Lyell Spills While Thommos Stinks

[Matt]

My lovely wife is a long time member of a Karate club and twice a year gets to attend a camp at Blackheath in the mountains. Of course I do the driving and cooking duties any good husband does but in between doing these things I get a lot of time to do what I wish, and we all know what that is!

I was keen to have a look at Lake Lyell first, the Delta Electricity site had it at 65%. More than I had ever had the pleasure of seeing before and the thought of all that flooded grass and margins had my casting arm twitching in anticipation. How little I knew! My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I crested the rise and the lake came into view, 65% you sure? One of my favourite spots is the small bay that you can turn into before the Dam Wall, it used to be a recreation area but the road is blocked off now. My last few sessions here had seen a few nice Browns caught but the bay was small and easily covered in the course of a couple of hours. Now that bay had become a large body of water in it's own right! The first thing I noticed when I got the waters edge was the sheer amount of insects in the water, the first metre was a writhing mass of flushed out life. Ants, Spiders, Cockroaches, Snails and stuff I don't even know the names of were all trying there hardest to stay alive, a bug natural disaster. Surely all this food would bring the fish in, and it did. But the sheer amount of food in the water meant that your presentation had be attractive enough for the fish to select it over the real thing. In my case it wasn't, I cast at plenty of fish with numerous flies, dry and wets but none were accepted. In fact I spent a good deal of time trying to avoid becoming a climbing post for the all the bugs in the water! With the fishing so hard I went for a drive to look at spots that I had last fished when the level was at about 50% and just to marvel at a site I hadn't seen before, Lyell at 100%.

Trust me, this lake will fire for both Trout and Bass over the next few weeks!

Next day I headed off to TCD to see what was happening there. Being a lake with no real catchment I was hoping it would be a little more stable. Again I was wrong, it had dropped a good couple of feet since I was last here a few weeks ago. The conditions were perfect for a morning rise, dead calm with a lingering fog. I was expecting to see fish rising as soon as the sun peeked through. Nup, nope, zip. The lake had a funny aqua colour to it (clay run-off I suspect) and I barely saw a fish. There was also an odd sewer like smell, TCD gets this occasionally and I don't think it is helped by the odd dead goat that the local farmers pop every now and again. Again everything was tried for no result, I only located a lone feeding Trout and I spooked it with a poor cast. Good news though in that it looked like it was recently stocked with loads of Fry hard against the edges in some places. Be great to Delta started pumping all that excess from Lyell up here.

I stopped on the way back to look at Wallace spilling, the Cox River was in full flood. All though I didn't even come close to catching a fish (in fact I think the Trout were laughing at me most of the time) it was still a worthwhile trip just to see the area in flood. I am confident we are in for a bumper season

Cheers

Windy

[Dalucius]

Wow! We will have to get up to Lyell I don't remember the last time I saw it full.

Thanks for your report.

[bringo]

It's great to see the lake full again it's been over 11 years since water has run over the spillway.

You wouldn't believe the amount of traffic on the road to the dam on sunday. You couldn't get a park at the viewing area near the spillway.

I fished there both sunday and tuesday for nill result. but I think when the water settles down in the next couple of weeks the fishing should be awesome.

Brad

[MOE^MOE]

good report mate the first time iwent ther i caught a 3.5 kg brown trout on 4 ib line you have just brought back that memory as im typing im organising a trip ther with my mate thanks 4 agreat report

[zook2001]

Great news and a fantastic report,that little bay which is now a big bay was one of my favorite places to fish before the drought.I hope you took a note of all drop offs to the side of the road cause I wouldn't want you to wade out too far! this is where most the fly fishers used to head out to of an evening as plenty of fish work along there.

Edited December 8, 2010 by zook2001

[fishermandan123]

Hi,

Good news mate. Just six months ago lake Lyle was at 25% and the threat of being closed to boats was growing. I was going to go up last weekend but i saw the "de" webside had the water level from 56 - 77% in a week. I will try and go up to wet a line soon, can't wait.

[Matt]

I know what you mean Zook, nearly went off a small drop-off! I love that bay, it's easy access and doesn't seem to get the attention. Also some good options for walking to further spots.

If the rain and flood eases up a bit and the lake stabilises the fishing will be fantastic, apparently the Bass are around in numbers and the Trout will have put on a lot of condition from the amount of food. Lyell is shaping up to be a good little mixed fishery!

Regards

Windy

[Smitty]

Hi all,

Though you might be interested in a couple of recent photos of the Lake Lyell floating pontoon. I've only been to the lake a couple of times, but I've never seen this pontoon anywhere near the water before.......bloody incredible!!!

Hoping to get up there in the very near future myself.

Cheers,

Smitty...