Littoral Zone #16 | Fly Fishing Australian Lakes and Beyond with Tom Jarman

Phil (2s): Welcome to the Littoral Zone podcast. I’m your host, Phil Rowley. The Littoral Zone, or Shoal area of the lake is a place where the majority of the action takes place. My podcast is intended to do the same, put you where the action is to help you improve your Stillwater fly fishing On each broadcast. I, along with guests from all over the world, will be providing you with information, tips, and tricks, flies, presentation techniques, along with different lakes or regions to explore. I hope you enjoy today’s podcast. Please feel free to email me with your still water related fly fishing questions and comments. Phil (43s): I do my best to answer as many as we can prior to each episode just before the main content. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy today’s show. If you’ve been listening to my earlier podcast, you might remember episode number eight, dryly Strategies and Tactics with Stillwaters, where I was joined by Jeff Perrin. If you haven’t listened to this podcast, I suggest you do, I’ll leave a link in the show notes section of this podcast. Jeff owns the Fly Fisher’s place in Sisters Oregon. Jeff mentioned a friend and fellow Stillwater Angler, Tom Jarman from Australia. During our discussions, Jeff suggested that I follow up and contact Tom for a future podcast episode. Phil (1m 24s): I followed Jeff’s advice, subscribe to Tom’s YouTube channel, and began following him through his Instagram account. After watching a few of Tom’s videos, I quickly realized that Tom is an outstanding fly fisher on both lakes and streams. In addition to fly fishing the lakes and streams in his native Australia, Tom is also an accomplished, competitive fly fisher, not only in his country but on the worldwide stage as well. He’s finished amongst the top 25 places in every tournament he has participated in, including a fourth place finish in Slovakia in 2023. Recently, Tom just won the 2024 Australian fly fishing Championships. As you will find out, Tom is an outstanding fly fisherman who shares his knowledge and experience freely. Phil (2m 9s): I’m thrilled to talk with him today about the strategies, tactics, and flies he uses whenever he fishes Stillwaters in Australia and worldwide. I believe you’re gonna enjoy our conversation. Well welcome Tom all the way from Australia. Thanks for joining me today. 1 (2m 27s): Thank you very much for having me. Phil (2m 28s): Yeah, it’s great to have you on board here. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself. I’ve got some notes here, but yeah, where you were born, where you grew up, where life took you, and especially the fly fishing aspects of your life. 1 (2m 43s): Yeah, sure. So I was born here in Australia, so Melbourne, which is the southern part of Australia. Actually, my family moved to England when I was very young, so my introduction to fishing and fly fishing was in the uk, moved back to Australia in 2000. So did most of my schooling here in Australia. Finished school, went to university or college for you guys. I studied a bachelor of environmental science, specialized in wildlife and conservation biology. And while I was studying that, that’s when I started guiding in Tasmania. So my summers were guiding and then the rest of the year was at college. I guess before that I, we’ve talked about a lot of my fishing background is competition, fly fishing, and I started that when I was 15. 1 (3m 28s): So fished, you know, ever since I was a little boy with my dad and played a lot of sport. Then I had some injuries and that opened the door to start doing some competition fishing, competition, fly fishing, and then, you know, that really just accelerated my skillset and my passion for the sport. And then that led into dieting over the summers. And then once I finished my degree, I was then allowed to do what I wanted to do. So I just, I didn’t actually go on and pursuing anything in that realm. I just, you know, kept coaching or guiding coaching, running clinics, writing out articles in a few magazines, contributing some books. And yeah, here we are now, I’m, I’m 31, so, and I’m just still plugging along in the industry, loving it. Phil (4m 12s): Good. So it was funny you said you were allowed to go do something you want, was that your parents said you’re gonna finish this thing and then you can do what you want. 1 (4m 20s): Yeah, yeah. I was allowed to do, they said, look, you can do whatever you want for a career, but you just have to go to, you know, go to college, go to university, get your degree and then you’ve at least, you know, got your fallback if you need. Yeah. And then pursue what you want. So it was just fly fishing all the way. Phil (4m 34s): Funny. My two sons were sort of the same way, you know, you need to have, because in today’s world, you know, when I graduate, I’m 62 now, God, I’m old, but 1 (4m 45s): That’s exactly double my age. Yeah. Phil (4m 47s): So you know, a high school education back then would get you a job nowadays if you don’t have that, you know, that post-secondary, as we call it here in North America education, you don’t even your resume or whatever, however you apply just doesn’t even get into the selection process. They just whittle you out. So you mentioned sports too. What did you play and how did you get hurt? ’cause I’ve got a similar life story too. 1 (5m 12s): I played a lot of soccer, so ah, football I was all in on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have to call it soccer ’cause in Australia we have football as Australian rules football. Yes. Phil (5m 22s): We played that in school a little bit. 1 (5m 24s): Yeah, Aussie rules. Yeah, yeah. Phil (5m 26s): Loved it. 1 (5m 27s): Yeah. So ever since like I was 11, it was, you know, training three to four days a week. I had two games on the weekend and then, you know, you hit that 14, 15 mark and you’re kind of like, okay, I think I want to, you know, pursue this. And you know, trial overseas looked to go to Scotland, China. At the time my club was sending some people to China and then I got a really bad ankle injury on my right ankle and then it was kind of like, hmm, I’m a bit of a liability now. Yeah. And then I just had injury after injury, so I kept playing soccer at a high standard here in Australia, but just never had the ability to go on. And as we’ve, you can probably tell I’m just ultra competitive. So yeah, it was a great outlet. Going into competition, fly fishing, Phil (6m 7s): What did you play? What was your position? 1 (6m 9s): So at my best, I was a really good right wing back, so I was quite a overlapping wing back, but you know, I played a lot of central midfield, like defensive midfield, controlling the tempo of the game. Phil (6m 21s): Yeah. I didn’t play it quite as your level. Then I got into other sports, then I was playing recreational softball for a company, dislocated my shoulder. Now I’ve done it eight times. I’ve dislocated my elbow playing ice hockey ’cause I thought I’d tried that. So I was, I always joke, I started writing checks my body wouldn’t cash. So I had to get out and I got into coaching ’cause my son was very much into soccer, my oldest one. And then got to about 17, 18, we were thinking about maybe he could get a scholarship and college, it’s very hard for Canadian soccer players to, you know, make it, you know, into the professional. We weren’t that disillusioned. But he said to me one day, And he was a striker, he says, I really don’t like to run. Phil (7m 1s): I went, well that’s a problem. 1 (7m 3s): That’s every striker though. Yeah. Phil (7m 5s): They don’t like to, they like kicking the ball in the net. Yeah, 1 (7m 8s): Yeah. They don’t wanna defend. They don’t have any responsibilities when they turn the ball over. Phil (7m 12s): He went on to play, you know, recreational men’s soccer and dropped back And he was a really good midfielder and then even went and played some central defense. And because as a former striker, he kinda knew what they wanted And he would deny them, that kind of thing. He, you know, I had a friend of mine who was a coach said, strikers can often make good defenders ’cause they know what to take away, you know, and play. So do you follow any of the big teams in the world? 1 (7m 37s): Look, not as much anymore because the time difference is very challenging over here. So yeah, it’s, I was always, when we lived in England, we lived in West London, so the closest team was Chelsea, Stanford Bridge, their home team was across the road. So I was a member of the blues, which was, you know, the, the club there. But then when I moved back here and then at school and by all my soccer fans, I got bullied because that was when Roman and Brach took over and all the money got spent and they became really, really good. So I got bullied and abused for just apparently jumping on the bandwagon. But I’d actually lived there. Phil (8m 13s): Well that’s me. I was born in Liverpool, so you can guess who I follow. And I am a, yeah, devout Liverpool fan. And I actually subscribe to a, a web channel we call fubu over here it’s called. And I watch, I’ll be watching Liverpool Southampton tomorrow, which is the time of the broadcast. It’s mid-November now, so, oh yeah. I’m a, a live and die scouser and yeah, so anyway, we’re digressing badly. 1 (8m 38s): It’s a shame you don’t have the access. Phil (8m 39s): No, I know, I know. It was handy when I had had it. I was like, wow. It was handy when I had it, but puberty took that away from me ’cause I was born in Liverpool so that happened. So, okay, let’s get back to fly fishing. We’ll be all over the place here. But you’re also, you designed some flies too. I see when you, because you’ve got a very active YouTube channel with some excellent content. I strongly recommend anybody listening to this podcast to check out Tom’s channel. We’ll put links in the show notes, but you’ve got just under 8,000 subscribers and growing and 196 videos and over a million views. So that’s pretty, I notice your view, you know, people are definitely interested in what you’re putting out there both on Rivers and your lake stuff, which I really like. 1 (9m 20s): Yeah, so I mean I try to do a mix of the content on the YouTube stuff. It actually, I started doing it when I moved back to mainland Australia to Victoria. ’cause I kind of wanted to be like, Hey, I’m, I’m back home now so I’m gonna be, you know, guiding and working here. And I just wanted to show people what the fishing is like in Victoria because in Australia or down here you hear a lot about New Zealand, you hear a lot about Tasmania and you don’t hear a lot about Victoria and it’s amazing. So many people who watch my stuff still think that all of the stuff’s from Tasmania, but it’s actually on mainland Australia. So there is so much to do, you know, here both rivers and lakes and yeah, it feeds in, in quite nicely because I have like my fly range with the Fly Life magazine shop. 1 (10m 8s): Yeah. So all the whole premise behind working with Fly Life, which is fly life magazine’s, like the biggest fly fishing magazine in the southern hemisphere, it’s Australia and New Zealand. And the whole premise was, you know, over here in Australia our fisheries are slightly different and you could appreciate how, you know, even from Stillwater fishing in where you are in Canada to the styles of flies you’d be using there, be it the size, the shape of the hook, the form of the hook, the gauge, the weights you’d be using are gonna be vastly different to in the uk, which would be different to here. And yeah, we wanted to kind of design a fly range, which is what I did to kind of suit the Australian context to kind of go, okay, look, all of those, the flies you can get from America and the UK are great, but there are little subtleties that I may fly are in this size rather than that size. 1 (10m 59s): And, and that was the whole premise there of going, okay look, they’re very, very similar flies, but these are purpose kind of built for this, you know, Australian context. Yeah, Phil (11m 8s): I, I under, I understand that totally. My first book was a dedicated still water fly pattern book because most of the still water flies were transfers lateral from rivers and streams. Right. That have been adapted for and they worked. But there was times, as you’ve talked about, when you need something a little more specific to handle a situation in front of you. So yeah, I totally understand that. But your flies have, one of the things I wanna mention, I, I actually have both books and I, I’ve got the original, it’s Australia’s best trout flies. So there’s the first volume and then they did a revisited volume I think it is and your flies are in there. So I was very pleasantly surprised, you know, to see that and congratulations ’cause that, that’s pretty cool. So ah, 1 (11m 47s): Thanks Phil (11m 48s): Because I, I, yeah, I tie a number of your flies. I’m just not saying that just ’cause I’m on here. But that Shrek I love, I think that’s just a very cool look and fly that kind of, you know, just uncomplicated and works. Right. 