With only two days off for both of us, and the technical arrival of autumn not quite corresponding with a run of fairly hot, dry weather, my son Daniel and I decided the Goulburn tailwater and a couple of its tributaries were as good an option as any. When our Goulburn-local mate JD said he could join us for at least some sessions, the deal was sealed.
The dispassionate voice on the Eildon info line (ph. 5774 3928) on Tuesday, informed us that river releases were stable at about 3250 ML/d (what I think of as medium height) and a nice chilly 12.8C. So it was tempting to start on the Goulburn – it was clear even where we crossed it on the Maroondah Highway bridge, which itself is downstream of some often-discoloured tributaries. However, we planned to be on the big river for evening in the hope of a rise, so we pushed on to the Acheron. This would give us some variety, while still giving us time on the Goulburn later.
This stream was at an almost ideal level, and by Acheron standards, quite clear. The fishing was good – some reasonable browns and smaller rainbows, mostly on a hot dot PTN, but a couple on the Royal Wulff above.
Over on the lower Rubicon, we found similar conditions: a comfortable but not excessive flow, and visibility was good, relatively speaking.
The biggest difference on the Rubi was rising fish. Find the right stretch (whatever that was!) and enough trout were coming up – and consistently – to safely take off the nymph. With lots of tricky casting amongst the willows and tea-tree, and plenty of snagging subsurface sticks, it always feels liberating to fish a dry alone on this stream, even if you can’t always afford that luxury.
Better still, it turned out that really big buggy dries worked well enough that I eventually decided any last-second refusals, were more than compensated for by the pulling power of the larger fly. I even watched one good brownie move to intercept (and eat) a hairy/leggy thing I landed 2 metres downstream of it while covering a smaller fish.
Eventually though, it was the pulling power of the big Goulburn which worked on Daniel, JD and I as we headed over to make sure we had plenty of time to scout and ‘settle’ before sunset. The river was a picture, and in that incongruous way of late summer/early autumn tailwaters, a large, cold, green mass of water rushing west through a rapidly drying landscape.
Initially, the actual fishing was unspectacular: the odd small, random leaper, and I think a modest rainbow to JD on the nymph. And then, just as I was wondering if we should have stayed on the Rubi, the occasional rise became something more.
In anticipation, Daniel and I had rigged up with a ‘sighter’ dun in my case, and caddis in his, with a small parachute red spinner off the back for both of us. I like to get prepared while there’s still a bit of easy fly-change light. It’s a gamble – you could get it wrong and have to change again. But I find smaller red spinners are common enough as at least part of the evening rise menu on many mountain rivers and tailwaters, and with both time and presentation being at a premium, a ready-to-go double dry rig can give you a valuable head start.
Daniel is fairly new to evening rises on big, fast tailwaters, and as the rises began to increase exponentially around 7.45pm, I heard him call out, “They’re not eating these flies!”
“You’ve got to really cover them,” I replied. “Think of these fish as Moorabool midge feeders,” I added, “Except the food is speeding past them in the current.”
“Well, okay…” came the doubtful response. But not a minute later, I heard a couple of fishy splashes, then “Yep, got one!” and Daniel was away.
This turned into one of those fortunate evenings when the trout are rising in a lot of places, and for more than half an hour. There’s plenty for everyone, and once I was satisfied that my son had opportunities, I was able to indulge in a decent go myself on the bend upstream.
Several trout later, the rises eventually faded away in the last of the light, and I made my way down to where I’d left JD, and Daniel below him. I was somewhat surprised when I got to JD but couldn’t see the silhouette of Daniel 80 metres downstream. Then I saw the flash of a headlight another hundred metres down from where I’d left him at the start of the rise. “Think he might have hooked a good one,” JD speculated. Sure enough, Daniel soon came crunching up the gravel to announce that he’d landed a 2 pound brownie, which had indeed taken him on a chase.
Then yesterday morning posed the usual question: where best to spend our remaining few hours before the drive home to more mundane commitments? Several candidates mounted a good case, but in the end, the Goulburn’s potential was too intriguing to resist. On a different stretch to where we’d spent Wednesday evening, we were pleasantly surprised to find some regular risers.
Perhaps the partial cloud cover and mild (20C) temperatures helped, and I should stress that this wasn’t evening rise intensity. However, in places – mainly the ‘softer’ bubble-lines and backwaters – we found trout sipping away. It wasn’t easy by any means. Without the cover of semi-darkness, the trout were easy to spook and hard to fool. However, all three of us agreed that this was champagne flyfishing – visible targets, feeding hard, and catchable… but only if the angler was good enough.
It was almost as much fun to watch as to fish, and sometimes it was actually necessary to be a spotter, so the angler at water level could be told what was happening. “He’s turned, he’s looking, he’s coming up, he’s coming up… argh, refused”, was a common refrain. Then every once in a while, a trout would actually eat the fly, and what a victory that was. The Goulburn can be a right bastard sometimes, but on this morning, I would have struggled to think of anywhere I’d rather be.
The fishing only got better, and the walk back to the car was tortuous – we’d pushed on well past our agreed finish time, and still we were tempted with some ‘just one cast’ moments. This is not the sort of fishing that can be rushed, and we probably would have been better off to keep our eyes on the track ahead and ignore the river.
Ultimately, we made it back to the car with a sense of both a special morning completed, and a job unfinished. I told Daniel that I suppose that’s one reason we keep coming back.
