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Contrary to popular belief sandfly bites are not associated with laying eggs. They are in fact bites associated with feeding. The fact that almost immediately they start to itch and the itching increases is related to the fact that during the feeding process they urinate and the bites become infected.

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There are a lot of fishing options around Gladstone in Central Queensland and these are my current favourites.

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How you organise fly boxes is important as it can make a big difference to how much you enjoy your fishing outings. This question and answer explains my approach.

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Scientists at CSIRO have wrapped up almost a decade of testing to prove the bug kills only the so-called “rabbit of the river” clogging the Murray Darling Basin, The Weekly Times reports. Applications to introduce the virus in Australia are now being submitted while an unlikely alliance between ­industry and environmental groups, including the National Irrigators Council and Australian Conservation Foundation, support the measure.

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These reels are beasts and have an impressive capacity of backing. I have gone for 70lb braid for backing and so that the backing is not the weak point in my system and even then 300 meters of backing fits easily. The reel also has a drag that locks up and needs 13lb of direct force to give line and then it does it ever so smoothly ... OMG..

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On Monday this week I fished a deep snag in the Boyne River and made contact with a big barra that came out of the snag and took my fly. Unfortunately the 24lb fluorocarbon leader wasn't up to the shock and as the fish took of in panic the fly and the leader parted ... what can you do.

Whilst the fish was I am sure momentarily spooked I was pretty sure that it would just retreat to its snag and sulk for a day or two.

Yesterday I went back to the same snag. Initially I prospected it from the same area from where I had touched the fish on Monday and then I gave the snag a two hour rest whilst I worked over some other structure up to 500 meters away ... nothing.

The incoming tide went to its ebb and slowly turned and along with just that little bit of moving water the water colour quite quickly went from relatively clear to a little milky. I moved back down to the snag and this time put long casts in keeping as far away as I could, allowing the fly to sink and then slowly twitching it back hopefully in an enticing way. I must have covered every inch of the snag and then out of the blue the line went tight and sped off to the right ... a good fish.

I quickly got the line back onto the reel and at the same time swung the electric so that it would take me away from the snag. It was a great fight with 4 fantastic jumps, well more like belly flops, out of the water revealing a fish, probably about the same size as the one I had touched on Monday. Whilst playing the fish I also put my net handy, the fish was never going to fit, even half, into my net. Thinking of options I put my boda grips where I could easily grab them and continued with the fight. The barra took a couple of big runs back toward cover but by then we were well away from the snag and in relatively open water so I let the rod and the drag of the reel do their work and just concentrated on not loosing touch with the fish as it desperately sought freedom.

The fight took about 10 minutes in total before I was ably to lip grip the barra with my left hand holding the boda grip and then hang over the side of the boat and get my right forearm under the belly of the fish and lift it into the boat ... didn't think I could do that but I was a bit pumped up.

When it fist showed itself I knew it was close to the magic meter mark one way or the other and whilst I could have been dissapointed when it only came up at 952 mmm I wasn't, I was chuffed as could be. A couple of quick photos that you can see above and the fish was carefully returned to the water, swum until it was ready to POQ and then released to grow that extra few mm.

The rod was my 8 foot 3 inch Redington Predator #10 weight rod, the fly line was my new SA #11 weight Tarpon WF-11-clear intermediate and the leader was 8 foot long and not the 24 fluorocarbon that I had used on Monday but this time was #30 lb Maxima Ultragreen. This has been my leader of choice for a few years and it was only in the last few weeks that I had swapped to the 24lb fluorocarbon hopefully to increase hook ups.

The fly was one of my 8cm prawns, this one had orange and black legs ... it's a ripper and whilst you can see in the photo it was a bit dishevelled by the action it easily was manipulated back into shape and ready for more action.

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In 2015 Australia will be the host country for the 10th Oceania Fly Fishing Championships.

I'll be there representing Australia as a member of the green team. Go to the FFA web site for information on the Ociania's and of course follow the event on the FFA Facebook page.

If you have any gems of information about flies or techniques for either Lake Wendouree or Lake Fyans please pass them onto me.

The Oceania Championships were first held in New Zealand in 1998 and were the result of discussions between Fly Fish Australia and Sports Fly Fishing New Zealand. The original concept was to provide additional competition experience to anglers from both countries broadly under the FIPS-Mouche International Competition Rules. The reference to Oceania is derived from the Oceania Region defined by the IOC. Australia and New Zealand are currently the only FIPS-Mouche affiliated countries in the Oceania Region and it has been the practice to invite other countries to participate in the event. Past participants have included Canada, United States and Japan. There is currently no written agreement as to the conduct of the event however there is a mutual understanding the event, whilst modelled on the World Fly Fishing Championships, is not intended to carry with it the strict ceremonial content of that event. The Oceania Championships alternate between Australia and New Zealand as host countries. They are held every second year (in the odd numbered year) with the Commonwealth Championships being held every second year in the even numbered year.

The event is by tradition strongly contested by skilful anglers in an atmosphere of friendship with an emphasis on sportsmanship. Our event is designed to enhance that tradition.

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Over the last 48 hours you may have seen quite a lot of activity on http://www.fishonfly.com.au.

I just wanted to bring you up to date and let you know that www.troutflies.com.au has been WITHOUT CONSENT using our site as a source of fly information. This was brought to our attention when wording from several of our fly recipes was found on their web site against flies that they have listed for sale. I know that copying is regarded as the ultimate complement but in this case the photos of the flies that they are actually selling are, in our assessment, inferior to the flies as shown and described on www.fishonfly.com.au

I wrote to them saying “I was disappointed to be advised that you have a direct rip off of a fly on my website for sale on troutflies.com.au and respectfully request that you withdraw that fly from your web site as the information you are using is: Copyright © fishonfly.com.au 2014 - All rights reserved.

The response from Michael Tenner was “Sorry about this a member of my staff did the copy without telling me exactly the source I have amended the copy”.

This was not the response I had asked for.

As is so often the case the actions of a few (in this case just one www.troutflies.com.au) effect ‘the many’ and in this case their action and response has led us to re-assess the availability of fly recipes on the web site to non members. Consequently, the activity you have seen on http://www.fishonfly.com.au over the last 48 hours has been steps we have taken to protect our intellectual property by making all fly recipes (except for around 12% of recipes for relatively standard flies) only available to members.

If you are a member of the action we have taken will not impact in any way on your access to the full content of our web site. If you are not a member, unfortunately, the actions we have taken does restrict the free access to the web site content to only around 12% of the web site fly recipe content whereas previously free access was maintained at between 40% to 45% of the web site fly recipe content. If that does effect you don't forget that you can join http://www.fishonfly.com.au and then access all the content of the web site for as little $1 for a full week.

I’ll keep you posted of any further developments in this matter.

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