1 (12m 1s): I gotta give a shout out to Joe Riley. So he was, you know, arguably one of Australia’s best ever competition fly fishermen and that’s his fly. He’s a Tasmanian angler And we have so many galacia which are like our native bait fish over here and is just the most phenomenal fly. And it has all of the, you know, the famous trout colors in it, the metallic green, the metallic gold. Then it has that dams Lee look and it just works everywhere. And you know, at the World Championships in Colorado in 2016, my first ever event, first ever session in world championships was actually on Sylvan Lake. And sure enough Shrek was the fly that caught most of my fish there. 1 (12m 42s): And it’s been, you know, it’s wherever I go in the world, if there are wild trout, it’s just a fly that you can fish in every size from you know, a 16 to a size 10. Yeah. Phil (12m 52s): I’ll probably be taking some number tens with Feed Australia. I mean not Australia, Argentina, I’ll let you know. Yeah. What they do. And again, everybody listening, Tom does a great video on his channel on how to tie that along with a bunch of other flies so we’re not talking about something you perhaps can’t get your hands on, create demand without supply. 1 (13m 11s): I know, yeah. And I know a lot of dudes like, I’m not sure if you know Russ Miller who used to be in the American team. Phil (13m 16s): Yeah, I know Rus, I know Russ well. Yeah, 1 (13m 18s): He uses the, he after the World championships in Tasmania in 2019, everyone who fished there was like, oh my god, trek this fly is amazing. And Russ has taken it back And he fishes it with, with just olive booby eyes. So he’s just, you know, taken it, put his spin on it for his fisheries over there. So yeah, there’s so much you can do with it. Phil (13m 38s): No, you have some great, so let’s talk about your competitive year. You know, in my research in all the tournaments you’ve been in top 25 in the world and you were fourth in Slovakia in 2023. So that’s, congratulations quite an accomplishment. You were the two, one of the members of the 2015 winning team in the Oceania fly fishing Championships. You’ve been to Colorado in the States, the Dolomites in Italy, Tasmania, Astoria in Spain, Lipski Nicholas in Slovenia. Hopefully I said those right. And you just finished winning the Australian championships again. So well done. You said you’re competitive by nature. I’m I’m sure that’s to do with your previous sports background. Phil (14m 18s): What do you like about competitive fishing? ’cause it’s kind of in North America here, a bit of a love hate relationship with it. I think some fly anglers over here, you know, don’t like competitive fishing. There’s a growing competitive, you know, coming more and more commonplace here. I think some in North America it’s a little bit, perhaps some of the conventional bass tournaments may turn fly fishers off. But I think as anglers we’re all pretty competitive at most times. Especially if dinner and drinks depend on, if you’re out with a bunch of mates dinner and drinks is on the, the one who catches the least amount of fish, I think the competition is on. 1 (14m 54s): Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. There’s a lot of things I love about it aren’t what you’d expect. I mean obviously it is one of the best ways to learn and develop as an angler because the how it works from both bank competitions on a lake and river competitions, you are allocated a beat. You are allocated a section of water for say three hours only you can fish that and you have to do the best you can of it. So you are really competing against yourself. You’re not competing against other people because they’re on other water. And it forces you to catch fish in scenarios that and in water types that you wouldn’t normally choose to fish on a social day of fishing. ’cause you’d be like, oh well I won’t fish that shallow, you know, slow glide because there’s a beautiful run coming in up here. 1 (15m 37s): So I really enjoy that element ’cause it challenges you, makes you catch fish in scenarios you wouldn’t normally fish and you just learn so much because of it. You learn from yourself from other angles on the water. At the same time it’s one sport that, you know, you don’t get feedback from other, you know, people performing around you. Like I say with golf, you know, you turn up to a, a, you know, a hole and it’ll say par four and you kind of can go, okay, well this is where I’m at. Like if I’m, you know, shooting five on this bogey, you know, that’s not too bad. And I think it gives you, it really gives you a benchmark to you know, get a feel for how you are going and your development. But also I love the fact that when I actually, so the nationals just gone, I was really busy in the lead up. 1 (16m 20s): I’d had, you know, I’d just bought a house moved in, I had a lot of guiding on so I wasn’t doing the fishing for myself. And I actually loved that, you know, during the competition I had three hours on one piece of water. There’s no one else around me. You know, you’ve got your referee on the bank, your controller who measures your fish, but it’s just you and the water. And it’s interesting people go, I like to be a, you know, to fish to be on my own and just to fish and in a three hour competition session I’m just so immersed in that piece of water and trying to maximize it, catch the fish I can, you know, I just completely zone out of life. I’m just solely focused on what I need to do on the water. 1 (17m 1s): I’ll dry fly fish that little bit. I’ll you know, nim fun to dry that pool. I’ll nim the top bit there, I’ll swing a streamer through that hole. It’s really immersive. Yeah. And then afterwards you know, you can kind of switch off. You come out it’s very social. You see how the other guys went during the session and then that afternoon bang you’ve got another three hours where you zone in and yeah and it’s fantastic. Phil (17m 23s): So in regards to Stillwater fishing, what are some of the the biggest memorable lessons you’ve learned on your competitive that somebody who perhaps doesn’t want to compete, can’t compete, whatever the reasons, but certainly can use to their, you know, sort of social fishing as you call it? 1 (17m 38s): Yeah, so that’s a great one. It’s hard. I mean you know the one thing I think about lakes, well I think we’ll talk about it later. Boat fishing versus bank fishing. Yeah. So I apologize if I’m jumping ahead. No, that’s fine. We’re just, it’s interesting in a lot of the competitions are from a boat, so you are actually paired with a competitor. So you are both competing against each other but you are in the same boat. So there’s an element of actually working together to try and maximize your boat’s performance. But you know, one thing that is amazing over here is we don’t necessarily have huge fish density in a lot of our fisheries and lakes are just patchy ’cause they function in very different ways to rivers, wind concentrates, food, other things. 1 (18m 27s): So what I would say is I think location is so important. That is one of the biggest things, your location on the water. And over here I guess, you know we have a lot of bait fish driven fisheries and may fly driven fisheries and you can fish reasonably quickly from a boat to cover water to find fish. And it is amazing how much water you cover for absolutely nothing. And then when you find them, both you and your boat partner are catching them even if you are fishing different techniques. So it’s something that I always keep with me. If you are a bank angler and you are, you know, you are wishing you are fishing from a boat because you feel like from a boat you have more access to more water. What I do when I’m on the bank, often socially fishing is I try to visualize, okay, if I was in a boat setting a drift, I would’ve fished this shoreline in about 20 minutes and I would’ve expected to have caught a fish or have not caught a fish. 1 (19m 19s): And yet when we’re on the bank, people spend two hours there, say yeah. So I think the one big takeaway you can think about is water coverage and location of the fish and just your read on the lake from, okay, I wanna make sure I fish a windwood shore. So where the wind’s blowing on, I wanna make sure I fish a calm shore where there’s no, where there’s no wind. ’cause there may be some mid hatching, some cat. I wanna make sure I fish off a point where some current’s coming around when a fish off a drop off, you know, fish over some weed beds, fish over some rock. So this is a bit of a ramble, but giving yourself time parameters around it as well because in a competition session we get three hours on a lake to catch ’em and sadly you can’t afford to spend two hours bogged down in one area. 1 (20m 4s): So I often, even when I’m guiding or when I’m fishing in a competition, I have my watch on and I often go, okay, well this shoreline looks amazing. There’s a few weed beds here, I’m gonna give myself half an hour to fish that then I’m gonna jump over, you know, onto the other side. Do some short drifts onto the windward shore again, another half an hour and once you hit some fish, obviously all of that can change. But I think giving yourself, you know, a, a structure to your day is really important. And when you’re on the bank it’s very easy to get bored or to bog down in your water but you just keep moving. You know, keep moving, give yourself a system to work to rather than just aimlessly going. And you’ll find that people often go, it’s a bit boring on the bank ’cause you know you’re just flogging away or this or that. 1 (20m 47s): But I kind of look at being on the bank and I’m like, I really don’t have enough time in the day ’cause I’ve gotta fish that point down there. I’ve gotta fish that leash or up there. I’ve gotta get into the wind down there. There’s a beautiful series of