Fishing with Kids — Shaun Cooper

NANCY AND DOUGLAS GO FOR A WALK

Shaun Cooper Nancy - just hanging out with dad.

To many fly fishing and hiking is an escape, from work and perhaps a busy home.

The solitude is the major appeal for many like me and it has led to some lengthy trips into the central plateau in search of this.

This all changed after the birth of our daughter Nancy, I couldn’t wait to share the area that I am so passionate about with my family. After the perhaps naive excitement of trekking around a favourite headwater with a baby on my back settled it was replaced with new parent anxiety and sheer fear. From the totally understandable concerns of what if I fall? Or a snake bite, to how do you even look after a baby?!

So, I did what we all do these days, I consulted the invaluable resource which has replaced the need to pester people with experience, the internet.

After finding a baby carrier second hand online we started practice on small creeks which is difficult when someone wants grab every willow branch that passes by.

The next step was camping in the 19 lagoons to maximize the tiny window in which a 6-month-old is content between nappy changes, feeds and general tantrums. But with the popularity of the area around the Christmas period by the time we got up and going the whole lake had been fished twice. We were now on trip 3 with no success, the pressure was building. Eventually we realized the chance of landing the revered western lakes brown in a 45-minute window was slim at best so we began to relax and just enjoy spending time in a world class fishery with even better surrounds.

With the pressure of results lifted it became clearer that the experience should be more about my family enjoying themselves rather than me catching fish, so I returned to an internet free reliable source of information that unsurprisingly took very little pestering to convince them to join me on some research missions, my old mate Mitch aka “midge”. We spent a gloomy but successful afternoon fishing to tailing western lake browns with our vehicle still in sight! Something we take for granted in Tasmania that’s for sure.

Buoyed by the success we had the day before on an old stomping ground of Mitch’s I went back with my wife Sarah and our now 8-month-old 10kg daughter/counterweight. It was a pretty standard January day on the plateau, not as warm as it was supposed to be and about twice as windy as predicted. We decided that the other side of the bay looked more sheltered so we planned to wade across the shallow sandy bay to a nice-looking tree where we would have lunch and then go home, maybe a practice cast or two.

If there ever was an argument for the existence of fishing gods today was the day! Out of the corner of my eye through the chop I could see a nice brown working his way back out to the weed beds straight across us on a 45-degree angle facing away. We did our best imitation of a square dance routine as Sarah positioned herself on my left hand side while I shook like a

little kid who had never caught a trout and Nancy did her best to distract me by throwing her hat in the drink and putting her fingers in my ears! Meanwhile this severely unlucky brown continued on with his day and was now facing directly away from me and decided to rise only metres in front of us and suck down a mayfly, it was now or never.

I laid out an ungainly cast into a 20 knot breeze that landed like an uncoiled slinky but as I stated before the fish gods were smiling on us this day because the brown navigated his way through the mess of fly line and swallowed a possum emerger without hesitation. The line was lifted and weight was transferred down the rod and words were uttered that are probably not kid friendly but hey this is a big moment for us.

We picked the square dance up where we left off, we have a hat floating away, Sarah trying to crack the DaVinci code which is unravelling a fold up weigh net and Nancy still poking her fingers in my ears, this is living! We eventually landed the beautiful 3lb brown and released him with a splash to Nancy’s delight and proceeded to the point we had spied earlier.

While we fed our child under an ancient pencil pine on the shoreline of the western lakes, I looked down to check the time and remarkably we had only fished for 15 minutes, we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering about finding sheltered areas to sit and called it a day.

Since that special day in January we have had many successful adventures with a baby in toe including trips with our good friends the Crowden’s with their beautiful daughter Mackenzie who is also still in nappies. We have learned a lot from them about hiking with babies which can be very daunting if its all new to you like it was for us.

Whilst there are some risks attached to taking your children fishing, they can all be managed by some careful planning like any other situation we expose them to. The benefit of allowing them to experience the true wonder of Tasmania’s wilderness far out ways the risk in my opinion,

Here are some things we have learned that weren’t off the internet from our first trout season with a baby.

Lower your expectations, fly fishing is hard enough without adding a baby to the equation.

Go for short walks from home and get your baby acquainted with backpack life.

Bring mum with you if possible, an extra set of eyes and hands is handy and why not make it a family affair.

Acquire the best quality baby carrier that your budget allows, squirming children can be heavy and unbalanced which will lead to discomfort if the pack is not suited to your body shape. Ours which was a second hand purchase also has a weather shield including a rain cover and mozzie net which doubles as protection from UV, stray casts and branches.

I am famous for sarcastically saying “catching a fish is a bonus” but in this scenario it really is, You will change more nappies than flies.

Take the time to sit down and get bub out of the pack for some play time on the shore of one of your favourite lakes, I can’t recommend this step highly enough.

If you got this far I will tell you about Douglas mentioned in the heading. Apart from Sarah and Nancy, Douglas is also a favourite I take fishing - Douglas Sky 9’ #6 weight. Another perfect companion for the Western Lakes.

As I sit here writing this story, we are in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and this already feels like a distant memory. If you have young children and fishing is a passion of yours then seize the day and maybe have a sleep in before your next trip, load up the family car at a gentlemanly hour and go share your passion with the ones you care about most, You will not regret it. Shaun Cooper Hey Nancy “This keeps daddy happy”.