Fly fishing Tasmania's Central Highlands

The lake country on the Central Plateau that Inland Fisheries calls its Central region — yingina / Great Lake, Arthurs Lake, Little Pine and Penstock lagoons, Woods Lake and the road to the Western Lakes — wild browns, highland duns from November to March, tailing fish in spring, and weather that decides the water each day.

Waters

There is a morning on the Central Plateau that every Tasmanian trout angler is trying to have again. Dull sky, a humid stillness after a cold change, a lagoon the colour of weak tea, and at about noon the first highland duns come up through the film and sit on the water with their wings up like small grey sails, and the browns that were nowhere an hour ago are suddenly everywhere, tipping and sipping in lanes you could follow with a pencil. That is what people drive up the Lake Highway for. Inland Fisheries Service calls this country its Central region, and anglers call it the Highlands: the lakes of the plateau a thousand metres up, yingina / Great Lake at the centre of it with road around most of its shore, Arthurs Lake as the dependable numbers water, Little Pine and Penstock lagoons as the fly-only jewels, Woods Lake for a rough day, and the track west past Lake Augusta into the Western Lakes. The fish are wild browns almost everywhere, half a kilo to a kilo and a half on the big lakes, with rainbows a tenth of the catch on Great Lake and a few in Penstock. Inland Fisheries Service opens and closes the season on set dates each year, with most of these waters shut over winter; check the current IFS Fishing Code before you plan a trip. Bring polaroids, a five weight, a box of duns and beetles, and clothes for weather the forecast did not mention.

The country

The Central Plateau is a high shelf of dolerite and peat, glaciated flat, holding lakes from the size of a paddock to Great Lake’s hundred and seventy square kilometres, most of them dammed or diverted at some point for hydro-electricity and all of them cold. Miena on the southern shore of Great Lake is the base; the A5 Lake Highway runs the length of it, the B51 loops east around Arthurs, and the B11 heads west past Little Pine toward the Western Lakes. Weather arrives from the west with nothing to slow it down and turns in an hour; snow is possible in any month, and IFS warns that Great Lake in particular can become dangerously rough with little warning. The Western Lakes beyond the A5 are the wilderness half of the same plateau and have their own page.

The fishing

Lake fishing, and four kinds of it. Polaroiding on bright days: walk a leeward shore of Great Lake or the Western Lakes with the sun behind you and look before you cast. Duns on dull days: from November the highland mayflies hatch on Arthurs, Little Pine and Penstock, most of them between noon and mid-afternoon, and the fish rise to them freely; a nymph or emerger before the hatch commits, an upright dun once it does. Tailers in spring: on Little Pine from September to November, with the water high, browns feed in the margins with their tails out, and a nymph fished dead still in front of one is the whole game. Wet flies when nothing shows: a team of wets from a drifting boat or along a windward shore, which is how Arthurs and Great Lake are fished on most days of the year.

Yingina / Great Lake is the anchor: enormous, open all year over most of its area, browns and a share of rainbows, ramps in half a dozen bays, and wind lanes on a calm morning from a boat. Arthurs Lake is the confidence lake, wild browns by the thousand and the best mayfly water on the plateau, with Cowpaddock Bay the shore-angler’s venue. Little Pine Lagoon is fly-only, shallow, weedy and famous, and technically the hardest of them. Penstock Lagoon is fly-only too, small, with browns and stocked rainbows over weed beds that grow mayfly by the million. Woods Lake is the fall-back when the wind is up.

Where to start

Start on Arthurs if you want to catch fish, on Little Pine if you want to learn, and on Great Lake if the day is bright and you have polaroids. Let the weather choose: dull and humid sends you to the mayfly lagoons, bright and blue to a shore you can see into, a howling westerly to Woods Lake or a lee bay on Great Lake, and heat to the deeper water, because Little Pine averages a metre deep and its fishing fades as the water nears twenty degrees. For the fish, the national brown trout page carries the biology and the mayflies page the hatch.

Through the year

August and September are cold, high and slow, with the season just open and the first tailers on the lagoons. October and November belong to the rivers below the plateau and to the tailers up here, with the first highland duns arriving in the second half of November. December to February is the broad, high-quality window: duns established on Arthurs and Little Pine by early December, building through January and holding through February, with beetles and terrestrials on Great Lake from late December. March is often the most settled month of all, with fewer people. April thins the hatches but not the quality, and most of the brown trout waters close for the season before winter sets in; check the current IFS Fishing Code for the exact date. Great Lake stays open over most of its area through the winter.

Rules and access

Inland Fisheries Service sets the season, methods, bag and size limits for every water here, and they differ from lake to lake: Little Pine and Penstock are fly-only with two-tier bags, Great Lake has areas with their own seasons and method rules, and the inflowing streams carry closures. Take them from the current Tasmanian Inland Fishing Code and each water’s page in the IFS A to Z, and carry the angling licence the Code requires. Access on the plateau is mostly public foreshore and Hydro Tasmania land with IFS Anglers Access brochures for the main waters; a lagoon on the map is not a right of way across a paddock, and the boating rules on the shallow lagoons protect the weed beds the whole fishery depends on.