weed beds over there. There’s some rocky boulders over here. So you just run outta time. 2 (21m 3s): Since 19 72, 4 wheel campers has been building tough, lightweight campers designed to fit almost any truck. Whether you’re after something minimal like me with the Project M or looking for a fully equipped camper ready for your next off-grid adventure. Four wheel campers has a solution for every outdoor enthusiast. You can head over to four wheel campers.com right now and use the builder tool to see which topper slide in or flatbed is ideal for you. Pescador on the fly offers a full range of fly fishing gear for any angler at any budget. With premium rods delivered directly to you. The L ray G six is the most packable high performance fly rod on the market performing like a four piece rod but with unmatched portability in six pieces and you can get 10% off your next order right now if you use the code wet fly swing at pescador on the fly.com. 2 (21m 52s): Never fly without your G six. Discover the Elra series and more at pescador on the fly.com. Phil (21m 59s): It’s funny, I think sometimes when you’re fishing from the bank you want to be in the boat and when you’re in the boat you’re looking at that shore going, boy I’d like to not just drift by this like you said in a limited amount of time and stop there and fish that we’re never happy. We always wanna be somewhere else. 1 (22m 13s): Oh it’s so funny and you know the biggest thing in competitions in the boat and it was the same at the nationals just gone. Yeah. When you’re setting a drift, everyone wants to be on the inside casting at the bank, you know, that is the gold a lot of the time because from a confidence point of view you feel better fishing at something. Yes. But when you’re on the bank you are trying to fish out to the middle a lot of the time. Well we Phil (22m 35s): Are, ’cause we tended in our lakes we fish a lot of anchored techniques, lock style and we’ll talk about that in a second. It’s getting more and more popular in certain situations. But we’ll anchor perhaps on the deep side for stealth so the fish can’t see us And we can fish that shoal area between us and the shore without disturbing the fish. And you, like you say, we’re either fishing straight at that shore or we’re fishing parallel to it, you know, along the edge of a drop off where fisher cruising or something like that. So yeah, we’re always seem to be enough, you know, I’d rather be there than where I am currently. Right. So 1 (23m 6s): Definitely, you know, and you don’t need a cast far, that’s the probably the biggest thing, especially if you’re on the bank for our fisheries. I mean we don’t, lakes aren’t overly deep so you don’t need a cast far to get that depth. And I think one of the, you know, the common mistakes you see is people fishing too long and you know, if they do get that taken, that opportunity at distance, your line control’s not necessarily there to always hook that fish. So, you know, starting short I think as well is super, super important. Yeah. And Phil (23m 34s): I find too, sometimes you cast long and you’re, you know, most of the insects war feeding and lakes tent, they’re not, you know, they don’t have any rockets strapped to them. They’re pretty slow moving creatures and you’re doing that slow retrieve. Your fly is on the bottom and you’re not fishing anymore. You just don’t get that effective retrieve. ’cause over time your fly is gonna continue sinking. And all that casting you did and my experiences in Argentina when you’re standing it’s all fishing from shore because it’s so windy down there. I joke if you went out there in lock style, you’d die, you’d get rolled over and pounded against the rocks. It’d be nothing. There’d be nothing left of you. But the guy, they all want you casting, you know, not quite parallel but on an acute angle ’cause that’s where the fish are in cruising that wave action you talked about that windward shore, it’s churning up food and you watch these giant swim through and all those scuds are just like, you know the, I always joke like the turtles in Finding Nemo all in the current spinning around having a great old time. Phil (24m 28s): And these, these travelers, they’re gliding through like basking sharks. They don’t even move. They just kind of ooze through the water and they just, whatever they see. Yeah. Right. And yeah, it’s exactly what you talk about. So we’ll come back to your lakes in a second. Let me, let’s talk about a little bit about gear and tactics you like to the gear you like to use. We’ll talk about some dryly stuff, washing line, sinking line, and then we’ll come back to the lock style bank style and then maybe sort of summarize it by sort of how you, the local lakes you like to fish and give a little bit of a, give yourself a shout out to the waters you fish. How’s that 1 (24m 59s): Sounds perfect. Okay. Phil (25m 2s): All right. So let’s talk about your, the rod. What rod weights you’re using. Everybody likes to talk gear, let rod weights lengths, those kind of things. Just go ramble. 1 (25m 11s): Perfect. All right. So it’s definitely first of all has to, for me 10 foot, you know, I love 10 foot. The main reason for that is managing one, you have a longer lever to cast with. You have a longer lever to manage your flies when they are close to the boat when you’re fishing the hang when you’re, you know, if you’re trying to manipulate your flies close to you. And you can also manage, did I say longer leaders? You can manage longer leaders and greater spacings between your flies. Yep. So that is a huge one 10 foot, I mean 10 foot six weight is, it’s a hard length and weight to beat. So I like the 10 foot six weight zone. I also use a 10 foot seven weight a lot when I’m fishing streamers and just slightly. 1 (25m 56s): And when I say streamers, not like I know in America you guys have like, you know, I’m not talking articulated streamers, giant streamers. When I talk about streamers I’m Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m talking about like a five centimeter long streamer. That’s an Australia, that’s a stream we use here. Phil (26m 10s): I think that’s one of the people, sorry. One of the things in our waters when people come over from river and fishing are used to fishing, you know, seven inch articulated and they say Okay, we’re gonna fish streamers. Well our streamers here imitate leeches and small bait fish. So they’re, you know, they’re that five meter two or three inches long, like a size six is a big streamer for us. We’re mostly each and tens. 1 (26m 32s): Yeah, I don’t think I even have a six over here. It’s too much. I Phil (26m 35s): Haven’t used them much in years we’ve gone smaller and smaller. It seems to be more effective. 1 (26m 39s): Yeah, I, I do like a 10 foot seven weight and then I also use, sometimes if I’m comp fishing off the bank, I’ll actually use a 10 foot seven weight or a 10 foot eight weight and I underline it so I can cast further. ’cause that allows me to aer realize more line and I can cast further. You know, you can cast 110 feet with a, not that you often need to in bank competition, sometimes the fish push out and out and out. So under like using a six, seven weight line on an eight weight allows you to cast a lot further because your rod can handle the weight of that line before it buckles. And I also on really windy occasions on some of my lakes here in winter, I do like the 10 foot seven weight, do eight weight because it is a lot stiffer. 1 (27m 22s): So when you are fishing in the weed wind and casting in the wind, it’s just more resilient to it. It doesn’t get buffeted blown around. And then also when you’re hanging your flies you are a lot quicker on the strike ’cause the ru actually doesn’t flex kind of counterintuitive to it doesn’t cushion the tip it or anything. I just almost wanna stick. So the moment something touches my fly, if I turn my wrist, that actually sets the hook on it. So, but look, as I said, 10 foot rod must have, if you can’t get that nine foot six is still is still a nice length. And then yeah, six, seven weight is probably is bang on. Phil (27m 59s): Yeah, we’re very similar here. I think sometimes in Stillwater fishing we have in North America there’s such popularity of fishing, you know, nine foot five weights is, you know, some people said that’s the only rod you ever need. And it’s like I don’t even take one of those, you know? Yeah. 1 (28m 14s): It’s an InBetween weight. Yeah. Phil (28m 16s): We use, you know, I’m a, you know, when I was a younger, more energetic I would, I remember my first competition I went in, I fished a 10 foot five weight my first session I was exhausted. There’s a lot of, you know, when you’re fishing lock style there’s a lot more casting and you know, moving and and casting than there is sitting still and fishing under an indicator or a b as you call it when you’re fishing social. Yeah, I, I stepped it up right away and, and sixes and sevens. And we’re also starting to do with some of our bigger lakes, pyramid lake for those big cutthroat and down in Argentina on those, we’re actually starting to use a little two handed switch. It’s just better in the wind ’cause you’re just doing a big roll cast. You’re not doing a lot because there’s high banks and you know, a lot of things that, you know, overhead casting, just one big roll cast and get it out there and and a lot of times we’re fishing under indicators are fishing very, very slowly. Phil (29m 5s): So they’re sort of becoming, I’m starting to use those a little bit more. I don’t know if you’ve tried any of that there but you know, my 10 footers work just fine as well. 1 (29m 13s): Yeah. So there’s actually one exception which I, I didn’t mention there at times and it happened on one of my local lakes here. You know, in really calm conditions when the fish get really tough, when there’s a lot of pressure, if I do need to fish lighter tip it on the lake. And this was the case that the world championships just gone in France in the Pyrenees on those high alpine lakes where you are actually fishing for very spooky fish with tiny dries eyes or very small nims. We were fishing six seven and atex tippets. So the lightest you’d I’ve ever fished on a lake before. And the reason being is if you are fishing a really small dry, having you know, thick tippet going to it, that tow point in that hinge is just absolutely awful. 1 (29m 58s): Your tipt really needs to scale with the size of the flight a lot of the time, especially in those calm conditions in the wind you can get away with it a lot more ’cause there’s a lot more going on. So at the worlds I actually fished a nine foot six four weight and a nine foot forward on the lake. So that is the only time I’ll fish something a lot lighter as if I need to fish lighter tippet because the conditions are so tough or the fish are so tough and you just need a rod that’ll protect that tippet when you strike and set the hook. So that is the only exception. But that is like a 1% of the time, you know, like until then I haven’t really encountered that around the world. Phil (30m 35s): So next to Rods, one thing that, you know, any of the seminars I do or people I talk to is leaders. Everybody just stops in their tracks and becomes obsessed with leader formulas of construction. Our leaders I find lakes are not, are relatively straightforward. So what’s your basic setup like for pulling lake subsurface? 