I hope all of you had a great Christmas and a happy New Year’s celebration. Let’s hope that we never experience the problems of 2020 again. COVID19 is obviously going to be with us for the near future however our problems appear small when we compare ourselves to the rest of the world.

Although our international travel is in limbo hopefully New Zealand and the Pacific may be feasible later in the year. At the moment it is inadvisable to travel outside our own State as restrictions are imposed at short notice in response to flare-ups.

My trip to Darwin was a great success on the family front but unfortunately the fishing that I was looking forward to failed to meet expectations. The stocked lakes (really ponds) in Palmerston were full of slimy weed that covered flies and leader knots on every cast.

Although I had tied the flies with weed guards they could not cope.
The locals seemed to think that this was due to the early arrival of the “wet” as the weed was not a problem earlier in the year. Other fly fishing was limited to shore fishing in Bynoe Harbour without success and a last day’s visit to distant member Craig’s “secret spot”.

Dark side boat fishing in Bynoe was reasonable but we were driven back home from the ‘secret spot’ after fifteen minutes by a severe storm and lightning. I had one bump on a ‘pink thing’ fly just before we were forced to depart so I’ll be going back there on my next visit.

Cheers,

Iain

View/download HFF Flycast, January 2021 edition