The Festive Season is always a quiet time for us at Rainbow Lodge and this enables us to do some of our own flyfishing. The weather has turned windy again to help the boats race from Sydney to Hobart but this does little for the fishing. Fortunately, many of our rivers are heavily lined with trees, giving shelter to the small mayfly and caddis that are hatching.
Both day time and evening hatches are bringing fish to the surface and very large numbers are being caught. This seems to consistently be the best time of year for river dry fly fishing and we are making the most of it! With twilight lasting many hours, there is no need to stop fishing until around 9:30pm and more often than not, the fish are still feeding hard well after I have made it home with a torch.
On the lakes, fish have also been rising freely when the wind had abated. As I write this, it’s unseasonably windy again and although many fish will be caught on dries fishing 'blind', the sight casting options may be limited. Arthurs, Woods, Penstock, Great Lake, the Western Lakes, Bronte and Little Pine are all dry fly fisheries at this time.
On a slightly different note, I have been testing a new pair of polarised glasses I bought couple of months back. For many, many years, I have believed that the yellow lens photochromatic 'Spotters' were the best in the world. I say that having tested an enormous number of polaroids from around the globe. I love light enhancing polaroids – as a guide the issue is often not whether I can see fish under perfect blue skies, but whether I can see them when it’s cloudy or early and late in the day.
Anyway, I recently purchased a pair of Tonic glasses when I broke my favourite pair of Spotters. The 'Tonics' are not light enhancers, but it appears they are the best pair of ‘non light enhancers’ I have ever worn. They have an extremely light (in weight) glass lens and have done everything I expected and more. I am still a fan of light enhancers when there’s cloud about, but for those who find the light enhancing lenses too light, the Tonics have done very well for me and I look forward to using them for the rest of the season.