1 (30m 54s): So pulling subsurface is pulling streamers or small wet flies or any weighted nymph. I actually go level so no taper so I’ll just go straight through because you know, we all like to think subsurface that are flies there, there’s this beautiful straight line between our fly line and and our flies and that’s just not the reality. So there are curves and waves with the way the water pushes and pulls. So having a thick tapered leader subsurface for me is a negative because it puts you slightly more out of contact with your flies. So if I have, whenever I have a beaded fly on the end, that’ll give me the kick to turn over the cast. ’cause there is so much energy going through a six or seven weight rod. 1 (31m 36s): Even if you have, you know, a 15 foot straight, you know four x liter, the like four x fluer carbon the whole way through, it’ll always turn over. And especially for us on the lakes we’re off, we’re fishing from boats, mainly fishing lock style with fishing downwind or at angles downwind. So it’ll always kick and turn over and even into the wind it will kick and turn over ’cause that that weighted fly on the, on the point on the bottom will kick and punch over. Yeah. So that is, if I’m pulling level fluorocarbon the whole way through when I’ll use tapers is when I’m needing to turn over unweighted flies, you know, for accuracy. So if I’m fishing a single dry or a team of two or three dries, naturally you need a taper to transfer the energy from your fly line down your lead to turn over that relatively unweighted fly. 1 (32m 27s): So often, a lot of the time I’ll use about four or five foot of a tapered liter. So you take a nine foot liter, I’ll chop a bit of the butt off ’cause that’s just really thick and is kind of irrelevant ’cause it’s the same diameter as your fly line almost half the time. Almost. Yeah, almost. It’s like 80 pound or something. And then I’ll take a little bit off the tip end ’cause I only want that section of tapered liter, which is tapering. That’s the whole point of having it that it tapers. As soon as that tapered liter levels out in that bottom end, the thin end, I chop it. Once that taper stops, I pop a tipper ring on there and then from there down I’ll fish my tipper. Phil (33m 7s): Yeah. So, but I think more and more people are, are are going that way. I think the big thing everybody worries about, at least I talk to people over here is we tend to fish a lot longer leaders in lakes than they’re used to in, in rivers and streams. If they’ve come from that, you know, a nine a 12 foot liter is long and we’re kind of like wow that’s just not even, that’s to my, you know, I’m not Joe almost to my first fly. It’s not really that way but you know, they get worried about tangles. So any sort of thoughts of advice you can have for people that are concerned about fishing that level setup because you’re fishing your, your multiple flies off independent tags too, right? You’re not Yes, off North America here tying to the bend, which I personally don’t like to do. 1 (33m 46s): Ah, that’s the worst. Phil (33m 47s): Yeah. For it’s probably the least tangled prone ’cause all the flies are following along like a train. But after that it loses its appeal pretty quick for 1 (33m 56s): Me. Do you guys have kebabs kebabs? Do you have, do you know what a kebab is? It’s like the skew, it’s a skewer. It’s meat on a skewer. Phil (34m 4s): Oh yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah I was thinking the fishing term, yes. It’s 1 (34m 7s): Like you’re expecting them to like inhale a piece of meat off the middle of a kebab. Yes. And it just doesn’t work. Phil (34m 16s): No, because 1 (34m 17s): It, a trout doesn’t necessarily bite a fly. They inhale a fly. So how is it meant to go with the fish? Yeah. If it’s in line like that. Yeah it just doesn’t, it just fundamentally it doesn’t work Phil (34m 27s): Well and I just think even the, the action, if you have a, a fly with lots of action and you tie something to its back end it, the fly doesn’t move in the same way it is does if it’s independent. I joke it’s like putting a towing your boat with a Porsche. It’s not the same car when it’s towing your boat. You know, if the boat represents that other fly you’ve tied on the bend, right? 1 (34m 51s): Yeah. So yeah. So I’ll tie all my flies. If I’m fishing multi fly rigs, they’re always off a dropper. So I use a triple surgeons not to tie off and I use the bottom tag. The length of that. Obviously a huge advantage as you’d know is your ability to change flies is just fantastic ’cause you don’t need to change your whole rig for that. But the length to eliminate tangles on that, it’s very important that your drop of length is scales with the diameter of tip it you’re using and the size of the fly you are fishing. So if you are using a larger fly off your dropper, you want to shorten that dropper because there’s gonna be more resistance in the air, which makes it more prone to tangling. 1 (35m 31s): Likewise, if you are using thinner tipt, it is gonna be subtler. So it is gonna be more likely to spin and potentially tangle around the dropper. So it’s just, if you’re a fishing light tip it or a big fly shorten your dropper up, you know, to maybe, I don’t even know how long that is. 10 centimeters. Yeah. Phil (35m 49s): So we’re still, we’re kind of metric here in Canada, but I’m in the wrong, I changed, well no I 1 (35m 55s): Changed. Yeah I didn’t even know what Phil (35m 56s): It grade seven. So I’m half metric, half standard. A lot of colleagues in this, they’re, you know, full imperial measures still. So we usually say about four to six inches, you know, for a dropper length. I joke some days I could fish a, you know, a 12 inch tippet and have no problems and other days I couldn’t fish one inch, you know, I couldn’t fish two and a half centimeters. I’d have a tangle. I just, you have those bad days where it’s just not your day. 1 (36m 20s): Yeah. So there’s that. And then also when you’re fishing a multi fly rig on a, you know, for me a six weight or a seven weight rod is a lake rod where a three, a two, three and a four weight rod is a river rod. Yeah. When you are fishing your late gear, the energy going through your fly line is so much greater. And to make the cast a lot of the time you don’t need the world’s tightest loop. If you are fishing a multi fly rig, you can just open that loop up and just don’t have your flies going near one another. So obviously that’s one option to avoid tangles. Another one, you can always use a constant tension cast or like an oval cast, make sure you’re clearing your flies so they’re not tracking on the same lines. 1 (37m 2s): So there’s no risk of wind blowing into them. But I, it, it’s surprising everyone that I take out for a day on the lake that is kind of like scared of these, you know, multi fly rigs and, and droppers at the end of the day you ask ’em if they noticed it and everyone’s like, oh I just completely forgot. Phil (37m 18s): Now if they’ve got good casting skills, you know, smooth application of power, good rod, stop all the basics you’re taught casting the leader in flies are just along for the ride, right? There’s 1 (37m 29s): Yeah. Phil (37m 29s): Yeah. And I think there’s also a benefit to the 10 footers helping you throw a more open loop. Because if you look at, I sat down once and did this, if you take a, the the rod path that a nine foot travels with your, the same motion and you did the same motion with a 10 foot rod because of that extra foot, the casting arc is going to be more open. It’s gonna help you throw that more open loop just by the length of the rod. 1 (37m 55s): 100%. Yeah. You’ve just got a longer lever so the tiniest movement of your wrist or your forearm or however you like to cast is gonna, you know, if you take that out to the tip, it’s gonna move it further. Phil (38m 6s): Yeah. Oh that’s cool. So let’s talk, you know, some of the techniques you mentioned dropper talk, washing line, very, very popular in the competitive world and I use it a lot. I love fishing washing line tactics from the surface to the bottom of the lake. Depending on what, what’s required. You use ’em a lot too. 1 (38m 23s): Well yeah. So it’s interesting believe it or not. No. No. Okay. No I don’t, we don’t seem to wash, we don’t washing line much over here. You know, I’ll very occasionally do it with, you know, you might fish a blob on the point and a two nymphs above it or you’ll fish a fab like a foam. Foam blo or a boo. I love, that’s my favorite. That’s my favorite Boyo and fly. Yeah. Yeah. Or sometimes like a dry is good on the point but I find a lot of the time if our fish are up and they’re looking to, if you are trying to like our, we talked about before we went live like our lakes over here aren’t overly deep a lot of the time. So you know, 5, 6, 7 foot, 10 foot, like that’s your water. 1 (39m 7s): The fish are often down around the weed or they’re up. There’s not generally a huge spread and a lot of the time on our lakes, like a couple of lakes north of me here like lake ee and I’ve actually, I’ve got forward facing sonar on my boat just so I can at least watch the behavior and I have an understanding of how they behave and it’s very rare that our fish hold outta depth. So they’ll very rarely hold on that lake for example two foot beneath the surface and stay there. They are pretty much down and then they come up and eat and then they go down again. So often I find if I was going to washing line, because I think the fish are feeding really high a lot of the times our fish just want to eat a dry. 1 (39m 51s): Yep. Can’t that our fish just love eat, especially Tasmania’s like that the fish just love a dry so much, so much of their food is above them. So if they’re up they will eat a dry and doesn’t matter if it’s sunny, it’s cloudy, calm, windy, they’ll just eat it. So a lot of the time, you know those scenarios where you’d go, I think the fish are feeding quite high, just a lot easier to just throw the dry because it’s more pleasant, more enjoyable. I agree. So yeah, I don’t washing line heaps for that reason. Okay. And then if the fish are at a very specific set depth rather than washing lining to them, I’ll often fish the bung because indicator I can just indicator Yeah, yeah. 1 (40m 35s): An indicator you can get the fly to that depth, eliminate all human error. ’cause ultimately we are our own worst enemies. So you can take, you know, no matter how tense you might be getting as you’re fishing going, come on, I really want to catch one here. Sometimes you might be speeding up your retrieve or slowing down your retrieve, which is affecting your depth fishing. An indicator of the bung just allows you to go that’s, I want that three foot down and I just want it down now and I want keep it down. Cool. Okay. What about your And watching my having said that, sorry, I was gonna say yeah like when I was in the UK after the world championships just gone in France on lake of man teeth, like the rainbows were like didn’t want to eat off the top super well and they were like a foot down and you could sometimes see them when the sun came out. 1 (41m 25s): Yeah. So in that scenario you kind of have to washing line ’cause you need your, you don’t want your flies dropping beneath them because they’re just not gonna eat it. So you know, it’s a phenomenal technique when it’s right. I just over here there are times when it is good but it’s not always the best way. Okay, Phil (41m 43s): Well that’s good and that’s why, you know, I’ve invited you on here for that, the different ways of doing things ev we all learn from that. So you’re dropper spacing. Do you have any, any rules whether you’re fishing near the surface or deeper about keeping or you’re always keeping them roughly the same, same distance apart. Any factors in there you think about? 