Greetings. Apologies for the lack of stories – Had a bit on lately, including fishing!

Of significant mention was an outing to Penstock Lagoon with Andy and Laneo. The forecast was looking very wet but limited wind so we met Laneo at Pennerz with high hopes. We dropped his tub in the water and noted several duns popping, which got our engines running. We were all rigged up with a team of 3 dry flies and the intention was to cast them down-wind and pull ’em back to the boat. The fish were honed into the mayfly hatch and soon I had a rainbow trout smash the Claret Dabbler during an aggressive retrieve. From here on in, the action was fairly consistent with all three of us hooking and landing a good brace of bows and browns. Some took the fly while on the move while rising fish were more likely to accept a static presentation.

I had already landed a few on a home-tied Possum Emerger with a little bit of glister dubbing, when I witnessed an almighty ‘BOOF’ on my point fly – I’m on! I slugged it out with the fat rainbow and realised when it reached the net that I had just snared my personal best rainbow on fly. The fish was a pig and tipped the scales at 5lb. I released the fish and smiled. Stoked.

An eerie fog rolled in but the fish continued to be active. There were many bows in the 1-2lb range and as odd as is sounds, we were craving some good browns and began leaving the slashy little risers as they were most likely the rainbows. With Laneo already on the board with around five brown trout I was dead jealous. I contemplated cutting the point off his flies just to be an arsehole, but we were in his boat after all, and I didn’t much fancy swimming back to shore! I noticed a dark back breach the surface just within casting range, cast my flies out and left them. Bang! Yep, there she is! The Possum Emerger does the trick again and the fish was almost straight onto the reel, peeling off old curly line that was quickly straightened out. A few good runs and a messy tussle while trying to avoid the drogue resulted in a very fat brown into the net. The fish weighed spot on at 4lb and it was in great nick – A small head and really thick through the body, no wonder it pulled hard.

The light started to fade, the showers rolled in and we loaded the boat – Content in the fact that we had a plan to fish a specific style on a specific water and we smashed ’em.