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

In New South Wales, Australia, my friend Nick Taransky makes fine bamboo rods. He is also a small-stream fanatic and as we were coming to the end of our respective fishing seasons, and perhaps in recognition of our shared love of tiny, twiggy waters, he sent me an interesting email with a few photographs. They lit a bright fire in the small-stream-addiction-centre somewhere deep in my brain, and if you are similarly small-stream addicted, hold onto your socks right now!

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 weight, while Troy fished his 7’3” Japanese “Naoto Shibuya Favourite” Glassmaster #3.  

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 2 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