Ira's pond...: January 2011

It’s on every semi serious bream anglers bucket list, Tasmania, the home of the horse bream and while its taken me a while, I finally got around to it doing it. I would have gone earlier but circumstance for whatever reason hasn’t allowed for it but recently long time mate & fellow breamer Don Johnston upped tools, sold his truck and house in Perth and hit the frog & toad in search of the endless life experiences that are out there to be had. I should really introduce Don on here as we do lots of fishing together and so you will be reading about him plenty in the future.

I first met Don when I was running the bream tournament circus, I mean circuit, here in WA. He came along to a tournament and was quickly bitten by the bream bug. Don was a few times state sprint car champion and has enough feature wins to fill a room full of trophies so its fair to say he was one of the best sprintcar drivers in Australia. Meeting new breamers it amazes me how many come from a motor racing background, it’s a common theme, loved it but either burnt themselves or their wallets out, looked around for something else to challenge themselves and then somehow meet the black bream, Don was no different. If you don’t fish you probably wont get it but black bream change peoples lives, where they live, their jobs, who they are married to etc. Don’t ask me how but if I had a dollar for every person I’ve seen changed by this stupid fish….. I’d be a rich man. Anyway Don started fishing the tourneys, we met, he invited me out for a flick in his tinny and the rest is history. We have now done countless trips together over many years.

Travelling and fishing lots it is interesting to observe the many varied relationships that anglers on the move have. Fair dinkum some are like married couples the way they carry on but it isn’t always easy to find someone who wants to go to the same places that you do, live like you do, fish like you do and do it all at the same pace as you want to. Don and I have very similar likes in fishing, almost identical really in that we like to travel to hard to get spots and chase the really big bream all over Australia and we love the whole camping out thing. Don started out as a complete rookie but is now the 15th ranked angler on the national bream tourney circuit which attracts thousands and thousand of anglers from every state. He is one of those guys that whatever he does he does well and I reckon he will only improve as he gets more experience.

Back to Tassie….

Flew Virgin all the way over, meh…. Landed at Launceston and climbed aboard the bream bus. Straight to the super market for some supplies where the unique Tassie experience begins immediately. Most small towns have one or two IGA’s, quite often right across the road from each other and most of the time they are converted houses.

Adds character to the place that’s for sure and that’s one other thing I noticed travelling around the state, they have preserved their old buildings a lot better than we have here in WA. Anyway bacon is sold by the kilo only, we couldn’t find any small breakfast 200-300gram packs anywhere, and most IGA’s meat section was dominated up front by the ten kilo bad boy bacon packs that were stacked twenty deep.

We drove out of town headed for the high lakes country and some trout fishing to start off the trip and were meet just out of Launceston by our guide, Greg Woods or “Woodsy” with hot pizza from his misses pizza shop…. legend.

I’m not sure how long you have to know someone before you can start calling them by their nickname but I think you add 24 hours for Tasmanians, I wasn’t sure so I gave it a few days to be safe. Born and bred Tassie Greg runs a tackle wholesale business all over the state carrying some of the leading products in their field. A more genuine guy you couldn’t meet, tells it how it is and doesn’t waste words is the best way I could describe him and his fishing style is simple no bullshit methods that produce the goods. He kindly took pity on us and offered to show us around some of the lakes even opening his fishing shack to our use for a few days.

Set right up on top of the high lake country some 3000 feet above sea level it is a text book trout shack complete with out door long drop dunny, which I discovered by mistake that the only way to use, is with the door open. Walking around the side early one morning I had to quickly advert my eyes when I realised Woodsy was using this method. Surprised at first I quickly realised the man is onto it, I gave it a go and if there is a better dunny view then I’m yet to see it.

With the lakes rising about ten feet in the last week from the big rains that effected the whole east coast the trout fishing wasn’t easy. We fished the Great Lake and Arthur’s and while we did eventfully get into a few I tell you what without a guide we would have been stuffed. His knowledge and advice was the difference and the go to lure ended up being the good old original Tassie devils. We threw all the usual bream lures, both hards and plastics but unless you had $4 wide swinging action of the devils you’d be lucky to get more than one trout a day.

