I have been trout fishing the Tasmanian Central Plateau since I was a kid and for most of that time I have been a fly fisherman.
After forty years with the feathered hook, you would think I would be pretty good at it and that I would always come home with a fish. You might think that, but you’d be wrong.
Last year I’m sure my wife, Donna, didn’t mean to be hurtful when she said, “Charlie, you are a man with no patience at all for anything you’re not good at. I’m amazed that you keep at it.”
Well, in mitigation, I must say that the trout season last year was the toughest and most unrewarding, in terms of catch, that I can ever remember; except for the season before, and the one before that and so on ad infinitum.
I do remember a summer in the mid nineteen eighties when I actually caught a large number of big trout. But beyond that nothing much sticks in my mind or my landing net.
The truth is that catching a trout with a tiny hook, spider-web-thin line, and an implausible concoction of feather and fur, often in a howling gale, is laughably and tragically the hardest form of fishing imaginable.
Although I am by no means among the very best at it, I am sure that no one loves it more than I do. And it keeps me going back year after year.
So it was with the trout season upon us once again, I headed up to the Central Plateau to check out my shack for another year of almost certain failure in pursuit of the spotted ones.
Now I am the most stoic and philosophical of fishermen. Failure is my friend.
I embrace it. I tell myself that really I love being out in nature and that catching a fish is merely incidental. I am always happiest when wandering the water margins of my favourite Lake, Bronte Lagoon, smack in the geographical centre of Tasmania.
Bronte is a place of wonderful light where big fluffy cumulus clouds dissolve in its clear waters and the surrounding trees and grasslands are illuminated with startling clarity. And the sunsets almost defy description, which is why I take so many pictures of them. Artists love it up there, and so do I, and for the same reasons.
But even my legendary patience was sorely tried when I walked down to the shore to discover that someone had taken the water away!
With only a week to go before the opening of the fishing season this premium trout water was high and dry! Hydro Tasmania had thoughtlessly converted my favourite lake to electricity and squirted it across Bass Strait to fire up the radiators and electric blankets of chilly old Melbourne.
I grew up, a Hydro kid on the plateau and I do understand the single-minded purpose of our state-owned power generator. I later remember, as a young reporter, the old Premier, ‘Electric Eric’ Reece telling me, “It would be a crime for any Tasmanian river to run to the sea without first passing through a turbine.”
So, yes, I get the ideology. But can I have my lake back please?
Trout fishing is worth an estimated $50,000,000 a year to the Tasmanian economy and that’s without any real Government attempt to promote it.
Ken Orr, a trout guide, who could catch a fish in a puddle in the middle of the road, has fished the plateau for half a century. He reckons with a little effort we could double the size of the tourist fishery, “but first we have to promote it.”
Ken pays his own way to Fishing Expos in Australia and overseas. “We have a unique fishery. It’s not necessarily the best in the world, but it’s the only one where you get to fish for trout you can see, finning and tailing in the shallows. That’s unusual because it’s not just fishing. It’s hunting. And you really can sell that.”
But right now, from my point of view, surveying the dismal prospect of the waterless shoreline flats of Bronte lagoon, it’s a dry argument.
It’s certainly one that has caused quite a bit of discontent in the Bronte Pub. The whole village, the shop, the pub and the various accommodation facilities, all depend on the tourism generated by the fishery.
“Everyone gets pretty pissed off when they take the water away,” says Shane Hedger, who runs the Bronte Store, where you can buy anything from a fly rod to an iron pot.
“Visiting fishermen get pretty dark when they come here and find the lake is empty. I tell them it might be full again tomorrow. It’s up and down like a yo-yo. The locals call it ‘The Bronte Tide’.”
The level of Bronte Lagoon and many of our other trout lakes, rise and fall dramatically in step with the peak power demands of the city of Melbourne.
Heat in summer, or a cold snap in winter, increases Victoria’s power demand from the Tasmanian grid. Shallow lakes like Bronte all but disappear overnight and so does the insect life and consequently the shallow feeding trout prized by fly fishers.
Of course everyone realises that Tasmania is earning a quid from selling our waterpower, but we would all like to think that there could be some compromise and some sustained environmental level achieved. Can a hydro-power industry and a high quality tourist trout fishery ever co-exist?
Ken Orr thinks so. “Only the big lakes like Gordon and the Great Lake are really storage lakes. The great little fishing lakes like Bronte are just ‘run of the river’ and they could be kept at a reasonable and steady environmental level without costing revenue. It just needs someone to care. And if we get it right then selling the trout fishery can become an export earner just like selling electricity.”
There are twenty five thousand fishing licenses sold in Tasmania every year, largely to locals, who most importantly, are also voters.
Accordingly, a new political organisation, the Shooters and Fishers Party are planning to make their voices heard at a start up meeting at the Grange in Campbell Town at 10AM on Saturday, August 8th.
I will see you there, unless there’s some water in my lake, in which case I will be too busy not catching trout.
