Tyenna, 16/2/2008

I just survived two days on the Tyenna.

Day 1 was a mental health day. I shot up there before the weekend crowds. The plan was to fish the river hard, and see what I could do. I started off up at the Tyenna Rd bridge (where the track is into the falls). The day started off in fine form, with fish frequent. I was fishing a dry with a nymph dropper. At one point I had a fish on each! But after and hour of lots of action the river suddenly went quiet. I explored a bit, and then decided to try some other locations. But it seems that plenty of fishermen had decided to try Friday afternoon as well. I tried below the fish farm, where I saw the leviathan. It looks like the secret has been discovered. Instead of the large number of big fish, I saw one 3lber, and that was it. I also saw lots of lures, line, litter, etc. Final score for the day was 6, with as many lost in the fight. One platypus that came within a rods length. And a narrow miss of a kangaroo on the way home.

Day 2 was take the kids into town day. No sooner had they got in the car than they started fighting. As we were driving in I tried to get them to stop. Instead it escalated. By the time we were in town it was full scale war. So I turned around and drove home -- telling them they could walk in if they wanted to go into town. This caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Being teenagers, there was even some interesting language. When I got home Susan said that to show that I meant it, I should head out and go fishing -- to really drive the point home. So back to the Tyenna.

Every spot on the Tyenna had a car. I didnt get there till 1:00pm, but still -- the river was being hit hard. Went back up to the Tyenna Rd spot -- there was even a car there. So I parked near the bridge and bush bashed through to the river. After 50 meters of sweat I found a track, which I followed to a magnificent pool, full of fish. Tried fishing with hoppers, and got one almost straight away. Tried other flies to no response. Back on with the hopper, and lots of looks. The key seemed to be the hopper with a yellow body -- I had some with tan and grey bodies, and they were ignored. I worked upstream from the pool, and had some more luck with a hopper in the next pool, and missed a few in some fast water. Eventually I came to a very long, deep, pool. At this point I decided that it was getting late, and I should head back. I wasn't looking forward to wading back down the river. However, the forest by the pool seemed to be open gum forest, so I thought I would try walking through that for a bit. I climber up the bank, and found the train track was 4 meters away. Once I was on the train track, I decided to walk upriver a bit and explore some more, and found a couple more pools at a bridge nearby. More luck with the hopper at this pool, fishing until dark and walking back along the track. Final score was 3 on a hopper and one on a bugger, with a good 6 or more missed on the hopper. Also missed one on a royal coachman wet.