Mercury Passage
Mercury Passage on fire with good sized flatties and squid (southern part near Green Point).
Crays potting but only just !!!
Huon Report
Mike, please find below report from the Huon. I am a member of the Desirables Fishing Club - which is a registered club in New South Wales - with current club president Mr Timion Rosso. We run an annual competition for the biggest fish caught in the "desirable species list". Which includes flathead, bream, trout, murray cod, aussie salmon and kingfish.
Spent Friday and Sunday late afternoons under a balmy night again fishing the Huon River between Judbury and Glen Huon. The difference to previous nights was there was a lot more insect action - so having worn out the Woolly Buggers (and no recent success) - switched to a dry fly being the Royal Wulff.
Again my technique was a little improvised and I also investigated a bit of new ground. With little wind about casting to both sides of the river was fairly easy as I seemed to be having rises closer into the banks, again I was letting my fly drift back down with the current and then doing a slow retrieve back in against the current.
Friday evening - Fished the first 30-45 minutes with the Woolly Bugger but with no results had one or two rises but no certain hits. So tied on a dry fly and used a bit of floatant which I also put on the fluorocarbon leader but dropped back to 6lb leader instead of the 8lb that I was using with the wet fly. So first cast in was into the middle of a fairly fast moving current let the dry fly float back and on the retrieve had a hit and was on - this was a small "pinhead" salmon. Pinhead means a fish that will never really grow and has a humpy look about it at harvest these are usually discarded or sent to processing to be turned into Pate.
And a few more casts in under some trees, accuracy is slowing improving, and bang another hit and a good strike - had this fish well and truly hooked with a few nice leaps landed a 52.5cms salmon. Was in better condition than the other one so was probably just over 2kgs. With landing net ready had a nice capture. Left with a feed for the weekend.
After carting in 180 bales of hay on Saturday, was fairly tired so Sunday was my next session. Started the night noticing the Royal Wulff hook was a bit worse for wear with no barb and bent back from the night before. But with a little more insect action - but less fish on the surface thought I would stick to the dry fly. The wind for the first time was to my back so when casting upstream I had a slight breeze with on the forward cast and against on the back cast - not sure if this was the reason but had a few more tangles, or was trying to cast further. Also noticed my so called tippet instead of being around 13 feet was down to about 6 feet - but just added a bit more fluorocarbon to extend the life of this. In the first half a dozen casts had a rise and a good strike - which yielded a 45 cms atalatic salmon. So kept this one for the neighbour. A few more rises and a dropped salmon and several tangles and reties, bang and a nice jump out of the water had a nice brown trout on (and the heart was up a couple of bpms). This fish did not fight as hard as the salmon but kept its nose in the deeper water. Silly me I left my landing net with the other salmon over at some rocks so was going to have to try and land this one by hand. So after manoeuvring him closer to some shallow water and seeing him tire tried to guide him to my feet but in doing this I offered some slack and bugger, he was off-. Most certainly going back to hooks with barbs!!!
So now have the DVD's of Chris Bassono's - "Highland Gold" which will give me some more inspiration (and willing to lend out in due course for any one interested) and with the grasshoppers starting up after the warmer weather will start to look further up river for some bigger brown trout.
Cheers, CH.
