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A few weeks ago a good friend of mine decided to take me trout fishing with his brother to one of his family's favourite secret trout fishing spots. Gerrod and I became friends before I moved to Australia as his wife and my wife went to art school together. It also just so happens that our kids were born a few months apart, are great playmates and are often mistaken for twins. Gerrod and his family also happens to live just two blocks away from us, so he's basically family. He's been an avid fisherman his entire life and I was one growing up. I quit fishing after my teens again and didn't pick it up again until the global financial collapse hit in 2008, the photography jobs dried up for a while and I had a lot of time on my hands. I spent a lot of time in the wonderful Driftless Region of Wisconsin but when I moved to Australia I was convinced that the climate would be too hot and dry and the water too warm to go trout fishing. I packed away my gear and would just get misty-eyed when my buddy in Oregon would post pictures of his boozy Pacific Northwest fishing trips complete with massive salmon and steelhead catches.
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Gerrod and I had been planning to go fishing for quite some time but it's hard to get away when we're working dads but after some careful planning we were able to do some trips to the Snowy Mountains and the Wollondilly River. It's winter time here so the water is cold enough for the trout to run and there are certain areas upstream from dams where it's still legal to fish this late in the year. We left well before dawn and spent some time driving through cliffhanging dirt roads and hiking through fields and woods of frost to get to the spot. The trout had just begun to do their run to spawn but it hadn't rained much and the river levels were low so despite the fact that I caught this fat 2kg beauty on my second cast, we didn't catch anything else for the rest of the day. That was fine by me though. I'm not one of those fisherman who likes to haul in and release fish all day. I'll spare the fish the stress. If I catch my keeper fish, I'm done for the day and I'll just spend the rest of the day relaxing and enjoying the nature.
