Flyfishing in Tasmania – The One That Got Away

Flyfishing in Tasmania, what a privilege.

This is part of an occasional series of posts looking back on those few fish that I really regret not quite landing.

There was the Loch Leven leviathan, the Bornish machair brownie and then there was this Tasmanian almost Shakespearean tragedy. Undoubtedly the biggest trout that I have lost, except I didn’t lose it, my incompetence meant I didn’t quite get that far.

The setting, a high deserted plateau in central Tasmania. Now’s not the time to explore the wonders of Tasmanian fishing. All you need to know is that you are fishing dry beetles on flat crystal clear water where you can see everything – way out of my comfort zone and experience.

Oh, the other thing you need to know is that after two days camping in the wilds, all I had managed to show my local companions was that as a visiting Pom I was totally out of my depth  and useless. 

My only defence was that I had been somewhat unsettled by finding a tiger snake in my tent.  To be fair, checking you’re not stepping on a snake between casts probably doesn’t help your chances.

Admittedly the one in my tent was dead, but I wasn’t to know that as I clambered into my sleeping bag. Of course it was my playful Aussie chums who’d found the snake loitering round the camp, despatched it and thought what fun it would be to throw it into a Pommy’s tent! Oh, how I laughed – after all they had spent the walk telling me that the only thing I needed to know about Tasmanian snakes was that they could all kill me.

Each evening after yet another successful day they would string their trout high in the trees and  cover them in netting to keep the possums away – let’s just say I had no such worries.

By lunchtime of the last day the overriding emotion of my companions was pity, and I was assigned my own little Aussie helper to make me break my duck.

The fishing was in shallow lagoons that flood in the Winter and then gradually dry out in the Summer, all boulders and arid.  We came to a virgin piece of water, best described as a big, ragged pond, glass-like with the sun relentlessly beating down. I didn’t need my little helper, I could see the fish, it was huge, ten pounds at least!

I cast out my dry fly ten feet short of where he lay, beautifully done, so far no Pommy embarrassment. The fish saw it and oh, so slowly, weaved sinuously towards the fly and then leisurely upwards – it was going to take it!

Cliché time – the cavernous mouth opened – but it’s true, it was huge like an opened white envelope, I could almost see its teeth. Don’t ask me why but I decided that now would be a good time to strike, far too early, leaving behind a very puzzled fish and a Tassie angler beside me, on his knees, head in hands. It was a long humiliating walk home.

That was thirty years ago and I have a date with that fish’s descendants sometime next October.