Lake Lyell

[daniel944]

Headed to Lyell on Saturday for the first time. We had trolling rods, spinning rods and fly rods in the boat with a range of lures and flies. No bait gear as we wern't planning to base our selves in one place as this trip was more about exploring a new waterway.

Turning onto Sir Thomas Mitchell Drv, it wasn't long before we had our first view of the lake and as expected all I could see were water skiiers Anyhow we have come to far to turn back now, although we did consider a detour to Dunns Swamp but deceided againts it as I have wanted to fish Lyell for quite a while now.

Pulling into the camping ground (dont take the dirt track where the sign is, keep going past the sign to the tar road) we paid our $4 and launched our boat. The first thing I noticed was the dirt in the water. There appeared to be suspended dirt all throughout. At this point I hoped that the water would be clearer in the middle, little did I know.

Soon we had the boat underway and headed up the far end of the dam until we considered the likley hood of loosing lures in the trees higher than the likley hood of catching fish. Down went the minn kota and out came a surface line with a rebel ant, a down rigger with a crickhopper and a dipsey-diver with a devel. All used various different types of ford fenders or cowbells.

We trolled this setup all over the lake, with different lures, depths, attractors, speeds, everything but nothing not even 1 hit! Me thinks that the biggest issue was the water quality, brown everywhere and quite warm 21degC. Plus the water skiiers didnt help much either. We also noticed that the sounder showed fish few and far between, and all on the bottom in about 7-8m of water near the shore.

Towards the end of the day we drove the boat up as far as we could and got out and walked the coxs river. We had one small brown on a dark brown nymph and a hit and miss on a repala minnow (brown trout color). Sorry no photos, camera was in the boat. And that was it.

After retreiving the boat, the owner of the shop told us that the water quality was due to droping lake levels and strong winds stiring up the loose dirt on the banks, plus he claimed that recently 2feet of water ran over the spill way and took a lot of the fish with it.

So we headed to blackheath for steak, chips and beer and got home around 10:30pm.

[zook2001]

Good report mate, been a very brown colour there since the lake refilled and all the trees rotted I know it doesn't worry the fish down in Tassie but it's a new experience for me here in NSW. For what it's worth I was there a month ago and the fish where biting a bit and rising more than I've seen for ages, the locals seemed pretty optimistic about the future.

[daniel944]

Hi Zook, can you tell me the water temp when you were there? Also were there many water skiiers?

Thanks

Daniel

[diesel]

lyells a hit and miss game at the moment and always has been as for the fish going over the spillway unlikely