Rafting rivers, wading and stalking streams

Click to read Daniel’s FlyLife Magazine article ‘Tasmanian River Renaissance’ for more background information on Tasmanian river fishing.

Daniel Hackett is entering his seventh year as a full time professional guide. The benefit of this experience to clients of RiverFly Tasmania are both obvious and immediate – Daniel’s knowledge of Tasmania’s northern rivers coupled with his river guiding skills are second to none.

When you book your lowland fishing experience with RiverFly, you will have Daniel as your personal guide. In the case of group bookings, Daniel will be your head guide joined by other guiding colleagues each with their own river knowledge, tuition and fish catching skills.

Wading

Wading rivers is the traditional way of fishing rivers, and for some people this remains the preferred style. Daniel’s cumulative knowledge of Tasmania’s rivers is used to provide his clients with the best chance of encountering a hatch, or sight fishing to feeding fish.

Daniel often uses a historic section of the North Esk River, written about and fished by the likes of David Scholes and Dick Wigram. This section of river features some of Tasmania’s best small stream mayfly hatches and is central to Tasmania’s northern river fisheries. Another alternative is to wade one of Daniel’s favourite wilderness rivers, fishing the fast pocket water as you go.

If wade fishing is your preference then let Daniel apply his considerable knowledge of isolated river stretches to design a program to meet your expectations. A Three Rivers Package can incorporate fly-fishing over three days, on three distinct river locations, offering three different experiences.

River raft fly fishing

The lowland river fly-fishing experience includes mayfly hatches, casting to rising fish and stalking polaroided fish. These features of Tasmania’s river fisheries are at times only fully utilised on the bigger rivers by using specialised rafts and an expert guide.

Whilst raft fishing with Daniel you may cover up to 25 kilometres of water a day, all whilst relaxing from the seats of the raft – or if you prefer, use the raft as a taxi to take you from wading hot spot to hot spot.

Daniel has access to over 75 kilometres (and growing each season) of lowland rafting runs and utilises the very latest generation raft to do so. He has been the first person to ever raft fish sections of many rivers in Tasmania, locating new magical weedy glides and great hatches that later develop in to new guiding locations.

The raft provides an extremely stable platform for beginners and experienced fly fishers alike, and can take you through waters that prove too shallow or tight for noisy and heavy fibreglass drift boats. Drifting silently downstream, the raft is at one with the surrounding environment. Cattle, sheep and platypus, even deer at times, remain unaffected by the passage of the raft.

Small stream trout hunting

For Daniel this can be the ultimate in river fly-fishing. The challenges presented by small streams, grasses, trees and wind can be the most demanding of all environments for trout anglers.

The wild brown are typically spotted rising or through the use of Polaroid glasses, thereafter the hunt is on with the weapon of choice being a single dry fly or nymph.

Reach casting, aerial mending, roll casting – whatever it takes to get the fly in between the obstacles and to the trout, all the while not showing yourself or spooking the fish.