30 Years on the Goulburn, and What We’ve Learned
By Anthony Boliancu
In an age where anyone can buy a raft, throw up a few drone shots, and call themselves a guide, you’d be forgiven for asking: does experience still matter?
After three decades on the water – thousands of days, countless conversations, and more kilometres walked, drifted, and driven than I care to count – I can answer that quietly, but firmly:
Yes. It matters more than ever.
A River That Shapes You
The Goulburn River doesn’t suffer fools. Nor does it reveal itself easily. Like all good teachers, it offers its lessons in layers – some slow and subtle, others swift and humbling.
I’ve fished the river through floods and droughts, bushfires and frosts, through long summers where the water barely trickled, and deluges of biblical proportions where it surged brown and angry. I’ve sat beside it on still days, waiting for a hatch that never came, and I’ve raced its currents in a drift boat chasing evening rises against the clock.
But what stays with me isn’t just the fish or the photos. It’s how this river – my home water – has shaped the way I see the world. It’s taught me patience, attention, humility. And it’s shown me, over and over again, that nature doesn’t bend to our will. It requires respect. And time.
Guiding here isn’t about “knowing the spots.” It’s about understanding the interplay between light, current, season, and bugs. It’s about noticing when the flow from the dam has subtly changed through the day, and how that change – though invisible to the untrained eye – alters everything from where the trout hold to how the boat should be positioned.
More than that, it’s about reading people. The guests in your boat. Their energy, their limits, their need for silence or laughter or challenge. That’s a skill that takes years – not just of guiding, but of living.
What Three Decades Teaches You
Longevity brings clarity. You stop chasing gimmicks. You stop believing in silver bullets. And you learn, often the hard way, what really matters.
You come to understand that most breakthroughs on the water don’t come from new gear or secret techniques. They come from quiet, incremental refinement. From getting things 5% better, then doing that a thousand times.
You also learn the value of timing – knowing when to teach and when to step back. When to correct, and when to let someone make the cast their own way, even if it fails. Because sometimes that failure teaches more than a perfect drift ever could.
You learn how to build a trip that’s more than just fishing. The little things: hot tea on a cold morning. Remembering that someone prefers a left-hand retrieve. Carrying an extra fleece for the guest who insisted they were fine in just a shirt.
These things aren’t in any manual. But over time, they become second nature.
Behind the Curtain: The Business of Guiding
There’s a romance to the idea of being a guide – sunrises, fish, wild places – but behind that lies a reality few see.
It’s early mornings and late nights. Gear repairs, food orders, insurance renewals, safety briefings, permit applications, and vehicle maintenance. It’s being a host, medic, counsellor, and mechanic – often all in the same day.
And it’s pressure. Real pressure. Because when people entrust their time, their money, and their hopes to you, you carry the weight of delivering – not just technically, but emotionally.
At Goulburn Valley Fly Fishing, we’ve built systems over the years that allow us to handle that pressure. Systems that give us room to improvise when needed, and resilience when things go wrong (as they occasionally do in the outdoors). We’ve made mistakes. We’ve learned from them. And each season, we refine things further.
It’s not just about delivering “a good day.” It’s about building trust – trip after trip, year after year.
That’s how we’ve built a loyal following. And it’s why so many of our international trips, particularly in Montana and New Zealand, are often booked out by returning guests before we’ve even had a chance to advertise them.
Because people don’t just want fishing. They want consistency. They want to know the person they’re travelling with has been through it all, and knows what to do when the plan changes.
The World of Fly Fishing Today
We’re in a moment where social media can make anyone look like a seasoned expert. A few edited reels, a slick website, and suddenly someone with a few years of part-time experience is packaging trips that appear to rival long-standing operations.
There’s nothing wrong with newcomers. We all start somewhere. And there are some excellent young guides coming through who genuinely care about the craft.
But experience matters. Not because it guarantees perfection – but because it teaches humility. It teaches restraint. It teaches you to think long-term.
Fly fishing, like medicine or aviation, is not a field where confidence should be mistaken for competence. It takes time. And it takes mistakes – hundreds of them. The difference is, with enough experience, those mistakes become less frequent, less costly, and more instructive.
A Culture Worth Preserving
One of the things I worry about isn’t just the future of rivers — but the culture around them.
Fly fishing, at its best, has always carried with it a sense of stewardship. A code. A humility before the fish, the river, and each other. That’s why we teach etiquette. Why we preach catch and release. Why we talk about leaving the river better than we found it.
That culture is easy to lose when guiding becomes a commodity. When trips are sold like theme park rides, with little understanding of what the sport actually stands for.
That’s why experience matters. Not just for catching fish – but for passing on something older, and deeper.
Passing the Rod: On Mentorship and Legacy
As the years have gone by, one of the quieter joys of this life has been watching others grow into the craft.
Some were guests who became friends, and eventually, guides themselves. Others were younger anglers I mentored, who showed promise – not just in their casting or river knowledge, but in how they carried themselves. In how they watched. How they listened.
Mentorship in fly fishing isn’t formal. There are no graduation certificates. It happens in drips – over campfire conversations, shared drifts, or quiet moments beside a pool. You offer what you know, but only when asked. You model steadiness more than you explain it. You teach not by instruction, but by presence.
That’s the part of experience no one sees. The part that leaves a mark long after the rods are packed away.
I’ve had the privilege of helping a few young men find their footing as guides over the years. Some stayed in the game, some moved on. But all of them left carrying a little of the culture we tried to instil: patience over ego, humility over hype, and care over convenience.
Fly fishing, done properly, is a slow apprenticeship. And if we’re serious about keeping it honest, we need to pass on more than techniques – we need to pass on values.
That, to me, is the true legacy of experience. Not what you keep. What you give away.
Why It Still Matters
In the end, this business isn’t about rods or rivers. It’s about people.
It’s about building something solid enough to stand the test of time – and flexible enough to evolve.
It’s about showing up – season after season, year after year – and doing the work with care, honesty, and respect for the craft.
That’s what we’ve tried to do at Goulburn Valley Fly Fishing. It’s not flashy. It’s not loud. But it’s real. And it’s built to last.
If you’ve fished with us, you’ll know what I mean.
If you haven’t – we’d love to show you.
No gimmicks. No shortcuts. Just thoughtful, time-earned experience – shared between casts.