FLY FISHER GUIDING SERVICE

Estuary Guided Fishing – All Year Round

All within a 30-minute drive, Mooloolaba is surrounded by productive estuary systems. Depending on the tides and latest reports we offer guided fishing on the Mooloolaba, and Maroochy river systems.  Here you can successfully target bream, flathead, tailor and trevally on fly. However, the whilst both are lovely productive estuaries but like all populated area the best fishing is at daylight and dusk.  This is a year-round fishery, start times may vary depending on the time of year.

This three-hour guide provides a great opportunity to hone your fly fishing skills and gain from your guides wealth of knowledge in a more tranquil environment, while still targeting some hard pulling fish!

Three Hours: $ 350

Impoundments Guided Fishing – All Year Round

Saratoga Season Sept-April

If Freshwater Fly Fishing is your thing you may want to check out our Premier Freshwater Fly Fishery targeting the mighty Saratoga. This is a very beautiful prehistoric fish that spends a lot of it’s time swimming around looking at the surface for food to attack. This makes the Saratoga a very sort after species on the fly rod. Topwater is king in any fly fishery and Borumba Dam is a great place to experience the sensation of a Saratoga attacking your fly.

Borumba Dam is a very beautiful place and during your day fly fishing you’ll encounter many different Australian native animals and birds around the edge of the dam foraging for food.

Borumba Dam has some other fish you can target on the fly with the Australian Bass and Silver Perch being very popular as they fight very hard and can be fooled to eat the fly with gusto.

Borumba Dam is about 1hour and 15mins from the Sunshine Coast and there are a number of accommodation options close to the Dam. The nearby town of Imbil has many eating places including the Famous Imbil Pub.

Come match your skill against the Toga

Full Day from: $ 850

Hervey Bay Guided Fly Fishing – November

Every year a huge Biomass of fish migrate south from the Great Barrier Reef down the whole Eastern Australian Seaboard and on their way down south they run into a very big sand bank, known as Fraser Island. In their efforts to continue south they must find a way around this sand bank and this forces the Biomass to congregate in an area called Platypus Bay on the western side of Fraser Island.

In this Bio Mass of fish, our main flyrod targets are 4 species of Tuna (Longtail, Mactuna, Yellowfin and Stripped Tuna), heaps of Spotty Mackerel, small Black Marlin. The huge amount of bait in the area during this time and the activity of the Biomass when it arrives draws a lot of other fish to the area. Golden Trevally, GTs, Cobia just to name a few.

The Biomass starts arriving late October with the month of November and first week of December being a very special time for Saltwater Flyfishers.

Platypus Bay hosts an unbelievable amount of bait at this time of the year and this is nature’s way of feeding the hordes of fish traveling south on their migration….and we love to be there when they arrive.

Fly fishing to bait balls is amazing fun and because of the proximity the bait balls are to the flats it’s not uncommon to see these pelagic fish feeding in water less than 5 foot deep.

Can you imagine seeing, and if lucky casting to a baby Black marlin, in less than 5 foot of water or what about casting to a rampaging line of Big Longtails killing anything, trying to hide in a whiting gutter. There’s also Golden Trevally and Queenfish to keep an eye out to cast to.

Fraser Island is the world’s largest sand island, a world heritage site and makes an amazing backdrop to this unique fly fishery.

Come see for yourself.

Full Day from: $ 1200

Meet Your Guide – Gavin Platz

I have lived and fished on the Sunshine Coast since I was a kid, Recreationally, Commercially and now for the last 25yrs as a Fly-Fishing Guide.

I started learning an appreciation of fly fishing in the 1980’s when I was fishing for a living. The person to blame for my addiction is Terry Parker who owned Fisherman’s World Tackle Shop, but I didn’t get serious about fly fishing until I quit Commercial fishing and took a job at Terry’s New Fisherman’s World at Kawana in about 1989. By the end of 1993 I was totally addicted to the fly rod and started not just fly fishing at home but in New Guinea, throughout the Pacific and the Americas. It mixed well with my beach lifestyle.

I opened Tie’n’Fly Outfitters in 1993. The Australian Tackle Industry at that time didn’t take us seriously as we had no Trout …. Of course we didn’t …. we had something much better Tuna and they ate flies with gusto!  Darryl ‘Steely’ Steel really showed us the way here and we took it to the next level.

During 1994, I had the pleasure of meeting Billy and Jodi Pate and was privileged to fish with and be taught and mentored by them over the next 5 years on the finer points of Fly Fishing in Saltwater. In 1996 the opportunity to fish with Billy and Jodi at their home flat in Bucannon Bank Islamorada in the Florida Keys. At the time Billy held the world record for the biggest fish ever caught on a fly rod a 188lb Tarpon on 16lb tippet. Something I will remember until I die.  I learnt so much and we became friends. This really spurred me on to the become a fly-fishing guide which I did in 1996. Since then I have had the privilege of having some of the best in the business in my boat. Cam Sigler snr, Cam Sigler jnr, Bryan Peterson, Kate Van Gutenbeck, Jack Samson. Through their encouragement and mentoring I became obsessed with learning more.

My learning curve intensified in 1995 when I had the opportunity to muck around with some fly rods up in the park with our own famous Rod ‘Harro’ Harrison. He had just come back from America fishing with Lefty Kreh. Harro gave me a casting lesson and improved my casting dramatically. I was so excited about what I had now learnt that I started teaching anglers what Harro had taught me. It just made sense to me there was a real benefit in being a trained Casting Instructor as well as a fully trained guide.

I had no idea how I was going to do this until I had a chance meeting with Gary and Wanda Taylor, both were Master Casting Instructors with the Federation of Flyfishers. They planted the seed in me to strive to become a Certified Casting Instructor with the Federation of Flyfishers, which I achieved in 2001 in New Zealand and my examiner was the famous Doug Swisher. Man, what a privilege that was.  At that time the FFF Certification was unheard of in Australia. Now days it’s a totally different story with a lot of anglers aspiring to and achieving their own certification.

I came to the realisation the fly fishing industry really catered for the biggest part of the fly fishing industry, namely trout and so was my certification, which I am very proud of but it lacked something. The penny should have dropped knowing there is only one question in the exam aimed at Saltwater Fly Fishing and the correct answer to the question is incorrect in my fly fishery. So I went about designing a range of schools using the Basic Fly Casting Principals as taught by the FFF in their Certification (which cannot be changed) and added basic ideas to improve an anglers casting ability to suit our Fly Fishery which is not based around Trout Fly Fishing.

Come fly fish with me I’d love to showcase our amazing Saltwater Fly Fishery to you