1 (41m 60s): They’re pretty much, you know, if you’re fishing on a floating line or a sinking line and I’m fishing slowly or retrieving flies, it’ll pretty much be at a standard five or six feet apart. Yeah. That’s very common for us over here. And one of the, I like the space or if I’m fishing two flies I love two flies, 10 foot apart. So 10 foot from my fly line to my first fly, 10 foot to my point fly. And you know, one of the reasons behind that is I fish love the drop, they love the plop of the flies hitting the water. It’s one of ’cause our fish, like I said, are so focused up, they are very like our fish just look up naturally the majority of their food is up. 1 (42m 42s): So that plop and the initial landing of the plot is so important and if you can have a greater spacing of your flies on the initial landing yeah then you’re essentially covering more water and you can pull ’em from a greater range to your flies. So for that reason, yeah I like to have them spaced as far as reasonably as as is manageable and a lot as well. Our lakes are quite, our lakes are very clear so you know you don’t like if they are clo the closer they are together, well you’re covering the same fish with the same fly anyway. Yeah. So I like having them well spaced. It’s just a little bit more natural And you know when you go to at Europe at the world championships on the lakes, it’s very common for them all to fish stream as one meter path. 1 (43m 26s): Which is like, seems crazy short but it works so, so well over there. So I generally find over here further apart is better. And then also our fish are hor our fish fight so dearly and if your flies, if you space your flies close together a lot Here. I was just talking with a friend Josh actually the other day at the Nationals. ’cause we were talking about why in Europe on a lot of their lakes they’ll fish, you know, three streamers, one meter apart and a lot of the times you can get double if the fish are tightly bunched together. You get more doubles when you flies are close together. Yep, we do. Yeah. Which doesn’t, we don’t get many doubles over here, but as soon you hook a good brown over here, like a 40 centimeter brown or or bigger, it just rolls. 1 (44m 11s): You know, you get it close to the boat and it rolls and your flies just come back in a giant mess. So having them spaced that little bit further apart is a lot cleaner as well. When you fighting the fish. Phil (44m 21s): Yeah. Do you fish two flies or three flies? 1 (44m 24s): So in Victoria where I live, it’s two flies is the rules. So the the state rules, like in British Columbia, it’s one fly in BC isn’t it? Is that right in Canada? Phil (44m 34s): One fly in BC and then everywhere else in North America, the best of my knowledge, you’re allowed multiple flies where I live I can fish up to three. Yeah I know other states and provinces it’s two so you make a great point there. You gotta check the local ra I most of the times fish too. It works. Yeah. I just find sometimes that third fly just adds a whole nother level of tangle in there some days. 1 (44m 55s): Yeah. So where two flies in Victoria, new South Wales is the state north of me where Sydney is. That’s two flies as well. Tasmania is three flies. But competition fishing, we actually have a, you know, everywhere. So recreationally here, two flies. So that’s generally what I fish. And so if I’m fishing, two flies like two nims or two streamers, two flies, 10 foot apart is beautiful. Phil (45m 21s): Do you compress the fly distance at all if you’re fishing to surface rising fish or is it still the same four to five feet apart? 1 (45m 29s): No, it’s about the same distance. Yeah. Phil (45m 31s): Sometimes I compress it if I’m just trying to make sure my flies again, that plop of a surface feeding fish, he’s looking up if two flies land in closer vicinity, there might be a better chance of he or she taking one of them. ’cause just two pieces of food landed in the area as opposed to one and the other one may land outside of of their their view or something. But you know, it’s just a thought. 1 (45m 53s): Definitely. It definitely would work. Yeah. If a lot of the time if I’m covering a rising game of flies, I just go one big long slow draw and they artificially love the animation of the dries. Yeah. It moves and they just straight up to it. So Phil (46m 6s): Yeah. Even if the bug you’re imitating doesn’t move like a mayfly usually just sits still. It’s the, I always tell I same way give it a pull but it doesn’t move. It doesn’t matter. It’s that if there’s lots of bugs on the surface too. It separates yours from all the naturals. Right. You wanna be seen. 1 (46m 22s): I fly fishing is both on lakes and rivers is probably one of the most underdone things I see. Yeah, because fish love it. Like it’s just like you said, it’s different. They’re inquisitive, it moves, you know, insects move. It’s not ab, it’s not that abnormal and it draws their attention 2 (46m 40s): Step into the world where the river whispers and the fishing is nothing short of legendary. This year I ventured into the heart of Eastern Idaho’s Yellowstone Teton territory where the fish were larger than life and the waters held the secrets of the best fly fishing out West Yellowstone Teton territory is not just a location, it’s a gateway to adventures that will etch themselves into your memory with crystal clear rivers like the Henry’s fork and the South fork of the snake and enough lakes to keep you going all year long. Make your way to Yellowstone Teton territory and embark on a journey to one of North America’s finest fly fishing destinations. Whether you’re planning your trip now or just dreaming it up, the YTT is where those dreams turn into reality. 2 (47m 23s): Remember Yellowstone Teton territory, that’s Teton. T-E-T-O-N. It’s time to experience eastern Idaho for yourself and support this podcast at the same time. Phil (47m 35s): Okay, let’s talk lock style a little bit. Again. The culture in Western Canada at least is a lot of anchored techniques where you sit, you anchor and you fish that way and it’s very effective. But I think with the increasing popularity of competitions and just the way the world works nowadays, more open communication, more the internet, those kind of things, lock style. I see you do a lot of that on your channel and I like it. I really enjoy it. Great way to cover water dynamic. You’re always doing something. Talk me a little bit your setup, your boat and just some of the tactics you like to use. 1 (48m 11s): Sure. So well over here it’s very, very rare to have anyone not lock star fishing. Yeah. Like if you see a guy anchored, you’re kinda like, what is he doing? It’s so abnormal. Phil (48m 23s): I’m working on a little bit the opposite like, and the two methods don’t work well together. You know, somebody’s in the middle of your drift or somebody drifts through where you’re anchored. There’s usually some colorful words coming out. 1 (48m 36s): Yeah. So yeah. So I use a drug as pretty much most people do over here. So a drug is like, for those that may not know it’s a C anchor essentially. Big Phil (48m 46s): Parachute. 1 (48m 47s): Yeah. So it’s a big rectangular. So my drug is, I think it’s a three meter drogue. So it’s three meters along the top and I think it’s about one and a half meters or one meter down. And so it’s that big rectangular shape and it attaches it the the bow of the boat and the stern of the boat. And you adjust the length of line, like the rope to the dr, you adjust that length so your boat drifts straight because all boats aren’t, you know, perfectly uniform. So they catch the wind differently. So sometimes if you wanna drift straight, you, you know, you may need to have your stern line in a little bit more than your bow or something. 1 (49m 27s): So the aim is to, for the drug, is just to slow your drift up, to give you more control, give you more time over the water and yeah, it’s great. The ones over here, here commonly you have the drogue has like, it’s almost, do you know what a pool noodle is? Oh yeah. You know kids when they play in a swimming pool? Yep, yep. Yeah. They jump on those like noodles. Those foam noodles. Yep. So our drugs have those in the top built into the material. So it floats on the top. And then the bottom is chain. So it’s just like linked chain. Like you might have the chain connecting from a, you know, your boat trailer to your boat for your security chain. Okay. That Phil (50m 5s): That heavy. Okay. 1 (50m 6s): Yeah. That’s what makes it set. So as soon as you pop the drone in, it says, so it floats along the top and then you’ve got the chain along the bottom. And the first drug I ever used was actually one my dad made because they’re very easy to make. They’re like a shade cloth. Do you know, do you guys have shade cloth? Phil (50m 26s): Probably. It’s probably known by a different term, but it, you know Yeah. Facing it on the, 1 (50m 30s): It’s the concept of it. Like yeah, you have them over children’s playgrounds. So light still penetrates, but Oh, okay. It’s not harsh. Phil (50m 36s): Yeah. Kind of a tarp. But we have a lot of plastic. I think I understand what you’re, 1 (50m 40s): Yeah, it’s, it’s a tarp, but it doesn’t, it’s not a solid like tarp. It actually water can pass through it. That’s the key. ’cause if you just use like a tarp for your drug, which some people do, when you lift it into the boat, it’s hard ’cause it’s heavy and it just pulls water in. Yeah. So it’s literally a shade cloth, a cut bit of that, that shade cloth. You lay the pool noodle along the top, a lot of ’em come with holes in them and you can pass the rope the whole way through. And then the shade cloth, it’s literally folded like over and sewn. So it locks that noodle in that foam in the top. And then at the bottom it’s the same thing. The chains laying along it and then it’s just folded. 1 (51m 23s): The she cloth is folded over and sewn again. And that’s it. And my dad made it for me. I think I was, oh, how old would I have been? I would’ve been like 13 or something. And dad, dad did it with old fishing line. Like he actually sewed it closed with fishing line And we still got it today and it still works a treat on one of our other smaller boats. So. Okay. Phil (51m 41s): All So you can’t Yeah. Get them commercially made in Australia. 1 (51m 45s): So not, I don’t believe so. You can buy them from a couple of places. Like in Melbourne there’s a fly shop called the Fly Fisher and they, I’m pretty sure they make one or they, you know, outsource one and sell some the fly fishing club. I’m a member of the Ballarat Fly Fishing club. Yes. A couple of guys there make them and sell ’em as a hobby for the club. And that’s where Jeff got his from Jeff Perrin. Phil (52m 13s): Yes, because I saw your drove, ’cause I’ve got, you know, we in Canada here until recently, it was very hard to, you had to order them from the UK and they’re, they have no, you know, no fold in and definitely no weight. And I find sometimes with those strokes, if the wind is up and this, you’ve got a bit of rolling chop, it kind of doesn’t allow, it pushes the drug closed and it’s very hard to get it to open to inflate water and slow. It takes a long time to set. Right. But your, you know, I thought of clipping weights on, but when I saw yours in your video, I’m like, what’s he got? I wanted it. 1 (52m 49s): Yeah, that’s right. Phil (52m 50s): So if I put a link to the, the fly fisher in Melbourne and, and maybe your fly club in the show notes, am I gonna perhaps create a stampede? Nobody wants for people trying to find those drugs? 