A Fishing Heritage

Broadcast: 25/05/2014 12:46:47 PM

Reporter: Fiona Breen

PIP COURTNEY, PRESENTER: It's a multi-million-dollar industry almost started by accident.

In 1864, a ship about to depart England for Australia was asked at the last minute to take on board a small gift: several hundred brown trout eggs. Those eggs not only survived the 91-day trip to New Norfolk in Tasmania, they later hatched and thrived in Derwent Valley ponds.

One hundred and fifty years later, Tasmanians and indeed anglers from around the country, are celebrating a remarkable achievement, as Fiona Breen reports.

FIONA BREEN, REPORTER: In Tasmania, it's easy to get away from the hustle and bustle of daily life and cast a line. There are thousands of lakes and rivers.

For fly fishermen Mike Stevens, Peter Hayes and his son Lochie, this river in the island's north has all the qualities of a good fishing spot - some slower bankside water and plenty of grasshoppers.

They've picked this sunny autumn day at the end of the trout season to cast their last lines.

Mike Stevens and Peter Hayes have been chasing brown trout since they were boys. Forty years on, they've lost none of their passion and say they're still learning. Fly fishing requires strategy, patience and practice.

PETER HAYES, TROUT FISHING GUIDE: They've got wonderful, wonderful vision. They can hear, so if I clink on these rocks, they'll hear me coming. Sound travels four times faster under the water than it does in the air. And they don't have ears like our ears, but they've got ears and they can hear me coming and they know - they know I'm after them.

FIONA BREEN: After recent rains, the conditions are not ideal. Even so, today, luck is on our side.

PETER HAYES: Yes, got him! Just when the camera's on. How cool's that? He's a good one for the river, Lochie. Look, here he comes, OK, Lochie, see if we can grab him in net before he goes. Here he comes, Loch. Yes! Woo hoo! What a great fish.

FIONA BREEN: The thrill of the chase and the catch?

PETER HAYES: Yes. It is a thrill. I mean, it's a wild animal and they're hard to extract from the water. And you have to do everything right to catch a fish like that.

FIONA BREEN: This is the feeling trout fishers have been experiencing in Tasmania for well over a century. It's become a way of life for some. Tiny shacks line remote lakes in Tasmania's Central Highlands. In trout fishing season, they become the hub of a small community.

PETER HAYES: I love going fishing with my son Lochie and it's a wonderful thing, it's intergenerational, and I hope that the rivers and lakes are in good condition for he and his sons one day.

FIONA BREEN: Trout fishing has also spawned an industry. Worth about $70 million to Tasmania, tens of thousands of licences are issued locally each year. Six thousand go to interstate and overseas visitors. Peter Hayes is one local who's latched on to the fishing obsession, turning his passion into a business.

What is it about trout fishing that you like? Because it's a job as well for you, isn't it?

PETER HAYES: It is a job. It's a job I've had for 20 years and I love teaching people how to do just that. And it's rewarding when you take people from the big cities like Melbourne and Sydney - and in fact from all over the world, as my clients come from all walks of life and all corners of the planet - to take them out of their normal environment into the wilderness and extract a wild animal that we can let go again such that we can maybe one day catch it at a larger size is a really cool thing to do and I love that.

FIONA BREEN: It's all thanks to the ingenuity and determination of a team of people led by Sir James Arndell Youl. 150 years ago, they successfully transported Atlantic salmon and brown trout ova from the UK to Tasmania. The brown trout not only survived, they thrived.

The brown trout eggs were a last-minute gift added to the shipment of Atlantic salmon eggs. The salmon that hatched never survived. The brown trout eggs hatched and the fish reproduced and reproduced.

MICHAEL YOUL, TROUT FISHER: I'm really amazed at the time he spent and the finances that he put in it to achieve it. I mean, it was many years that he was working for the goal and he had many obstacles along the way. Um, so I just think that he was - was quite an amazing man.

FIONA BREEN: 85-year-old Michael Youl is the great-grandson of Sir James Youl. He's proud of his trout fishing heritage. The Australian Fly Fishing Museum at Clarendon in Northern Tasmania looks after his family's important historic pieces.

MICHAEL YOUL: One of the things I'd like to show you, Fiona, is the little pine box, which was the whole reason that the shipment was successful.

FIONA BREEN: So the ova were in the box?

MICHAEL YOUL: First of all, there was charcoal put in the bottom to help cleanse the water. Then there was moss and the ova was gently poured on top out of a jug and more moss and ice on top of that and the lid screwed down. And they were all stacked up on top of one another with 30 tonnes of ice stacked around them.

FIONA BREEN: Incredibly, this technique worked. The eggs, in boxes like this, chilled by the dripping ice, lived for about 90 days before finally arriving at what is now known as Tasmania's Salmon Ponds, 30 kilometres north-west of Hobart.

MICHAEL YOUL: They weren't intended to come to Australia at all. But they were a gift, they were packed, they came and they succeeded and they conquered.

FIONA BREEN: It's not known if Sir James Youl ever got to enjoy the fruits of his labour. His sons, however, embraced his trout fishing legacy and passed their passion down the generations.

MICHAEL YOUL: I still fish, still enjoy. Can't cast as far, sight's not as good, but I still enjoy it.

FIONA BREEN: John Diggle heads up Tasmania's Inland Fisheries Service. In autumn, they head up to the Central Plateau where the brown trout go to spawn. They harvest and fertilise fresh batches of eggs to make sure there's always a stable population.

JOHN DIGGLE, INLAND FISHERIES SERVICE: We've got naturally recruiting trout populations in the state in most of our rivers and lakes, so, they do just fine. You don't have to do much to them. They just happily live here.

FIONA BREEN: There are some who worry about the future of Tasmania's trout fishery and the health of rivers and waterways. There's a fine balance between a healthy fishery and the demands of agriculture.

PETER HAYES: Intensive agriculture is taking its toll on the waterways. Cropping and siltation of the rivers is not great, but I think we're slow learners, but we are learners and so eventually things will be fine. We just need to care for our environment like it was our own backyard.

FIONA BREEN: Greg French has authored several guide books on Tasmanian trout fishing. He says trout fishing has inspired its own type of environmentalism. Anglers are passionate about their rivers and waterways.

GREG FRENCH, TROUT FISHER: And there is of course the argument that the fish are non-native to Tasmania and therefore perhaps there is no conservation value in them. For people who feel like that, I'd urge them to have a closer look at it because the level of attachment to the environment that anglers have means that we are among the most active proponents of conservation.

FIONA BREEN: Back on the river, Mike Stevens and I are still fishing.

We're not having a lot of luck here, are we?

MIKE STEVENS, TROUT FISHER: I don't always catch a fish and my wife asks me when I get home if I've had a good day. She doesn't ask me how many fish I caught. So sometimes it's good. Sometimes I go out with an order to catch some fish because someone wants a couple of fish. Sometimes I can do that and sometimes not, but I always have a good day when I'm out fishing.

FIONA BREEN: Well, can't get a more beautiful spot than this to spend the day.

MIKE STEVENS: It's a pretty good spot. It's a nice river. It's just up a bit because we've had some rain, but hopefully we'll find a fish just up here a little bit further.

FIONA BREEN: But the day is drawing to a close. The occasional splash has kept us going, but our luck has run out. The elusive brown trout has had enough. It lives to survive another season. Maybe, just maybe, we'll meet again.