Penstock Encounters

Techniques and tips for my favourite water

Logan Reid

Penstock lagoon is a favourite of mine. A stunningly beautiful lake with native eucalypts growing down to the water’s edge, Penstocks clear waters offer excellent polaroid fishing for both big brown and rainbow trout. This makes it the perfect location for a fly fisher to spend some time in, especially early in the season. The lagoon also has awesome dry fly opportunities in the warmer months with duns turning into red spinners, caddis, stoneflies and damselfly being some of the most prominent hatches. Penstock can be a tough fishery. It cops a heap of fishing pressure and the fish have become educated but in this article I am going to give you some tips I have been given and some things I have learned along the way, focusing on land-based and wade fishing.

First encounter on Penstock Lagoon

For as long as I can remember, my dad and all his mates had fly-fished. Throughout the summer months when I stopped catching fish on lures dad and his mates kept on catching fish on the fly. So I decided to give fly fishing a go at the age of 11. As a lot of us fly fishers start, I began by casting on the lawn in the front yard and stuck at it for about six months before moving onto the water. It would be six more months before I caught my first fish on the fly. The first fish I caught on the fly was a brown trout of about two pounds that took a dry fly. The fly of choice was a deer hair beetle. Because I was only just starting with my fly fishing journey, I couldn’t cast out as far as I wanted. Those who know penstock, and especially those reading who have fished off the dam wall, would know the fish are often a cast and a half away! So I gave dad my rod and asked him to cast the fly out for me. Catching my first fish on the fly would’ve been a proud father and son moment for Dad. He wanted to be there next to me to see it all happen and share that moment. Dad stood next to me, waiting 2 hours, and putting out another 50 or so casts before I would get a fish to take my fly. But as it often happens, Dad placed his rod on the ground and looked away for three seconds and that’s when the fish decided to take my fly, and I hooked up on it before he could see it all happen! Before hooking up on the fish I had many fish take my fly but not hook up so to be able to feel contact and head shakes from the fish was rewarding and I was filled with adrenaline. Penstock lagoon being a shallow lagoon the fish don’t have the depth to go down so they just run like a freight train, jumping and going absolutely crazy. The cast that dad threw out for me was a long one, and it wasn’t long and I was almost into the backing. Not knowing how to fight fish back then this brown was peeling line off and doing whatever it wanted! For a moment he went down and hit the bottom, and I thought I might have lost him until I thankfully felt him come loose. I regained most

The author with a Penstock brown taken on a dry.