Fishing College’s Crossing 2005 Half an hour from Brisbane’s CBD, Mount Crosby Road crosses the Brisbane River. It’s a little bridge just north of Ipswich, called College’s Crossing. There’s a picnic and recreation ground, plenty of clean water for kids to splash in … and there’s fish. My intrepid fishing mate and I headed out […]
Month: October 2010
Accessories? Moi?
Well, maybe I do carry around a little too much fly fishing gear. I admit it. I hope that’s the first step on the way to recovery. On the last trip to the beautiful Bundara, I noticed the fly vest was getting a bit heavy and my more minimalist mate Warwick politely suggested I should […]
Bundara River Summer 2005
Hopper Magic on the Bundara It was late afternoon and we were only an hour from the Bundara River when the wind blew up and the high country hoppers began pelting our car windscreen. The fate of the hapless hoppers notwithstanding, it was a welcome sight for a couple of dedicated fly fishermen. Like the […]
The Mighty Sturgeon – Canada 2000
The end of the heavy game rod dips slowly, as 30 metres below in the chilly Fraser River near Vancouver, a prehistoric monster of the deep delicately extends its hideous mouth over a dainty package of salmon eggs. I grab the rod, point down close to the water and wait. The next hit is slow […]
Down and Dirty on the Delegate River 2005
If fire fighters were gun fighters Delegate River would be Australia’s OK Corral. Delegate River Tavern was the rallying point in early 2003, when fire fighters from around the world converged to contain the deadly firestorm which swept from north east Victoria into the Alpine Parks and border country of NSW, and then flared up […]
Tongariro Late Summer 2005
Wherever you live in the world, there are only three things you need to catch a six-pound trout: a passport, a Taupo district fishing license, and some cash to get there. The action varies a little, but the big fish are there all year around. Most overseas anglers – from Australia, the USA or the […]
Mars and Venus
I’ve a learned a little about fly fishing in the past 20 years, most of it from other men, in groups of two or three. But men in small hunting groups can be driven, self-destructive creatures. After a hard day, pounding the mossy rocks in pursuit of truculent brown trout, we’ll often camp out rough, […]
Fishing Forensics
We had been on the water for a couple of hours, when we ran into two frequent visitors to the Mitta River and – as you do – we asked what flies they were using and if they’d had any luck. “They’re biting on caddis at the moment,” we were told, and shown a small fluffy […]
Sad story with a better ending
Picking your fly rods up from the oversize luggage counter is always a bit of a heart in the mouth operation: mainly because you worry your rods have been left behind or sent to Los Angeles or Heathrow, never to be seen again. But they were there alright, in the oversize luggage section at Brisbane […]
At last the perfect sunnies!
Last day of the trip on the Bundara, it was late afternoon, merging to dusk and Warwick and I were casting some big ugly flies on the water, hoping to tempt some evening risers. I chucked it in when I couldn’t see the fly in the shadows and started to pack up, but Warwick kept going. […]