Welcome

Some twenty years ago a lone bait fisherman, spending his Saturday afternoons at the Toorourrong, that small but attractively situated reservoir at Whittlesea, where the trout are hard to catch, was attracted by the method of a fellow angler who, using a dry fly, cast to and secured a fish at what seemed to our "garden hackle" exponent an incredible distance, and he at once determined to study this very different method of taking trout.

The "dry fly" fisherman was Mr Reg. Lyne, of Melbourne; the observer, Mr Wilf Crouch, of Doncaster, and the chance meeting of these two enthusiasts was destined, in later years, to improve the technique of fly casting beyond belief; for from Mr Crouch’s enthusiasm of his new found art resulted in a purely fly fisher’s club.

To Mr J. M. Gillies, the well known angler and golfer, and also a devotee of the Toorourrong, who observed Mr Crouch, with first one and then another of his numerous protégés receiving instruction in the art of casting flies, belongs the credit for suggesting that a fly fishers group be formed for casting practice on a Doncaster orchard dam.

The rapid and permanent conversion of numerous bait anglers followed, and in 1932, some fifty anglers, under the energetic secretaryship of Mr Frank Park of Box Hill, banded themselves together under the appropriate title of "Red Tag" club.