1 (53m 3s): I dunno. I mean the shipping will be the hardest part, but Oh yeah. Phil (53m 6s): But you know, fly fishers if we want it, we don’t care. 1 (53m 9s): That’s right. If you search, if you look in Australia, if people search for a drug, D-R-O-G-U-E is the spelling. Yeah. They’ll be, you’ll they’ll find him somewhere. Yeah. Okay. Phil (53m 22s): Alright, we’ll do that then. Okay, so tricks, techniques, when you’re lock styling anything top three tips kind of 1 (53m 29s): Thing. Yeah, so my, the biggest thing that is just don’t cast because if you are drifting, moving from all of the same water over and over and over, if you cast at any angle other than straight down the middle, you are covering multiple, you know, you are covering more water. So the analogy I give to people is, so take, let’s take a bird’s eye photo or a bird’s eye view of your boat. If you are drifting straight down wind, if you are watching your cast, if you are casting straight down the middle, all of your cast are overlapping and you are fishing essentially that one avenue of water. 1 (54m 14s): Correct? Yep. Is if you now are looking bird’s eye, let’s say you are sitting at the front of the boat and you are casting on a 45 degrees angle out towards the nose, like not 90 degrees to your right, but you know, 45 degrees now if you look from a bird’s eye view and see the areas that your fly has traveled through, it is covering like three times or more water. Does that make sense? Yeah, Phil (54m 45s): No, we do a similar thing when we fish anchored style, we, I call it wind drifting. Or if I’m fishing under the indicator bump, moving the strike zone where I quarter out and let it swing or I move it through just to cover more water, kind of fan cast, you know, cover different area. Not always in the same lane over and over, unless obviously the fish are sitting there. But that really happens. Yeah. You want to cover as much water as possible. That’s a great tip. 1 (55m 11s): Yeah. Look, other than that, I guess the biggest, the other biggest thing is the hang. So yeah, let’s talk about that. I’m not sure if you guys Yeah, sure. Do you guys call it the hang? Yep. Yeah. Yep. So Phil (55m 24s): Got hang markers on our lines, all kinds of things. 1 (55m 28s): See I don’t like hang mark. Phil (55m 29s): Oh really? I love them. 1 (55m 31s): But that’s a, we can talk about that in a sec. Yeah, sure. Yeah. The hang is obviously where you’re retrieving and let’s say just before you recast your flies, if you’re fishing subsurface, let’s say with NIMS or streamers, you typically, if you weren’t to hang, you’d just go strip, strip, strip, strip, strip or retrieve and then pick up and recast. The hang is that stage before the recast where you lift and then stop your rods. So your flies ascend through the water column, stop them dead. And it actually gives the fish a chance to eat that fly static just before, just after it’s ascended, before it leaves the water and hanging the flies from a, when you’re lock styling is sounds simple, but people do it. 1 (56m 11s): People aren’t always very thorough with it because naturally as you are lifting and then you, you lift and then hang your flies, you stop them dead. What happens is the boat keeps drifting onto the flies. So if you are not able to keep up with, if when you stop your flies, you must gather the slack or move your rod to compensate for the drift of the boat. Yeah. So that your flies are still static, but you have contact your relatively tight to them. Because what often happens is people will lift, hang the boat drifts onto their flies, a fish eats them, but slack is accumulated because the boats kept drifting onto them. And that is the hardest skill. It’s managing that fine line between actually getting your flies to lift hang, stop dead. 1 (56m 55s): Yeah. But then still be able to detect a take of a fish does eat them. And it’s just one of the ones where so much of Stillwater fishing is doing the simple things really, really well. Control and take detection is everything. And just understanding the speed of the drift of your boat, how that affects, you know, your slack management on the hang and even how it affects the speed of your retrieve. Because you need to deduct the, the speed of the drift of your boat from the speed that you, you are retrieving and that’s your actual retrieve speed. Yeah. A lot of people think their fly is moving at the speed that you are retrieving, but your fly is actually moving at the speed that you are retrieving minus the drift of the boat. 1 (57m 35s): Yeah. Phil (57m 36s): I’ve had discussions with people who think they’re moving their fly and if they’re fishing, floating line is all this man, I says, you’re not even moving the fly. Yeah. It’s not until that comes tight, you’re not moving it right because it, they’re just gathering line and think they’re doing well and you can see everything’s, you know, no tension. Yeah. You can’t feel anything. You’re not even the flies just on 1 (57m 57s): The Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Phil (57m 59s): No that’s brilliant. Seems like you thought of a lot of different things when you’re out there, all like you said, and you beats by yourself. It’s funny, isn’t it? Just thinking things through everything. I always say to myself, everything happens for a reason. Why did I get, what did I do? Because I got, I did something different, you know? And sometimes it’s a total mistake. You stepped on something, pulled on something when you shouldn’t. And that was the, the thing that it’s like why did that work? Why did that make the difference? Because I’ve been casting, you know, four or five times previous, nothing happened. I did something slightly different. What was that? Yeah, it wasn’t an accident. Something you did something a little different. So very thoughtful. Very thoughtful. Okay. Bank style. You mentioned that, you know, in North America, not a lot of it, not all of our lakes, we can fish from shore, you know, the shore is muddy, there’s trees and rocks behind you. Phil (58m 47s): Private property, you know, as you mentioned, you know, the boat certainly does give you good access, but you know, there are t you know, fishing from the bank is, I find it when I go I, I have to really downsize the amount of kit I can bring with me. ’cause a boat, I’m sure you’re like me in your boat. I’ve got a lot of kit in my boat ’cause it can, I’ve got everything I got, you know, 20 fly lines, I’m, you know, a bit of a gear junkie, but I’ve got everything I need. Whereas in the, on the bank I’ve gotta make some. 1 (59m 15s): Yeah, definitely. Well do you use for start, do you use cassette reels? Phil (59m 20s): No. And not, I, I certainly understand the real supplier I’m aligned with doesn’t do cassette. So that’s why I, I do it. But I certainly, okay, 1 (59m 29s): There you go. Yeah, we won’t go into it then. Yeah, you got But that helps me. Yes. That helps me when I’m off the bank because having, you know, the spare spools with no weight makes it very easy to carry stuff. I’m very minimalistic in my fishing so I’m probably the opposite to you as far as you know, what I carry. I mean I was just, before we got on I was arranging my river flies, which I mean people can’t see. But that’s all I carry on the river as far as NIMS go. And my lake stuff is very much the same. It’s a, and that was the whole premise behind the fly life fly range. It’s having flies that serve a purpose and a function and fit in with a technique rather than having so many different options. 1 (1h 0m 10s): Having pheasant tails with every different color hotspot or every different color this. And I think when you’re on the bank, so much of it is positioning of fish and actually finding the fish. So that comes as the priority. And you know, on our lakes at least, you know, our fish are very, very opportunistic here. It’s, and like I fished over over in North America and it’s amazing your fish us can get so locked in on something like Cal or you know, it doesn’t happen a lot over here. So that’s very easy for us in Australia. ’cause I don’t, we don’t need to have the exact fly or this or that. ’cause our fish don’t tend to be as hatch driven. We get more trickles of stuff throughout the day and the fish will kind of eat whatever I envy Phil (1h 0m 52s): Devoted Corona in Fisher were, you know, I was fishing with my wife this year And we had to get them under an indicator they wouldn’t take ’em retrieved. And I had to hang them a foot off the bottom and my wife wasn’t getting the same amount of fish. She was four inches out on her depth set and that made. Yeah. And it’s just stuff that you know, drives you to drink at the end of the day because it just, please. Yeah, 1 (1h 1m 15s): So I mean, I mean bank phishing, the good thing about being on the bank is you can do a lot with a floating line and adjusting your leader and the weights of your flies, that is one of a floating line is probably the most versatile fly line. And it’s very easy for us to get sucked into mid tips that are five foot in length, 10 foot in length, this and that. And that stuff is brilliant. And you know, I, under having spent more time in the UK this past year, I have more of an appreciation for how important that is on some of their still waters where the fish get hugely pressured and you’re standing in a peg like you’re standing in a spot. Phil (1h 1m 56s): Yeah, I saw your video of that one. You were on a, you know the peg a little, a little, a little dock or wharf. We were yeah. 1 (1h 2m 2s): Jet and sometimes yeah, yeah, totally. And sometimes you can’t cast further to get more depth on a cert, on a intermediate. So you don’t have the luxury of being able to lengthen or shorten your cast to affect your depth. So you have to do it in the line. And that is where a, a lot of that stuff comes into it. But with a floating line, if you have, you know, nylon tapered leader, fluorocarbon tapered leader, they in, they fish very differently. If you have, you know, a range of tungsten bead heads on the point that again can anchor and get your flies to different depths. So if I was off the bank floating line, maybe an intermediate, that’s probably all I would take really, you know, a floater, maybe a sink of intermediate and a full sinking intermediate. 1 (1h 2m 46s): And that would cover me here in Australia. That Phil (1h 2m 48s): Would cover most as well. Most of the times where fishing shallow from shore, there are a few times, you know, I have fished where it’s steep bank and it goes in and the fish are there for whatever reason, then I might, but even then floating line with an indicator or B would work. But not a lot of the sinking line stuff. ’cause the wet, the sinking line’s a little more challenging to manage when you’re knee deep or waist deep in the water. Totally. Without some kind of gripping a and it’s around your legs and your feet and just, yeah, lot of fun thing. 