I used to fish them way back when I started trout fishing but these days just throw mainly small hards or plastics and if its slow I bust out some Mepps Celta spinners. Staring down at my box full of spinners in every size and colour you could imagine I had to drop the “couldn’t grab one of them off ya could I mate?” after Woodsy landed his third trout in half an hour on a green and gold Tassie devil.

The lakes are amazing, bloody huge and even though it was summer they were cold days on the water where I was running three layers of clothing, although I did feel less of a wuss when Woodsy had to put his jumper on cause “it was a bit chilly.” Not complaining though and the scenery is just amazing. While we didn’t catch anything huge you do see the hooters cursing or on follows and the ones you do catch are all nice trout you’d be stoked to catch back home in Perth. Once we had scratched the trout itch and a few dumb trout came our way (the smart ones stayed right away from us) we headed off in search of big bream.

Looking back heading up to the lakes and the high country...

Interesting rock wall in The Great Lake

Moths dance in the sunset across the valley from Woodsy's shack

Don with a "late arvo" average brown

Woodsy's shack from the outside

Inside

The dunny

Standing timber at Arthur's Lake

Average brown

Hooter brown

Decent rainbow just hanging

Tassie is renowned for the average size of its bream and while the fishing wasn’t as easy as I thought it might be I wasn’t disappointed when my first legal fish went 45cm. You can go three to five years or more in WA without seeing 45’s so that’s some perspective and Miami Vice also cracked a nice 40cm kilo fish to open his account as well.

We crammed as many places into the next week as we could travelling from as far south as you can get a bream boat at South Port where I had to have a beer at the most southern pub in Australia, all the way up the east coast to the sports fishing capital of Tasmania, St Helens in the very NW. Driving around the main things I really noticed was just how much bream water there is, the whole coastline is all virtually bays, islands, rivers and estuaries. It makes you realise how dull the coastline in the SW of WA where I live is.

The drive south from Hobart along the coast is an amazing couple of hours of winding roads, fishing villages and hamlets lined with bays complete with flats that would swallow a hundred Walpoles or whole systems back home no worries. You ask local breamers about these places and they go “dunno no one fishes there.” But you walk down to the marina and there are big bruiser bream just hanging around the pylons.

Tassie breamers are a funny lot, they think two hundred k’s is along way and they tend to stick to their own patch. I guess why move around when your braining 40’s at home? I kinda got the impression Tassie would be flogged by now but nothing could be further from the truth. In time this will change of course but I was amazed at how small the places they run their comps are and just how many places there are left that no one fishes. The fisheries booklet alone names 40 something places you can catch bream in so that gives you some idea.

The wind didn’t let up for most of the trip and the weed and small salmon were phenomenal but the amazing free oysters growing everywhere make up for the hundreds of small salmon and flathead every day. Getting lures past them proved to be the challenge. We fished flats, rivers, estuaries, lagoons, oyster racks, weed beds, bridges etc you name it its all there and plenty of big fish all to willing to have a go.

They don’t take lures like WA blacks that’s for sure. You HAVE to fish the pause on both hards & softs and they don’t run much just kinda lay over on their side and pull down like a heavy weight. They still pull line but don’t worry about that and we had our arses handed to us a few times being busted up by unstoppable beasts. I only had one bream on the whole trip that wasn't just lip hooked so you have to go easy on them and we fished 2lb the whole time down to 5lb leaders, they aren't stupid!

All in all an awesome trip and not only for the amazing fishing but culturally its like driving around Perth twenty years ago where you see straight as original Datto 1600’s and RS 2000 Escorts being driving around by old ladies and still used as daily drivers. Brings back some memories that’s for sure.

I’ll be back for sure as locals told me about spots with no roads, where no boat has ever been launched that are walk in or mountain bike only where they don’t even get the camera out unless they are over 50cm. All spoken with a stern face in a serious Tasmanian country accent you just know isn’t bullshit… and all your thinking is, I’m coming back baby…