Fishing School

  Tarraleah, Tasmania, Australia
Friday, January 16, 2009

Ready to fish

Liz has already given the game away by saying that our trout was given to us and not skilfully caught with absolute guile by me. Maybe the drama of the vehicle affected me but I did not catch a fish all week although I cannot blame the fishing school at all...it was a wonderful affair run by a Tasmanian fishing club with their members acting as teachers, instructors, helpers and general dogs-bodies.

Casting Practice

They have been running the 5 day fly-fishing school annually for almost 20 years and the level of knowledge and skills is quite remarkable. I now know lots of things about trout and trout waters but am a little short in the capability department. However we will be in Tassie till April so I am confident that further blogs will show my progress.

Serious fishing plans

The progress on the Ford was far better and I picked it up in Hobart on Friday afternoon, drove back to Bronte Lagoon with no problem and after a relaxing weekend of practising my casting (!!) we drove it  200km to the aptly named village of Snug, for an overnight stay ready to drive onto a ferry to Bruny Island in the morning.

Bronte Lagoon

This is Liz now and I had a relaxing time in the lakes country while David was attending classes. I had an interesting walking companion(another non-fisherperson) and also a borrowed dog to walk so was happily occupied.

Campfire

The weather was mainly fine, except for single figure overnight temperatures, but we enjoyed keeping warm by sitting around a camp-fire in the evenings, in the clear highland air, looking at the stars. The Australian 'bush' certainly has an air of magic. There was also interesting wildlife around and we saw echidna, wombats, quolls, possums and wallabies.

Possum

Even the drama and hassles of the breakdown could not spoil our stay in the lakes and we will definitely return to the area either later in this trip or next time; David is already talking about doing the follow-up fly-fishing school next year so Tasmania in January may become a regular feature on our calendar? Perhaps next time he may even catch a fish?