Snowies and Cotter

[Centrepin]

This season we have had one visit to the Snowies for very little return. While the rivers did some colour I would have expected better results than we saw.

We fished the Upper Murrumbidgee, Eucumbene and Yarrongabilly rivers. In 2 hours on the upper Eucumbene saw a couple of fish come up to the dry. I could not convert them with the usual tactics. So there were some fish there and it would take a bit more persistence to get results. The upper Murrumbidgee was too coloured to get a true measure of its potential this year.

The Yarrongabilly returned 2 m0derate rainbows in about 10 hours of fishing.

You can see evidence on the Yarrongabilly of massive floods. The river stones are all bare and not covered with algae and silt as is normal. No sign of nymphs or husks that they have emerged. The intelligence suggests this is consistent with the Thredbo river and much of the Eucumbene. It appears the big floods of the winter have scoured the bottom and the fish just leave the area.

As a consequence we cancelled a further trip to the Snowies and arranged a day trip to the Cotter.

In the morning we fished some easy water upstream and it produced a few rainbows to 35 c.m on larger dries. Nothing came to the nymph at all. These were spirited little fish that fought well in clean fast flowing water.

The river was flowing high and all the fish came from deeper sections. It was great to see them just emerge from the deep to take the dry. Some large beetles were about so size 12 Adam’s irresistible was the fly of choice.

After lunch we struck out for some new water further downstream. This was tiger country and I expect sees fewer fisherman.

The fish again were all rainbows of a better class of fish. All about 40 c.ms and again fought very well in the fast clean water.

There were not a lot of fish but they were consistent. Only 1 run produced more than 1 fish but nearly every run had one fish come up to the dry. Our conversion rate was not great but we ended up with perhaps 10 fish for the arvo.

So unless I get better intelligence I’ll give the Snowies a miss till towards the end of the season. I’m sure there would be fish in the top end of the creeks but they will take some persistence to work out the patterns.

The Cotter has me intrigued at the moment to really explore the potential. The Blue mountains streams will get some attention, as will NE Victorians streams towards the end of December.

Geoffrey

[kyuss]

Thanks for the report. The Cotter is one of my favs. Well worth the effort to treck in to the more inaccessible places (or MTB). Nice to hear of 40cm fish, I was convinced that 35 was about the limit for the stream.

[huckfinn]

Nice work mate. Not asking for your good spots, but where are some decent areas to fish on the cotter?

Cheers mate

[arpie]

Interesting observations on why it was so ordinary, too! Great report, even tho the fish were few & far between. Nice pics!

Roberta

[Centrepin]

Nice work mate. Not asking for your good spots, but where are some decent areas to fish on the cotter?

Cheers mate

I can send you some maps. I'll send PM but will need email address to attach the file as PM does not support this well.

Geoff