1 (1h 3m 17s): And one thing I’m not sure if you do the same, I’m huge on all of my, like all of my lines, even from the river, from year influence to everything, I’m huge on having a loop on the end of them. So on my floaters, I make sure I keep the manufactured welded loop on the end and my leader is a completely terminal part of my fly line. So I like to think of my leader as being as changeable as the tip it in the flies. So I don’t nail knot, I don’t do anything like that. I just tie, for me the smoothest connection is literally a clinch knot of like three or four turns not locked to the end of the welded loop on the fly line. 1 (1h 4m 0s): And it’s super smooth and it means that I can fish that. And if I need to change, you know, if I wanna change to get more depth, you could tie a poly liter on and you could tie, you know, a fluer, carbon tapered liter lyric Caron tapered leader on chop that knot there, tie another one to it. It’s very simple. You’re not worrying about loop to loop. You’re not worrying about nail knots eating into your fly line. That makes it even more versatile for me. Phil (1h 4m 22s): Yeah. I do a similar thing with the line manufacturer I work with. We’ve actually put a tipt ring on the end of the line for that reason. Perfect. Goes through the guides and I can change. Perfect. Right. Because everybody does loop to loop connections here, which are problematic and that loop to loop connection can actually jam up on rod tips and totally the, it h it’s, it’s more the leader the line goes through, but the leader, especially if you’ve got a high rod angle when you’re landing a fish. Yeah, 1 (1h 4m 49s): Yeah. And horrible Phil (1h 4m 50s): Sound. 1 (1h 4m 51s): Totally 100%. Yeah. Yeah. So exact same concept. And I think having that versatility and flexibility is really important. Phil (1h 4m 58s): Yeah, no, I agree with, so any tips on choosing the right bank? I know local knowledge and things come in, but you know, in the competition environment you don’t, obviously you get assigned your peg where your session is and sometimes that can make or break you. ’cause you could get a really crappy place. You would never, but you know, if you have the choice, do you have certain banks that you’d gravitate to more than others? 1 (1h 5m 23s): Look, if I had a choice, I would always be on the windward shore. The shore where the wind’s blowing in. Give me that every single day of the week. Yeah. Phil (1h 5m 29s): And most anglers would shy away from that. Yeah. 1 (1h 5m 31s): Right. Yeah. Phil (1h 5m 32s): Because they’re, they’re envisioning they have to push into the wind and really you don’t wanna do that, do 1 (1h 5m 36s): You? You don’t have to, you can go at all angles other than straight into the wind. And you know, even whether the lake’s, a terrestrial lake where the food’s from above that gets blown in on the surface and washes in, or whether it’s a lake where, you know, a lot of our lakes are just jammed with bait fish where weed gets dislodged and then, you know, bait fish feed on, you know, algae and whatever gets washed into that edge, the bigger fish come in as well. So just give me a, a windy shoreline to be standing on with the wind blowing it onto me and a beanie. Phil (1h 6m 6s): And I find those scenarios as well because that wind pushes the fish in that surface chop. I think it also, they feel a little more safe in there. Correct. They’ll come in so close. You don’t have to power a big long cast out, as you mentioned earlier, that usually works against you anyway. But God, you can fish a short 20 foot cast off to an angle either side of where you’re standing and get all the fish you want all day long. 1 (1h 6m 30s): 100%. Yeah. And they’re just, they’re definitely so much more comfortable and confident to eat in that. Yeah. Phil (1h 6m 37s): Yeah. ’cause it’s, you know, with bank fishing, when I talk to, you know, in North America so much of our trout fishing is river and stream dominated for good reasons. Like you, I love fishing rivers and streams, but I think a lot of people wanting to come over to lakes view Lake, oh I need a boat. There’s a lot of cost to that. I don’t have one. Yeah. And you can have some really good sport just fishing from shore and get right into it. Yeah. So, okay, you’ve mentioned your lakes. Before we let you go, talk to me about, a little bit about your, your lakes. We’ve got the tactics now, fishing, boat bank, different lines, different leader setups, all that wonderful stuff you’ve been talking about. I’ve been writing notes here feverishly. 1 (1h 7m 15s): So Phil (1h 7m 16s): Very analytical. I find your approach to Stillwater fishing very analytical and thoughtful and I’m attracted to that. Oh, very 1 (1h 7m 22s): Cool. Phil (1h 7m 23s): It’s the same way I, like I talked about here, everything happens for a reason. Why did that happen? Yeah. I wanna know why. Yeah. And how can I impact that, you know, in certain situations or to make it even better. So I like the way you think. So let’s talk about your, your Victoria area and the Tasmanian, the lakes in Tasmania. Tasie you fished. 1 (1h 7m 41s): Yeah, so, so where I am in southwest Victoria, I’ve got two kind of very different fisheries, lake fisheries around me. So the west, we’ve got the crater lakes, which I’ve talked to you before. They’re volcanic, they’re actually lakes in volcanic craters. So they’re very crystal clear waters, extremely fertile because of the volcanic soil. And they’re fisheries that are at lower altitude, they’re about, you know, a hundred, 200 meters above sea level and because of the depth of the lake. So they’re about 45 meters deep. Okay. So what’s, I dunno what that, what’s that feed? A hundred and 150 feet or something like that? Phil (1h 8m 18s): Yeah, something like that. Yeah, 1 (1h 8m 19s): Yeah. They fish best in winter. You know, when the water temperatures on the surface are optimal, the fish pull up shallow. They also feed on our galacia, which are our bait fish that spawn on the rock and weed beds on the edge of the lake. So those fish come up and predate on them in winter and they grow really big because of that. So that’s pretty much from May, June, July, August. That’s my fishing and what I do, and they’re not big number fisheries, but they’re big number, like they’re large, they’re trout fisheries where, you know, if you caught five fish for the day, that’s a great day and they’re gonna be some absolute crackers if you go. So that’s west me, north of me. You head to the, like the broader western Victorian lakes, which are probably the closest lakes to Melbourne. 1 (1h 9m 2s): And they’re lakes. They’re the lakes that have the most mayfly in Victoria. So Lake Weee, mul and Reservoir Hepburn lagoon, mur, there’s a lot of them. A lot of them are water storages. Some of them you can put a boat on and some of them you can fish from the bank and they’re very, very shallow lakes. So Lake Weee is probably the best Mayfly lake. That’s actually the one in the middle of that town. That’s the Phil (1h 9m 25s): One your fly club’s located on, isn’t it? Yes, 1 (1h 9m 28s): Correct. Yes. Sensational lake. And it’s about five foot deep, so extremely fertile, extremely weedy and just lots of brown trout. And you know, you get the same in winter, you still get the fish feeding on bait fish. But spring and autumn it’s mayfly hatches are varying, varying species. And on all of our lakes, you know, there’s a spattering of Midge as well like, but we haven’t talked about it. The one thing about our lakes is Midge fisheries go, our fish don’t lock into them like they do in the UK or Phil (1h 9m 60s): Out here in western Canada. They lock in, you know, that is your bread and butter. You know our mayfly, our call beta is a narrow, you know, they’ll feed on ’em in certain lakes on the nymph stage, you know, throughout the year. But the actual hatch itself is quite narrow. Whereas our Carin, our midges will hatch from the second the ice comes off, till the ice goes on again. And even if there’s no hatch coming on, those fish will respond to a well presented fly. ’cause they’ve just seen and eaten so many of ’em. They’re kind of like peanuts, jelly beans, whatever your favorite can. They just see trout sees one and goes, I, you know, eats it out of reflex almost. So yeah, very important here. Phil (1h 10m 40s): But it’s surprising to hear that yours is not the case. But you know, it’s, 1 (1h 10m 44s): That’s the beauty different place we get. Like we have so many on those lakes. We have so many mayfly, so many snails, so many scud, a lot of bait fish, lot of damsels we get, it’s very popular. We get Do you guys, oh yeah, you have, you are from the home of the gums aren’t you? Phil (1h 10m 60s): Yes. The dragonfly nims. Yes. Mud eyes as you call them over there. Yes. 1 (1h 11m 4s): Mud eyes. The mud eye fishing down this way is spectacular in the evening and night over summer. Yeah. Yeah. I got, I had a friend in the Canadian team who actually came over and gave me some, some of the fus my name and they’re fantastic. And Phil (1h 11m 17s): We do ’em either in the natural deer for those of you don’t know, I’ll put a link in the show notes to the fu so you know what it is. But it’s a dragonfly nymph that we have two families of dragonflies here in North America. The DERs, we, the common name we call ’em their slender hourglass shaped big, very aggressive. I actually used to have an aquarium tom that I would study insects in. And I had one get I I accidentally, well what’s a one inch one of these DERs gonna do? Right? I had a 30 gallon aquarium that I dropped this guy in when he was an inch long in July. And by October 1st he was almost two and a quarter inches long and had eaten just about everything in the tank. Phil (1h 11m 58s): It was like alien. It was just going like, just does not play well with others. They stalk, you know, the weeds like a cat. And then they all dragonfly nips have that ability to jet water out their back end where their gills are. And that’s what they used to PI used to sit and watch ’em how they’ll eat each other. They’re just, whereas the fu actually imitates a, a sprawling nymph we call it that is more sedentary in its habits. It shuffles into the weeds and just sits in ambush and lets things come to them little more, you know, a little more laid back in its approach to destroying everything down there. Still equally voracious. But so the gofi is more, again, back to the, is more squat and spider like, you know, a back, a wider body section, a front head. Phil (1h 12m 41s): And we just spun and clip deer hair bodies a fussy pattern to tie, not hard, just deer hair and horrible. Yeah. And you end up trimming half the legs off if you’re not careful and all that stuff. But it’s a great flight. Very popular. We tie it in natural deer hair and olive. Yeah. But you could probably take a permanent marker, tie a natural one and color it to whatever color you see on your water. So yeah, it would work. I’ll put a link to that. But yeah. Yes, 1 (1h 13m 7s): For that I use, I’m a lazy lazier attire. I love a like a little booby. So a booby with a blob body, an olive blob body or a brown or a black blob body and a little mabu tail. ’cause that’s perfectly here. But yeah, gum is, is such classic pattern. So yeah, we have those, those fisheries around Ballarat, mayfly, lots of damsels mud eyes. And then you know, you go right up into the northeast where the national championships just were And we have some alpine lakes around our ski fields. So they’re wild brown trout, that very barren lakes. Not much food. Very opportunistic fish where you know, you’re fishing terrestrials, you know, they look, they eat Midge ’cause that’s a lot of the time all there is. 1 (1h 13m 51s): But those fish are just hungry and they want to eat. Phil (1h 13m 53s): So what terrestrials do you have there? We, over here we’ve got hoppers and beetles and ants are probably our big three. 