The glorious Gordon River by Kelly Hunt

The Gordon River is one of the jewels in Tasmania's crown, and spends most of its 190km winding majestically through the south western Tasmania world heritage area, spilling into the history-soaked Macquarie Harbour.

The lower reaches of the Gordon is famous for its path through spectacular narrows and picturesque broad waters. These waters are the stuff of legend among seasoned 'searunner' fishers.

A searun trout has made a decision as a young fingerling to head out into the brackish estuarine water for a look and really likes what it sees. This new habitat combined with a varied and abundant food supply leads to a number of significant changes for these fish. Searunners soon grow into silver barrels growing faster and stronger than their poor cousins, the resident brown trout. This is why they are a much sought-after prize for those anglers trying to better their power and stamina.

If there is one thing big sea runners enjoy more than cool saltwater passing over their gills, it is a big run of white bait. The Gordon River is well renowned for its big runs of spawning whitebait. They come from all around to well up at the river mouth ready to brave the lazy current of the Gordon, move upstream, spawn and die. Big powerful sea runners will feed on these whitebait as they congregate at the river mouth and follow them up stream feeding ferociously.

BUCKET LIST ITEM

A trip to Tasmania's wild west coast to fish a river full of massive trophy trout should be on everyone's to-do list. There are some instances when being Tasmanian is a huge bonus and being involved in an annual trip to the Gordon River with cobber Stan Kaine is one of those occasions.

Trip planning is always as much fun as the trip itself and debating what to take and what to leave behind. Due to the landscape and the inability to camp on the steep riverbanks, living on board is a popular aspect. This comes with its difficulties as the confines of a small boat over four days has its logistics requirements.

Hadley Deegan runs the well-respected Deegan Marine in Tasmania and on hearing our plight offered us the use of a 2570 Super Cab from Stabicraft. Having never set foot on one, it was a fantastic opportunity to get acquainted.

The big Stabicraft, at 7.86m overall length and 2.49m of beam, was going to be a whole lot of trout fishing platform. This awesome vessel is obviously designed and very well appointed as an all-weather game fishing boat. We would put her through her paces and see how she would perform as an impromptu marine caravan.

THE HARBOUR

The three hours tow from Ulverstone to Strahan was effortless thanks to the VW Touareg's towing ability and the quality engineering of the custom Mackay alloy tandem trailer.

Macquarie Harbour was in a foul mood when we arrived at the ramp. Failing light and a 30 knot southerly made the decision to bed down in the big Stabicraft for the night relatively easy.

First night in the big girl and we woke in fine spirits. There were massive amounts of room in the full V berth and the Stabicraft has heaps of storage everywhere. We stowed the gear and made ready for our trip across the harbour as the weather had not woken as happy as we had.