South Esk River
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South Esk.
Longest river in Tasmania.
Session 2 010 Nationals. I has what Peter Walsh called the swamp after last competition. A beat of around 200 meters long but 90% of that behind tangled willow trees. Amongst the trees there was no acces to the main river but there was access to pockets of watr amongst the tree roots etc but could only bow and arrow cast. Managed just 1 fish of 35cm and and one hit that didn’t stick. If higher water is a chance I suggest that South Esk around the feed lots is not an appropriate competition water.
South Esk River
I fished the beat 6 on the South Esk in the Pre Nationals competition of FFA Tasmania chapter on 17/10/10. That beat was accessed through the feed lot property and I had the opportunity of driving past beats 3, 4 and 5 on the way to my beat. The location as you would expect is pastoral plane. Beat 6 was around 150 meters long and flowed through deeper glides with river banks 2 or 3 meters above the water which appeared to be 3-4 meters deep. There was no access to that water except from the high bank. I fish the deeper water with both dry and by stripping a bugger on a type 5 line to no avail. Below the glide there was around 100 meters of skinnier water made up of faster glides and chutes running through weedy water that had deeper gutter and glides between growths of ribbon weed. The water was clearly up as at the corners you see that it had inundated some low lying grass. Managed 2 fish on the shallower corners on a #14 F fly which was about the same size as the couple of Mayflies that I saw. I saw fish in more remote water but they showed no interest in the F fly or when fishing two nymphs under dry either of the #14 BH collared hares ear spider, the #14 pheasant tail or either of the two indicator flies I fished which were a red humpy and later a royal coachman.
Looking at others results after the competition I got the impression that the flies I fished were at the smaller end of what the fish prefer with preferred flies #10 and #12 shaving brushes, and para ball emerges and ants brown and black para duns and black, red and orange spinners. The buggers I used on the type 5 line were probably a bit dull being just basic black buggers and I understand that black and olive mark two’s of about 3 cm long are closer to the mark.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For similarly named rivers, see River Esk.
The South Esk River is the longest river in Tasmania[1]. It starts in the mountains near Fingal flowing through Avoca, Evandale, Longford, Hadspen and finally Launceston. The river is dammed at Trevallyn Dam near Launceston and used for the city’s Hydro Electricity scheme. Although most of the water is dammed at Lake Trevallyn, some flows on into the Cataract Gorge where it becomes a tributary to the Tamar River, and the outflow from the power station also joins the Tamar River downstream of Launceston. The river is constantly subject to flooding and overflows at Lake Trevallyn cause a scenic display of rapids gushing through the Gorge.
The Macquarie River is a tributary.