The Great Lake in Tasmania is one of the State’s most important spawning waters. Not only does the spawning in the Great Lake ensure that the lake maintains a great stock of healthy wild brown trout and rainbow trout, but also ensures that other lakes in the highlands offer great fishing despite their own spawning limitations.

With salmonids relying on moving water and suitable stream beds to trigger and accommodate the spawn, not all Tasmanian lakes offer viable spawning conditions. But with the help of fish relocated from waters like the Great Lake, many lakes are able to be maintained at viable fishing levels.

The majority of spawning on the Great Lake occurs in the Liawenee Canal, a canal that feeds water from Lake Augusta in the Western Lakes down into Canal Bay on the Great Lake. Tasmania’s Inland Fisheries Service has a facility on the canal where every year fish are intercepted and either directed into artificial spawning channels or into cages from which fish are selected for relocation.

The brown trout start this process around the end of the official Tasmanian trout fishing season (which ends at the end of April). During May the canal sees the passage of thousands of brown trout, with the IFS Liawenee Weekend offering visitors to see the spawning process underway.

In the later months, sometimes as late as September and October, the rainbow trout have their turn, and, like the brown trout, are steered into a network of dedicated spawning canals to undertake their breeding cycle.

While the Liawenee Canal is the epicentre of the Great Lake spawning activity, not all trout gravitate to this part of the lake. Tods Corner, for example, provides spawning opportunities driven both by the inflow from Arthurs Lake and by any small streams fed by rain and snow melt.

This year, although the water came late to some of these smaller streams, the fish turned up to do their thing, battling up narrow streams, pushing themselves up over barriers and disappearing into little tributaries to lay their eggs.

Sometimes these smaller streams offer lovely opportunities to observe large numbers of fish in the wild. It’s a great reminded of the determination of these fish. It’s also a fantastic opportunity to show kids fish in the wild. It’s certainly part of my “off season” routine.