And I thought fishing was tough yesterday 16-2-2016-02-16

From the Archives ...

"Angling is an art - Hannah Ledger

and an art worth your learning.."

Presented from Issue 112, October 2014
So said Izaak Walton in the 1600s. It seems that Burnie’s Hannah Ledger has combined angling with art rather well. Hannah is a fish fanatic, outdoor enthusiast and budding, self-taught artist. From as young as she can remember, she has always had crayon in hand, colouring book under arm and as she’s grown as a painter, jars full of paintbrushes and cupboards full of ready-to-go blank canvas’.

A country girl at heart, Hannah was schooled at Yolla District High School, a small ‘farm’ school in the states North West, then went on to Hellyer College where she was given the opportunity to really grow her art skills; And by grow, that meant skipping the classes that would probably have more an impact of getting her somewhere in life, like English and Math to spend every spare minute with the art teacher, painting or drawing.

As typical teenagers do, they make poor decisions- and after being accepted in to one of the countries top art schools, turned down the offer and decided to move to the big island, where she lived for 5 years working in what seemed ‘dead end’ retail.

And I thought fishing was tough yesterday 16/2/2016

Headed off again this afternoon for another spin session in a rocky fast water stretch of the Meander River that's fished very well on my previous trips here. When I arrived the weather wasn't all that bad. The wind was a little gusty but nothing to worry about as I could see it wasn't going to effect my casting all that much. The river was reasonably sheltered from the wind too which made it that much easier. The first fifty meters was a little quiet as I just had the one hit and miss. Then over the next eighty meters I caught three nice browns. I'm thinking to myself I'm going to have another good catch of trout in this long fast water run again today. Then all hell let loose, the wind suddenly picked up a blew a gale. It was howling and there were small branches, twigs, leaves and all shapes and sizes of bark flying everywhere. I knew then it was going to be very difficult fishing from now on. This is as tough as I have ever experienced when fishing a river in these conditions.

On nearly every cast my line was crossing over twigs and getting fouled up. If it was the line fouling then the spinner was hooking into the bark or the fallen twigs in the river. Casting was getting to be near impossible and there wasn't a sign of a trout now. I stuck to it and finally picked up two more browns when the wind eased of for fifteen minutes before it picked up again. In that fifteen minutes I did catch two more solid browns with the best one going 520gms. I had covered around 600 meters of river now and I decided to fish another couple of hundred meters then call it a day. That two hundred meters of river seemed to take ages to fish as the wind was even stronger throughout that distance. I couldn't get out of the river quick enough in the end. What I thought was going to be a pretty good afternoon on the river didn't happen at all. Still can't really complain, I did catch another five trout, could have been worse.

Good fast water stretch of the Meander River

2016 02 16 Solid brown taken in this fast water run