Autumn days on Great Lake

Joe Riley
As the days of Autumn shorten, and the brown trout season draws towards an end on the last weekend in April, it is good to know that those with "the affliction" can still pursue the odd trout on a hand full of lakes. Great Lake remains open year round with the exception of canal bay, which by the time you are reading this, will have closed along with all spawning creeks and canals.

Great Lake

Jim Allen

One of Tasmania's premium fisheries, and in my opinion the most under utilised, is Great Lake. I have had a shack at Haddens Bay for many years and spend every summer there. So I look at the opportunities Great Lake has to offer very closely.

Great Lake in Spring

Lets face it,  Great Lake at first glance is not the most inviting of waters.   Barren rocky shores and drawn down bays do little to invite the fisherman to try his hand.   But this lake offers good sport right through the season for both the boat and shore angler alike. October and November  see the onset of warmer weather as Spring pushes on.   Midge start to hatch more regularly making morning wind lanes inviting, and the gum beetles and other terrestrials around the lake begin to offer the dry fly fisherman a taste of things to come.   However around the shore there is some excellent wet fly fishing to be had, and this also boons during the late spring to early summer period.

Great Lake by Boat

An examination of this summer's boat fishing prospects.
In this two part series, Neil Grose of Tasmania's Premier Fly Fishing Guides gives a run down on what is most likely to produce the goods over the coming four months of summer.

Trout in the waves at Great Lake

Polaroiding on the Great Lake Jim Allen explains his technique polaroiding trout in the waves of Great Lake.     

The requirements of polaroiding on the Great Lakes are a big northerly wind and a blue sky. Quite often in the warmer northerlies a lot of terrestrial insects get blown onto the water - particularly after Christmas. When you get the beetles on the water the fish get up in the waves.

Great Lake rainbow trout in excellent condition

Despite the low lake level at Great Lake rainbow trout arrived at the Liawenee fish trap in good numbers this year.

The fish were stripped of eggs and milt for grow out of the fertilised eggs at the IFS hatchery at New Norfolk. While this has been the practise for some time, this is the first year in recent times that eggs from wild rainbow trout have been treated at Liawenee to produce triploid fish.

Once fertilised, the eggs are treated in a pressure vessel to produce offspring that are sterile (triploid) in the sense that they do not produce gonads (sex organs). The consequence of this process is that the fish do not stop feeding in winter and do not put any energy into reproduction. The end result that the fish have the potential to grow larger in a shorter amount of time.

Great Lake - one of our best - for shore

Greg French looks at shore-based fishing at Great Lake

At the beginning of November Great lake was already within .8m of the all-time high level mark of 1035.48 (i.e. 3.89m below full supply) attained in October 1997 - and it was still rising. There is a distinct possibility that this coming summer the lake will edge out over new ground. Such an event dramatically affects trout behaviour.

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