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Natural · Lake
Mudeyes and dragonflies
In the last hour of a summer evening on a highland lake the biggest brown trout in the water leave the deep and cruise the timbered shallows for one thing. It is not a fly you cast to a rise. It is a fly you cast to a fish you can barely see.
What you see
Big swirls and bow waves in the shallows at dusk and dawn; dragonflies in the air by day; empty nymph cases on timber and tussocks
When
Summer, with January and February the peak on the Tasmanian lakes; the warmer months on the Snowy Mountains lakes
Tie on
A mudeye pattern in 10 to 14, fished slowly in the shallows at first and last light
The mudeye is the dragonfly nymph, and no Australian angler who has fished a highland lake in summer needs the Latin. It is a stout, drab, clawed creature the length of your thumbnail to the top joint of your thumb, it lives on the bottom among weed and drowned timber for a year or more, and on summer nights it crawls and swims to the shore to climb a stump or a tussock and split its skin into a dragonfly. That migration is what the fishing is about. Lake Eucumbene is famous for large brown trout cruising the shallows in low light to feed on migrating nymphs. Find the movement and you can fish to a big trout in water barely deep enough to cover it.
The Tasmanian lakes have the same thing. The Inland Fisheries Service puts the good mudeye hatches in January and February and recommends wet-fly fishing with mudeye patterns and fur flies at first and last light. In the Blue Mountains the guides say plainly that Lake Wallace is full of mudeyes and that a mudeye pattern works when they are moving. Bait anglers across all of these waters fish the live nymph at dusk against the timber, which tells you where and when the fly angler should be too.
The fishing is a slow fly in shallow water at the edges of the day. Nothing about it is delicate. Find the timbered or tussocky shore, wade in quietly or stand back, cast along it, and retrieve a mudeye pattern with slow, short pulls a hand’s width apart. The take, when it comes, is not a rise. It is a stop, and then a very heavy fish.
What they are
Dragonfly nymphs. Two families matter to the angler: the stout, squat ones that crawl, and the longer, torpedo-shaped ones that swim by jetting water. Both are brown to olive, both have the hinged, extendable lower jaw that makes them the top predator of the lake bed short of the fish themselves, and both are called mudeyes here. The adults you see hawking over the water by day are the same animal after the hatch, and trout take them rarely; the nymph is the food.
The migration is the event. It happens in the dark and the half-light of warm nights, and the empty, split nymph cases you find on stumps and reeds in the morning are the proof of last night’s hatch and the promise of tonight’s.
When and where
Summer. On the Tasmanian highland lakes the Inland Fisheries Service times the hatches to January and February. On the Snowy Mountains lakes, fish the warmer months alongside the beetle and hopper fishing. In the Blue Mountains, mudeye patterns belong to the warm half of the year, when the nymphs are moving. The Victorian Fisheries Authority’s habitat notes list mudeyes as a standard food item the lake beds are managed to grow.
The place is shallow water with something to climb out on. Drowned timber, standing dead trees, tussock banks, reed beds, rocky points with weed behind them. The fish come in from the deep to these edges at dusk and are still there at dawn; through the bright middle of a summer day they are back in deep water and the mudeye is not the fly.
How to fish it
A mudeye pattern in size 10 to 14, weighted lightly or not at all, on a floating line and a leader of around three metres. A dark Woolly Bugger in olive or black, hackle trimmed, is as good a mudeye as most of the dedicated patterns, and a fur fly or a Mrs Simpson does the same job in Tasmania. Cast along the shore or the timber line, not out into the lake, let the fly settle, and retrieve it slowly with short pulls and long pauses. A mudeye does not sprint. The fish follow, and a pause is when they take.
Start half an hour before dark and fish into it; be back at first light and fish until the sun is on the water. Stand still. A cruising brown in a foot of water will see you before you see it, and the bow wave that turns away from your feet was the fish you came for. On a boat, a slow loch-style drift along a timbered shore at dusk with a mudeye on the point and a small wet on the dropper is a summer evening well spent.
When the fish are on midge or damsels in the daylight hours, fish those. The mudeye is the dusk and dawn fly, and it is the fly for the largest fish in the lake.