinging streamers. The next day the rain hammered down and neither one of us were keen on going out again.
This weekend has some great prospects! Two friends of mine will be over to fish so it may be time to take on the winter rainbows at the river mouths again. I hope the weather is good. The forecast for the next few days is for snow to low levels with extreme cold and wind-chill.
Tight lines all.. Ronan..
This week on SLTV, “Tasmanian Western Lakes” part 2.. Fish, 4x4ing, frozen tents, wisdom and wilderness!
Well bent in my only fish of the day!
The Waiau..
Guy and I had one each.. Mine took a streamer fished on an intermediate line, Guy’s took a deep nymph.
One for my F&F expert to identify! Keep an eye on the comments for details on this fungus!!
Conditions were pretty good but it seemed that there were very few fish about..
Last weekend I fished Lake Dunstan. The top end of the lake has not fished consistently well this year but last weekend was pretty good. The browns are no longer on the flats, at least not in large numbers but some rainbows have taken their place. This makes sense because browns spawn first and I expect they’re now up river. The rainbows were present in high enough numbers to deliver decent fishing. I used a clear intermediate line with a long 10lb tippet and a wolley bugger. As I drifted off the shallow into the the deeper water I counted the line down a bit. This worked but most were in pretty shallow water. I hooked about the same number of fish each day, on Saturday I landed 6 and on Sunday just one. Three were around 5lbs which were the biggest I’ve had off the lake this season. All but one were rainbows. This is the first time this season that I’ve found rainbows in reasonable numbers. This does not surprise me though, I spent most of my time fishing the shallows which is brown trout territory. To target rainbows on Dunstan one usually needs to fish the deeper water with sinking lines.
This weekend I’ll be deep sea fishing with the lads from work. I’ll bring the fly-rod so I hope an opportunity to use it presents itself!
This week on SLTV, “Tasmanian Western Lakes part 1” Paul and I take on a serious 4×4 mission into the Tasmanian Western Lakes. We get stuck before we start but Paul solves the problem while trying not to get stuck in the mud himself! John’s TCR bites the dust, You will hear some fantastic music from the Spa Pikers and most importantly witness some excellent fishing in a truly wild and beautiful (and sometimes cold!) place. This 2 part show is one of my favourites!
The browns have left the flats and the rainbows have moved in.
2 days on the lake like this one..
I have hardly seen a rainbow on the lake all season. The fishing out there for them now is ok.
I had 3 in the 5lb bracket over the weekend.
It cooled down quickly as the sun went down..
Lots of swans on the water.. A jet boat tearing down the river roused them up!
Flat calm for much of the weekend but virtually nothing rising.
A solid hen..
Heading in on Sunday just before the sun dropped over the mountain…
I found myself feeling pissed off at work today. When I thought about exactly why I was feeling that way the answer didn’t make me feel much better. A very good friend of mine in Ireland, Colin Folan, sent me a link to a “Prime Time” episode on RTE covering both sides of the Aran Islands fish farm debate. I’m totally anti fish farming using the methods adopted by the Irish salmon farming industry. I witnessed the decimation of sea-trout populations, mainly through my father’s eyes when I was a child. This collapse coincided with the first farms and within a few years they were all but gone (1271 sea-trout down to 21 in one year on the Lough Inagh Fishery and down to 14 the next). Salmon farms have continued to plague wild salmon and seatrout populations ever since through pollution, disease and huge infestations of sea-lice feeding on farmed salmon but easily latching onto wild salmonids as they pass by. The program on RTE highlighted the fact that now B.I.M ( Bord Iascaigh Mhara, Sea Fisheries Board in English) are behind a proposal to build Europe’s largest salmon farm just off the west coast of Ireland beside the beautiful Aran Islands. If this goes ahead when will it stop? Will the entire west coast be dotted with ugly, polluting cages? Why can’t we learn from our own mistakes or B.C’s or Scotland’s or Norway’s? IFI (Inland Fisheries Ireland) are opposed to the farms due to the threat that farms pose to wild fish and angling tourism. BIM picked a great time to sneak in with their proposal. Ireland needs jobs and the farm could employ lots but at what cost? If the wild fish populations are further reduced on Ireland’s west coast huge numbers of jobs will be lost in angling tourism. If money was put into promotion of angling tourism, preservation of habitat and re-population of wild fish stocks, jobs would be created both in the short and long term And we would have wild fish running our rivers for ever more. One thing that really bothers me in all of this is the fact the entire debate seems to revolve around money and jobs. The welfare of wild salmon and sea-trout for the salmon and sea-trout’s sake has taken a back seat. If you have ever stood beside a river watching wild salmon and trout run up and over a fall you will know what an amazing and utterly captivating sight and experience it is, If you have not and this farm goes ahead you may never witness this on Ireland’s west coast nor will your children. This brings a tear to my eye. The farm has not been given the green light yet so there is still hope. Maybe we will keep this wild fish resource and not give it up like we did our sea fishing rights and our oil.
Below is a link to the episode, Start 17 minutes in.
By the way, The BIM spokesman on the show made reference to the fact that wild salmon and sea-lice have coexisted for millions of years, (which is true in the wild), but he neglected to mention what happens when you pack a million salmon into a little cage. The lice will find it and their population will explode due the amount of available food. Also what happens in the open ocean cannot be accurately compared to the confines of a cage. I could see the No Salmon Farms At Sea spokesman chomping at the bit to retort but he never got a chance! And to Richard from the IFA, “Does it take 3kgs of wild fish to produce 1kg of farmed salmon?” he was asked, “No” he said, “it takes 600gs of protein / fish meal to produce a kg of farmed salmon” Well my question to him is, how many kgs of wild fish does it take to produce 600gs of fish meal?? Dam evasive politics.
