Serious Fun @ JFFC Sept 2018 | Page 20

20 SeriousFun@JFFC SEPT 2018

I turned slowly to face my resident trout – I could not believe it they were all there! And

this after first spotting them so long ago. Now for the cast - it could not be more than 6m.

The fly landed perfectly upstream from the monster – it floated a wee bit to his right – he dropped his tail and grabbed the fly as it passed – fish on!! Wow! He darted upstream with gusto, I was astounded at his momentum – into the next pool and on his first jump, a shake of the head and he was off! I stood there breathless. Even though I did not bag him it was such text book stuff – as I write this I can still see him in slo-mo, wow!

We got a few more fish; I seemed to pick the rainbows up in the slow tail outs weird I thought that was brownie tactics.

As the afternoon wore on we got to an outcrop walked around and down to the pools just below Outlook cottage. I fished the water leading up to the cottage whilst Leslie had great success at the bend right below the cottage. Dusk was approaching fast so we called it a day and headed back to the Lodge.

The area here was hammered by the flood. A big blue gum stump stood alone on the bank, snapped off like a match stick. The cottage was ruined, the logs on the roof an indication of the levels to which the water had risen – quite eerie…

Shane & Butch also were full of reports of how much the storm had changed the river upstream of the Lodge, the large pool where the pump was situated was now like a lake!