Polaroiding

A blue-sky day, the sun high behind you, polaroid glasses on, and the lake floor lit like a swimming pool. Somewhere on it a brown trout is cruising. Your job is to see it first.

When

Cloudless, bright days between about ten in the morning and four in the afternoon; December to February is the best of it

Where

Clear, shallow water: the Western Lakes of Tasmania, the shallow margins of the highland lakes, clear alpine rivers

Start with

A pair of polaroid glasses and a broad-brimmed hat before any fly; then a small dry or an unweighted nymph on a long leader

Bright, windless days do not produce good dun fishing on Little Pine or Arthurs, but they are excellent days to be in the Western Lakes polaroiding with a mayfly imitation to cruising fish, watching the trout come for the fly and take it in full view. The Inland Fisheries Service describes the same pattern across the highland lakes. Polaroiding the shoreline on a sunny day provides good returns. December to February is the optimal period. It can be done from the deck of a boat even when the wind is blowing hard. And on the Western Lakes plateau, where the individual waters are small and clear and the trout are wild browns, it remains the main business of the place, with the dun hatches and the tailing fish as the highlights around it.

Polaroiding is sight fishing, and the name comes from the glasses. Polarised lenses cut the glare off the surface and let you see into the water, and with the sun high and behind you and a broad-brimmed hat to shade the lenses, a clear lake bottom in a metre of water is as legible as a paddock. You walk the shore slowly, looking not for fish but for anything that moves, a shadow, a pale flank turning, a shape that was not there a moment ago. Then you stop, work out which way it is going, and put a fly ahead of it.

The reason it matters beyond Tasmania is that it is a reliable way to find a trout that is not rising. When fish are neither rising nor tailing, polaroiding is how you locate them, and a good pair of glasses is the first thing to buy. On a clear alpine river in the Snowy Mountains, fish can be polaroided in the runs from the bank, in one case from the balcony of a ski-village apartment. Any clear water on a bright day can offer a polaroiding opportunity.

Conditions

Sun, and plenty of it. The best hours are between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon on cloudless days, when the sun is high enough to light the bottom rather than bounce off the surface. Cloud can end it; a bank of cloud crossing the sun turns the lake to pewter and the fish can vanish, so wait for the light to return. Wind is less of a problem than you would think. A ripple can help, breaking up the reflection, and from a boat the Inland Fisheries Service notes polaroiding can be productive even in a strong blow. Flat calm and a low sun is the hardest combination; you see the sky, not the lake.

Clear, shallow water. Up to about a metre of depth is what the Snowy Mountains sources give for a lake that is not perfectly clear; on the Western Lakes the bottom is visible much deeper. The fish are in the shallows because that is where the food is: the beetle falls, the mudeyes, the frogs and tadpoles in the marshy margins, the caddis on the stones.

The rig

A floating line, a leader of at least three and a half metres tapering to a fine tippet, and a fly that lands quietly. A small dry, a Red Tag or a black beetle in 12 to 14 on a beetle day, a parachute mayfly dun in 12 to 14 when the fish are on duns, is the usual choice, because the take is visible and the fly can be left sitting in the fish’s path. An unweighted or lightly weighted nymph, a small Pheasant Tail or a stick caddis, is the fly for a fish cruising deeper or one that has refused the dry. A four or five weight rod that can put a fly down softly at twelve metres, not a rod for distance.

The glasses are the rig. Polarised lenses, amber or copper for the flat light of the highlands, and a hat with a brim that shades them from above and the sides.

Execution

Walk the shore slowly with the sun behind you, so that you are looking into lit water and the fish is looking into the glare. Watch a stretch of bottom rather than scanning; movement gives the fish away before shape does. A confident polaroider covers water quickly: keep walking when nothing is there and stop dead when something is.

When you find a fish, freeze. Work out its line. A cruising brown patrols a beat and comes back; a fish moving along the shore will pass a point you can cast to. Put the fly two or three metres ahead of it and off to the side it is favouring, and put it there before the fish is close enough to see the cast. Then do nothing. If the fish sees the fly and turns toward it, wait for the mouth to close before you lift. If it swims past, a single small twitch as it draws level will often bring it back. If it bolts, it saw you; the next fish gets a longer cast and a lower profile.

What goes wrong

You looked at the wrong thing. Fish are found by movement and by pale flashes, not by trout-shaped outlines, and a first-time polaroider walks past a dozen fish looking for a picture in a book. You moved when you should have stopped. A fish in a foot of water can see a walking angler from a long way off, and the bow wave heading for deep water was the one you were about to cast to. The fly landed on the fish. Ahead and to the side, never on top; the leader is the only thing that should land near it. And you went on a cloudy day. Save the cloudy days for the mayfly lakes and the loch-style drifts, and take the blue-sky days west.

Safety

The Western Lakes are a high, exposed plateau where weather changes fast and the walk in is long. Carry warm and waterproof layers on any day, tell someone your route and your return time, and treat a bright morning as no promise about the afternoon. Wading the marshy margins of the highland lagoons can mean soft sediment underfoot; the Inland Fisheries Service warns of it on some waters, and a wading staff is not an affectation. The same sun that lights the lake bed burns; the hat and glasses are for your eyes, and the long sleeves are for the rest of you.

Dry-fly presentation

Fly fishing the Western Lakes