A New South Wales mini-grand slam; rainbow, brook and brown trout from tiny Australian streams by Nick Taransky.

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Says Nick...

It’s feeling very Autumnal here, but some reasonably warm weather got me away from rods and renovations with my mate Troy to try for an Australian 'mini-Grand Slam'; rainbow, brook and brown trout.   We started out with rainbows and brookies.  

Targeting wild rainbows and brookies...

There were plenty of rainbows and Troy got a handful of brookies, but it took a few hours for me to get mine.  I fished my Madake 4 piece, bamboo ferruled 6’3” 3-wt, while Troy fished his 7’3” Japanese “Naoto Shibuya Favourite” Glassmaster 3-wt.  

Then on the way back to Cooma we stopped at a tiny roadside creek for 20 minutes to catch a brown.  Again, Troy got one in two casts but I missed a few chances before landing one.  

We realised that a true grand slam needs 4 species, but that’s not really an option here on the mainland. So in the future a diversion to a little dam on a tributary to catch a native galaxia minnow might be a cool thing to do.

Nick Taransky

(SEE Nicks bamboo fly rods on the website link in the title of this article. Tom Sutcliffe)