Day 2 of 2023-24 Tasmanian Fly Fishing Season - Little Pine Lagoon
The opening weekend of the Tasmanian fly fishing season always requires a choice of venues. We have been lucky this season - the weather was not much of an influence and so it generally became a matter of putting alternatives in a queue and ticking them off day by day.
After a good opening day on the Saturday at Penstock Lagoon, a day on Little Pine seemed to be the right candidate for day 2. Wind forecast was favourable and it was clear I wouldn’t freeze.
Little Pine Lagoon
Little Pine is only a 15 minute drive from Miena and is a “legendary” fly fishing destination. That “legend” built over years of fantastic dry fly fishing in the warmer months - spectacular hatches and strong fighting wild brown trout.
Since the bushfires in 2019 the “legendary” mayfly hatches, spinner hatches and gum beetle swarms have been significantly diminished, with the lake’s catchment area still recuperating from the fires and the whole ecosystem having been changed.
This means that while there are still good insect events, and excellent margin fishing to tailing trout there is also far more wet fly fishing on the lake than in the past. At the start of the 2022-23 season, opening weekend produced reports of big catches by loch-style fishers and it seemed logical to try to emulate those successes on the opening weekend of the 2023-24 season.
In addition to the reports of good numbers at the start of last season, there were also murmurings about the size and condition of fish. Little Pine has a reputation for big health wild brown trout, but the last season reports were frequently punctuated with commentary about smaller fish and poorly conditioned larger fish.
It seems that 2023-24 has got off to a similar start. Again there are plenty of fish but, again, they are a mix of relatively small fish (in Little Pine terms at least) and fish that are not in great condition. Of course the fish in the latter group can, at least in part, be explained by the effects of spawning. August fish will frequently still be recovering from their strenuous spawning efforts in May and June.
This is not to say that day 2 of the season was not a good fishing day. The fish were there and very catchable. The bigger fish tended to be taken on the deeper running point flies while the smaller fish seemed more happy to slash at the higher-running dropper flies, flashy flies deliberately tied to attract attention.
Like last year, we’ll take the first day on The Pine as an indication that it’s likely to offer up plenty of fish this season and, also like last year, we’ll wait optimistically for a continued improvement in the incidence of mayflies and a continued improvement in the quality of the dry fly fishing.
We Tasmanian fly fishers are always optimistic. Mad if you’re not, eh!!