Last Sunday my 9yr old son Louie and I packed up the boat with our fly rods and headed off to Lake Dunstan for the day. We arrived at the Lowburn boat ramp around 9am there was still a good frost on the ground and the inversion layer was still hanging around making things bitterly cold ! On went the Simms G4 waders and boots and we proceeded to head up to the top of the Lake to where the Clutha flows in. We arrived about 20mins later and drove the boat right into the sandy shallows where the water was about a 1m or so deep , I rigged up my rod with an Airflo 40 + Di5 and Louie's with a Di1.5, our tippet consisted of a level piece of 10lb Airflo Sight Free fluro carbon with a well hackled Woolly Bugger that Louie had tied up the previous day attached to it with a smaller Stu's Deadly Damsel fly trailing behind.

I turned the main motor off and we set ourselves up with him at the back of the boat and myself at the front. We then slowly drifted with the current along a shallow weed bed that had a very deep drop off into a channel on it's far side. These weed beds are home to many aquatic insects such as snails, damsel flies, dragon fly nymphs, caddis fly nymphs, midge, water boatman and may fly nymphs all of which play a part in the trout's diet through out the year.

We didn't have to wait long for some action on my third cast over the weed bed into the deeper channel I had a savage take as I stripped my Bugger back over the main weed bed but unfortunately the fish came unstuck ! Next up its was Louie who was into a good fish which had engulfed a woolly bugger he had just recently tied . After a good 5 minute battle off the back of the boat we netted a nice brownie which was released after a quick "grip n grin" for the young fella.

We did another couple of drifts over the same stretch of water playing around with rigs ,flies and speed of retrievals and touched 2 more fish which again came unstuck in the deep weed beds that surrounded us. All up a satisfying day out on Lake Dunstan with my son !