Mental Health gets Trouty

The Fly Program and Bayer help well being

Mick McCallum

In April this year, I was fortunate to join other farmers from across the country for a two-day trout fishing retreat at Currawong Lakes. The Bayer’s big fish challenge is an Australian-wide free friendly competition, which in its fourth year, brings each state’s winners together for the retreat. Throughout the year Bayer donates $1 per every centimetre of a fish uploaded via the app which goes to support mens mental wellbeing programs. Bayer together with Matt Tripet, the founder of mental health charity `The Fly Program’ and state winner gets to spend two full days at the 2000-acre retreat overlooking three beautiful lakes. This year Bayer also invited well-known NRL star and fishing celebrity Andrew ‘ET’ Ettingshausen who would be filming an upcoming episode. Also, joining us each day were local fly fishing guides to help the farmers catch that famous sought after Tasmanian brown or rainbow trout.

The fishing program - Day one

Each morning everyone would enjoy a fully cooked breakfast by hosts Richard and Mez followed by a fly lesson by Matt Tripet. After everyone is full of food and knowledge, it’s time to go fish! The state winners are split up into groups, and each group has a guide to help catch the biggest or most fish for the session. Each group gets one of the lakes allocated for the two hour session. After the session everyone meets for a brief of the fishing events and lunch. Fishing was slow going with not too many brag stories told over lunch. I picked up a 44cm rainbow in a corner I remembered fished well the season before. Using a 6wt fly rod and floating I line, I made a cast with my dry and dropper setup and waited for the fish to show itself. While the rainbow didn’t make a great account for itself once hooked it is always so rewarding to feel the line go tight! It was an awesome feeling watching the fish slide up to the reeds and I could get a closer look at it before quickly popping the fly out and seeing it swim away.

After lunch, we got to let off some steam with a skeet shooting event. Currawong lakes not only has three pristine lakes, but it also holds an Olympic size clay shooting range.

With most of the clays remaining intact, many laughs were had and some great banter was flung throughout the event. If memory serves me correctly, The Bayer team along with Matt and ET came out victors over the farmers. Back to fishing, another twohour session on now a different lake for the afternoon. Again, the fishing was tough. Many of the anglers had more success with the dry/wet combo, with a bushy nymph in a light brown colour being a good producer while suspended under a parachute dry, and retrieving over the cast and wait for strategy.

With all fish being released it’s a photo of the fish on the brag mat for proof and bragging rights. I picked up another smaller rainbow at 43cm on a dry as many insects were out and about for the session. It seemed that once the clouds lifted and the sun started to shine the bugs went crazy and the fish started to rise. It was a flat calm day so you could see the fish taking the bugs off of the surface easily.

With the session over, it was time to shower and meet up for a beautiful five-star three-course meal supplied by the hosts again. The evening involved sitting around the fire and a chat with ET and Matt covering the topic of men’s mental health and life stories. It was great to hear about ET’s footy career ending and how he had set up his TV show ready for the next part of his career.