I recently spent a week fly fishing in Tasmania with members of the Sydney Fly Rodders club. I discovered Tasmania offers world class trout fishing and I will certainly go back again. As a relative novice to fly fishing for brown trout in streams, I hired a guide for my first day's fishing. It was... Continue Reading →
Never trust anyone who tells you catching a whiting on fly is easy. You'll know every other fishing story they spin is a complete fabrication, or monumental exaggeration at best. Whiting are a tough fish to catch - particularly on surface flies. The proverbial fish of a thousand casts. I'm addicted to it because of... Continue Reading →
Over the Christmas break I had the opportunity to canoe fish from the saltwater mouths of rivers for bream and whiting all the way up to the fresh for bass. At this time of year the water is warm, cicadas are chirping and fish are looking up. Perfect conditions for surface fly action! In this... Continue Reading →
A recent canoe trip up a remote Australian river chasing bass on fly produced the goods. Catching these iconic Aussie battlers on fly in beautiful country is food for the soul. Here's a video that captures the scenery with plenty of surface strikes. Enjoy and please subscribe to my Youtube channel if you like what... Continue Reading →
Exploring the Hawkesbury River by canoe gives you access to remote stretches of water full of wildlife. Tidal flows in the upper reaches are extreme which made progress challenging in parts but well worth it! Hope you enjoy the video. https://youtu.be/fLeZJo9cXJM
Fishing is a great leveler. It humbles the investment banker just as easily as the construction worker. It sure has humbled me. Yet rather than coming home with my tail between my legs after a fishless day, I return with a spring in my step. It’s a conundrum I’ve been puzzling over for a while... Continue Reading →
In my neck of the woods, late October signals the start of the religious season for whiting. It is when they start looking up to the heavens, pondering the eternal questions of life. Whether they find salvation is anyone’s guess. All I know for sure is with their eyes upturned, they begin to notice my... Continue Reading →
Bream are a challenging fly fishing target, particularly when you first start chasing them, but with perseverance you’ll discover how rewarding a sportsfish they can be. I began chasing bream with a six weight a year and a half ago. Mostly from my canoe in the coastal lakes and estuaries along the east coast of... Continue Reading →
All anglers have a home water. A special place full of fishing memories. A place where the water and the fish and the wildlife are familiar to them. A place where they feel at home. My home water is Lake Macquarie. Lake Macquarie is big – really big. Big enough to be the largest saltwater... Continue Reading →
The most memorable fish are often the ones you had no intention of catching. To prepare for a couple of days fly fishing on the NSW Central Coast, I took great pleasure in tying a selection of flies for bream fishing. From small shrimp imitations to prawns, tied in olives and browns, with black eyes... Continue Reading →
Narrabeen Lake (also known as Narrabeen Lagoon) is a coastal lagoon located on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. The lake has a reasonable population of bream, flathead, whiting and mullet. It also produces healthy number of donuts – for me anyway, when I have a fly rod in my hand. So it was with an element of... Continue Reading →
You can tell when an angler hooks a decent rock blackfish. Their rod bends double and they begin a strange sort of dance routine on the ocean rocks - there's a little bit of tap, lots of leg bending, a few side shuffles and a touch of arm twirling. One thing's for sure, all of... Continue Reading →
Port Stephens, less than three hours north of Sydney, is a rewarding spot for fly fishermen happy to wade the flats and fish breakwalls during the cooler months. Catching my first luderick on fly was a priority for this trip. They're a favourite of mine and I've spent 30 happy years pursuing them from the... Continue Reading →
Every angler remembers their first piscatorial kiss. How with trembling hands they reeled in, far too quickly, and with none of the showmanship they’ve since developed, but somehow managed to yank that fish onto the bank without the slightest idea of what to do next. That was their first, the popping of their piscatorial cherry,... Continue Reading →
Time loses you in the wilderness. Time as we know it, at least. The time that fragments your day into a series of frantic tasks – children, employment, housework, admin, technology, set your alarm and do it again tomorrow. But not in the wild. Out here, you swap your watch for nature’s timeless timepiece, no... Continue Reading →
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