1 (1h 13m 59s): Yeah, exactly the same. So we have grasshoppers there, we have ara, so many different types of beetles of a range of different colors. We get ants in summer on warm, you know, stormy kind of evenings. So we get flying ants and termites that are like anywhere from black brown to orange in color. We get a lot of, on our rivers and lakes like orange ants, orange termites. Phil (1h 14m 21s): And we, we nicknamed those cinnamon ants. Yeah, 1 (1h 14m 23s): That’s that’s that’s actually, yeah, that’s the color almost. Yeah, that, so that’s Victoria. Tasmania. There’s a lot. So in Victoria we have a lot more rainbow trout and than Victoria and New South Wales have more rainbow trout than Tasmania. Tasmania is more of a brown trout with some rainbows. Whereas a lot of the places over here is 50 50 where I am. Yeah. And then we also have some areas with some tiger trout and those lakes, the cradle lakes near me, we have chinook salmon in them. That’s one of the big appeal. Oh Phil (1h 14m 53s): Yeah, I saw one of your videos on that. Yeah, that looked like a fun fishing. 1 (1h 14m 57s): Yeah, so that’s that. Tasmania is very brown trout focused. So a lot of the lakes, the really iconic fly fishing ones where the world championships were in 2017, like little pine lagoon, penstock lagoon. The lakes that I took Jeff Perrin to when he was over fishing with me. They are very much may fly waters so lush weed beds very fertile. They get beautiful, they get like a highland done there, which is like a brownie. And then you also get Canaan, which are like the, you know, the tiny black may fly, which the fish are horribly painful to catch when they’re on. 1 (1h 15m 41s): And then in Tasmania you get a lot of terrestrials as well. So gum beetles from obviously gumtrees gum beetles falls are very big. And then you get some ant falls and other stuff. So yeah, Tassie has, the central highlands is, it’s about 1,800 to a thousand meters above sea level. And that’s kind of the main hub of, of trout fishing. That is lakes all around the state. Tassie’s, if there’s water, there are brown trout in it in Tasmania pretty much. But yeah, sounds horrible for like the Mayflower fishing. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. So And Phil (1h 16m 15s): You’ve got tigers. We’ve got tigers here too. They’re fun fish. Little aggressive at times. Yeah, we have some good fun with those here. 1 (1h 16m 23s): They definitely, it’s interesting ’cause they, they stock them in in a number of the lakes around here and the tigers really affect the behavior of the brown trout on the lakes here. Our browns don’t like on like my lake, local lake rum beat the browns just do not want to compete with them. So the tigers go in and occupy the weed beds, you know, tied to the bank and on the edge. And they’re so aggressive and so territorial. The catch rate of browns just plummeted for me in the last two years when the tigers were in and they didn’t put more tigers in. And this last winter just gone, I was back to catching the numbers of brand trout I was used to. So it’s like the brands just didn’t wanna have anything to do with them ’cause they’re just so aggressive and fiery. 1 (1h 17m 6s): Yeah. Phil (1h 17m 6s): The ones we’ve got, you know, I, I got to meet them in a, a province of ours called Manitoba. There’s a lake there that, and they grow big, like some of the ones I’ve seen that are 25 plus inches long. And yeah. And we get them in the evening stripping mouse pattern stripping Chernobyl ans long English pattern. Your, what’s it called? You know, with a foam post in front of, I’ve got blank right now. Your suspender minnows or your, you know what they fish 1 (1h 17m 31s): Papa fry. Phil (1h 17m 32s): Papa fry. Exactly. Yeah. And they love that. And I’ve stripped that, you know, like we’re casting right into the weeds, right into the pockets of the bull rushes. And, and they’re in there chasing minnows and they come at it like a great white shark taking a seal. They just come out and goes and it’s like your heart stops. You almost miss the take ’cause it’s so violent, so aggressive. Right. And it, it’s a lot of fun. They become a very popular fish here because of that aggressive nature. And it’s interesting ’cause the last lake I fished before our lakes froze up ’cause we get a nasty winter here. It’s a mix. It was originally a rainbow fishery, then they added the tigers and now they put the browns in it. Phil (1h 18m 12s): And I was very surprised to get a brown because you’re right, they, as I think on it, they’re a little more few and far between. The rainbows seem to, they seem to occupy diff they’re just, they seem to play well together. Yeah. But different habitats. But yeah, the browns sort of, and that’s why I think in those lakes, if you get a brown, it’s a big deal. Right. Yeah. It’s a brown. 1 (1h 18m 33s): Yeah. Phil (1h 18m 34s): So this has been great. I could sit and talk with you for hours. We’ve been chatting for a long time here and it’s just been fantastic. I, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. And yeah, I wish you all the best and maybe one day I’ll get over there and spend some time with you on the water. I’d really enjoy it rather than just living vicariously through your YouTube channel. So how can people get ahold of you? What’s the best way they can do that? 1 (1h 19m 1s): So they can go to my web. So from my website you can, they there, there’s also a page where they, there’s some of my YouTube videos on the website they can find, they can see my fly range up there. If they follow me on Instagram jam and fishing is my handle there. You’ll see, you know, there’s a whole bunch of stuff that goes up there. Be it tying flies, fishing ins, all of that stuff. There’s obviously my YouTube channel Tom Jarman fishing, which is a mix of fly tying and some instructional videos and then some just hopefully edutainment, which is just me fishing a day on the water or an afternoon on the water. Just talking through what I’m doing and why. And yeah, they’re probably the best ways to, to see what I’m doing and hopefully yeah, learn and get something out of it hopefully. 1 (1h 19m 43s): Yeah. Phil (1h 19m 44s): Okay, well good. We’ll have all those links to all those places you can contact Tom, Instagram is YouTube channel, all of that stuff, plus a lot of the stuff we talked about today. Anything else you wanna say, Tom? Have we not covered anything you were hoping to touch base on or, I know we kinda rambled all over the place and I take you down bunny holes, bunny rabbit holes and 1 (1h 20m 4s): All kinds of things. Yeah, yeah, you can talk better than I can. I, Phil (1h 20m 9s): Yeah, that’s not hard. 1 (1h 20m 13s): No, I think that’s about it. I mean, just, yeah, like, I’m just very, very passionate about our fisheries here in Australia. ’cause you know, everyone New Zealand is amazing, it’s absolutely phenomenal. But Australia is, you know, equally unique and beautiful in its own way and there’s so much to do down here. So I just, yeah, highly encourage people, whether it’s fishing with me or anyone, you know, any guy in Australia or anything. The, the beautiful thing about fishing in Australia, you know, compared to fishing in, in America, which I love fishing in America, I found it quite challenging with private access land, all of that in America, in Tasmania and Victoria, if you come over here, you can jump in at a bridge and you can fish your way up, walk along the bank. 1 (1h 20m 57s): There’s no restrictions. The land issue, the private water, there’s no such thing as private water. Phil (1h 21m 3s): Yeah. Very similar to here in Canada. Yeah, there’s a few places with private water. It’s not really private water. The land around, it’s private so the access is governed. But yeah, we call it crown land here where everybody has, you 1 (1h 21m 16s): Know, it’s exact same here, access to Phil (1h 21m 17s): It 1 (1h 21m 18s): Fish. Yeah. So it’s just super accessible. The fishing’s fantastic. The dry fly fishing here in Australia is absolutely magic. Like our fish just look up and, and want to eat off the top. So that is definitely, you know, one of the highlights and one of the cool things fishing here can, you know, the more I travel around the world and like I get to go away and compete at the world championships every year and love it, but every time I go away it makes me realize how lucky I am to be here in Australia where the, like, like you guys, you have public water everywhere over here, one license fee, I think like $30 and you can fish for a whole year anywhere you like. Well Phil (1h 21m 55s): That, that’s great. Tom, I, I, again, I really appreciate you taking the time. I’ll let you get on with your day. I know you’re 18, 19 hours ahead of me when we recorded this, so I’m, I think I’ll go upstairs and have a bite to eat for dinner and you’ll probably be getting towards lunchtime and you’re a day ahead of me too, aren’t you as well? So yeah, that’s different. So you’ve got all fired up to spend more time with you. So I’ll probably be pestering you by email a lot more often now. So, but really great to meet you and thank you for spending the time with me today. I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Tom. I found his approach and insight into fly fishing lakes. Fascinating. I could have talked to them for hours. Phil (1h 22m 36s): I found Tom to be a brilliant fly fisherman who thinks about every aspect of his techniques, strategies, and tactics. Reviewing our conversation, I forgot to circle around to one comment Tom made about not liking hang markers. Subsequently, I emailed Tom to find out why he didn’t like them. Here’s what Tom had to say. I don’t like them for a few reasons. From a drifting boat in different conditions and on different fly lines. For example, intermediate compared to a type seven full sink, you’ll want to start your hang at different distances from the boat. So the hang markers aren’t super helpful. I guess they may give you a rough starting point though. Also, if you rely on your hang marker, you aren’t thinking hard enough about where the line and flies are during the cast. Phil (1h 23m 22s): Knowing the length of your cast, your speed of retrieve and feeling the change in the thickness of the fly line with its taper through your fingers, et cetera, you could know almost exactly where your flies are. Naturally. It’s different from a moving boat to an anchor boat. Interesting. As I sort of rely on hang markers myself, I guess I’ll have to start integrating some of Tom’s thoughts into my approach to still water fly fishing. You never stop learning. That’s my motto. If you wanna learn more about Tom’s approach and methodology to fly fishing lakes, I suggest you check out his YouTube channel and subscribe so you don’t miss out on any of his fly fishing and fly tying videos. You can also follow Tom through his Instagram account. Phil (1h 24m 4s): I’ll place links to both his YouTube channel and Instagram account. In the show notes section, you’ll also find links to the Australia’s best Trout Flies Revisited book I mentioned where you can learn more about Australian trout flies and Tom’s patterns. In particular. Thanks for joining Tom and I today.