Bronte Lagoon Report
(Name deleted to protect the guilty.) Had a couple of days camped at Bronte Lagoon. The lagoon is as high as anyone can remember that we have spoken to. On Wednesday night the water was a good metr above our previous campsite water level but with the tailrace into Brady's fully open the water was dropping fast and dropped about 400 mm over two days. This may account for the lack of trout visibly tailing.
About four boats on the lake plus half a dozen fly fishermen on the shore that we could see. Thursday there were periods of calm between puffy south westerly breezes and during the course of the afternoon the water temperature rose a full degree to just under 7 degrees. We trolled most of the time plus did some spinning with both lure and plastic. Eventually R** caught a 750 gram brown on a Tassie Devil trout pattern but that was it for the day as the sky cleared and the cold breeze dropped off.
Thursday night we had a good fire going but ice was already on the tents before we said goodnight. The sky was perfectly clear and we saw about 4 shooting stars - or should we say space junk, one of them very bright. Then about 9 pm a huge flare up at low altitude at 9 pm last night running south to north so close that we could hear the rush and it left a thick smoke trail for about 70 degrees of vision. It seemed to be only about a thousand feet up. Then it broke up into three pieces that we swear could have landed at Bronte Park. Distances can be deceptive at night but we were waiting for the bang as the stuff hit the ground.
Friday morning (11 Sept.) the campsite was covered in a thick frost with ice at the waters edge. We waited for the sun to rise before heading off into fairly flat water but the cold breeze came up from the north and cloud cover increased to grey periods of 100%, but not before I changed my Rapala minnow to a 4cm brook trout Rapala with a bright orange belly. Within an hour I had caught three 1.5 kg and R** caught another 1 kg brown on his Tassie Devil before the wind got too strong. The fish were in superb condition and two of them fought exceptionally well.
We did not see any others land fish and the fly fishermen we spoke with said they sighted a few fish but were just there for casting practice I reckon. We had our fly gear ready but the fish were in the 10 ft depth from the eastern shoreline and hitting at about 5 ft from the surface. I don't fly fish too well in strong breezes but my mate R** is an ace in any conditions but even he was reluctant to go fly. I finished with the three, R** with two and thought it was good start to the season.
M****