Some trout flies

Mainly river and stream patterns at the top and some lake patterns below. Dressing flies is not unlike cooking: one begins by following recipes in books and learning the techniques until branching out and creating variations and original patterns incorporating new materials to meet specific needs or conditions. more

A number of patterns are named after women, for example the traditional Mrs Simpson is named for Wallace Simpson, others refer to my favourite places, people I know, life events and may incorporate reference to the types of fly such as b.h. for a bead head or simply wet or dry.

I designed a salmon fly pattern called Elsa Garrett to honour a Blue Mountains girl who dressed flies for Zane Grey in the 1930s.

I have also like to design and name individual flies or sets as memorials to anglers who have gone to rest, note the Purple People Eater is in there somewhere. I wonder how an all black fly would go, maybe with a flash of silver, called the Johnny Cash or simply the man in black.

Fly fishing problems are essentially aesthetic problems that lead to aesthetic solutions: colour, visibility, shape, size, sparkle, motion, drag, movement, silhouette, sink rate, how a dry fly sits upright on the surface and catches the light at sunset, how an emereger pattern sits just so in the surface film. As John Goddard and Brian Clarke have remarked in The Trout and the Fly, the trout fly is a clean device that lends delicacy, mobility, lightness and elegance to the pursuit of trout.

In recent times there has been a terrific expansion of fly fishing in Australia to include salt water tropical species such as bone fish, barramundi, golden trevally, saratoga, mangrove jack, sooty grunter, jungle perch and temperate species such as bream, mullet and whiting, as well as warm water native species including bass, cod and perch. Some of these critters have big razor sharp teeth and can pull like a horse - delicacy and lightness are inmost cases best left at home. more

It does however demonstrate how successful the fundamental principles of fly design have been over the last 500+ years since first described in print in the "Treatyse of fysshynge wyth an Angle" by Dame Juliana Berners in 1496.

Finally we may turn to Isaac Walton, from The Compleat Angler first published 1653, wow what a language:

O sir, doubt not that angling is an art. Is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly? a trout! that is more sharp-sighted than any hawk you have named, and more watchful and timorous than your high-mettled merlin is bold; and yet I doubt not to catch a brace or two to-morrow for a friend's break­fast: doubt not, therefore, sir, but that angling is an art, and an art worth your learning. The question is rather, whether you be capable of learning it? for angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so: I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice: but he that hopes to be a good angler, must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the art itself; but having once got and practised it, then doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove to be like virtue, a reward to itself.

Curiosity Rocks, Lake Jindabyne

The Rocks have not looked like this since Lake Jindabyne started filling in 1967, it shows the impact of the current drought cycle that began in 1996 compare. The dam was at below 50% capacity when this was taken with a 19-35 mm lens and polarising filter. With only average snow falls this year, the inflow will have little impact after draw down for hydro power, irrigation and environmental flow for the Snowy River below the dam. more

Those snags in the water are festooned with line and lures, some of which are now part of my angling history display in the den. Some of the old classic lures which haven't seen the light of day for 20-30 years were cleaned up and given a swim with new hooks and still worked well.

I guess the Rocks looked much like this before the dam when the valley was a pioneer grazing community, home of The Man from Snowy River, and even before then when the Ngarigo people roamed here and visited the high country each summer for the bogong moth feasts.

As the weather heats up in October, the moths, Agrotis infusa, more migrate to the cooler mountains to aestivate, the reverse of hibernation, in their thousands, up to 17,000 per square metre, in the cool dark cracks and crevices in the great boulders and scree slopes. They were easily smothered with smoke and scraped off the rocks into nets and skins then carried back to camp, roasted and eaten whole or pounded to a paste, made into flat cakes and cooked on hot stones. High in protein and fat, their taste was described as rich and sweet and similar to roasted walnuts.

This abundance of food encouraged great inter-tribal gatherings for trade and exchange, feasting, ceremonies and dispute settlement. Early European observers commented on the people going up onto the mountains looking gaunt and miserable from the winter and returning after a few months sleek and fat, even the dogs were fat! Not forgetting that the mountain pigmy possum, Burramys, is also partial to a feed of bogongs.

Recently however it has emerged that the moths may contain traces of arsenic probably from insecticide absorbed by the larvae which feed on the roots of pasture plants, so recipes for bogong moth omelette should be treated with caution.

Breamar Bay, Lake Eucumbene

This is a silver lake fish flat line trolled on a still overcast day at Breamar Bay. These fatten and grow quickly on yabbies and smelt, cruise the depths in great schools and compete to spawn up the creeks and rivers in Autumn.

Snowy trips tend to be full on: predawn coffee with a shot of single malt to aid the circulation, dawn fly fishing from the bank or trolling from the boat weather permitting with a thermos of fortifying hot coffee, back to camp for breakfast and a warming coffee, out for more fishing, back for second breakfast and a fresh coffee, there might be a hatch on as the day warms so maybe try the dry fly, afternoon snack and a cooling lager to combat dehydration, try some down-rigging or a wet fly from the boat or maybe take a lunch pack and a cooler with a bottle of wine and check out the streams, back to camp in the late afternoon for tackle tinkering and liquid refreshment, a nap then a snack accompanied by a cleansing ale, fish the evening rise, open a bottle of red to have with dinner and relax at the camp discussing the day's events and planning the morrow, try a few casts from the bank while sipping on a glass of single malt, return to camp after a few hours and rug up for night fly fishing with torches, waders, tackle and a thermos of warming coffee, return about midnight, clean the catch and add them to the fish freezer, grab a few hours sleep and tackle up again for the dawn activity peak; with little time or inclination for personal grooming, a certain air of crustiness sets in, but the fish don't seem to mind.

I am reminded of the words of that great brother of the angle (although we know that does include sisters also) Isaac Walton from the Compleat Angler, 1653, who was well aware of the need for a fortifying breakfast and that a fellow's drink bottle should always be kept near to hand:

My honest scholar, it is now past five of the clock, we will fish till nine, and then go to breakfast. Go you to yon sycamore-tree and hide your bottle of drink under the hollow root of it; for about that time, and in that place, we will make a brave breakfast with a piece of powdered beef, and a radish or two that I have in my fish-bag; we shall, I warrant you, make a good, honest, wholesome, hungry breakfast, and I will then give you direction for the making and using of your flies; and in the meantime there is your rod, and line, and my advice is, that you fish as you see me do, and let's try which can catch the first fish.

So you see how little has changed in 350 years.

Thredbo river fish

Thredbo River

The Thredbo is fed by snow melt from the Australian alps within Kosciusko National Park and is now a major spawning stream for fish from Lake Jindabyne, one may fish up and down the river all day and never see another human being, which is the way I like it.

I made this 7' 2 piece split Tonkin cane rod from an old 12' 3 piece rod my father brought out from England in the 1920s, the reel is a Hardy Princess from the 1950s, the floating line a traditional double taper Hardy, the fly a 14#red tag tied parachute style, the fish was released.

This trout is a dark river fish, insect fed, mature and muscular from a life in fast water; quite different from its fat, shiny silver cousins downstream in the lake that gorge on yabbies and cruise the thermocline, feeding open mouthed like whale sharks in the gloom, through clouds of plankton.