Oddly enough given that it’s still a warm and 'buggy', I don’t particularly rate February for evening rises on streams. Of course they can happen. But to put it another way, if I turn up to the right river under the right conditions in December, I feel a bit ripped off if there isn’t a good evening rise. By this time of year though, I’m more philosophical. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won’t.
Earlier in the week, JD and I spent two evenings on the Goulburn; both of them idyllically mild and with a bit of breeze, but not enough to pose a threat to a potential rise. The river both evenings was steady at 2700 ML/d, and clear. The two different spots we chose to fish were nothing fancy: no major hikes, no rafts. Just a short walk from well-known public access points.
While rationally, I know the Goulburn tailwater carries a lot of trout (and all the more so since the advent of half-decent winter flows), whenever I fish the bleeding obvious spots, complete with well-worn riverside tracks and the odd forked stick in the bank, a part of me can wonder if such stretches might be a bit fished out? Sure enough, as I started our evening session working a perfect-looking run, the lack of a quick response to my caddis grub, then PTN – both beneath a hopper-ish Stimulator, had me wondering. My casts and drifts, plus fly choice, were surely about right? I know it’s usually wrong to blame the fish and the spot, but I’m only human.
Eventually, I did land a small rainbow near the top of the run, and spotted but couldn’t catch a big willow grubber, so there were fish present after all, and a couple were even prepared to feed – and that after a fine weekend of no doubt intense fishing pressure.
Well up ahead, I could see JD. While I wasn’t watching him the whole time, I was pretty sure he had at least missed a fish (a sudden lift of the rod, followed by hands on hips). Okay, there was hope, although aside from a leaping sprat against the bank, and the two apparently illogical (to the uninitiated) backwater gulps from the grubber, I hadn’t seen a rise.
I walked up to JD, who had indeed hooked and lost one, and had also seen a sprinkle of rises. It was after 7.30pm and the sun was getting very low. I walked 80 metres upstream of him, something you can do ethically on a big river like the Goulburn – at least with a mate. No sooner was I in position, when JD hooked a reasonable rainbow and landed it. Then he caught another. I too saw a couple of rises, and landed one on the nymph – still beneath the arguably now inappropriate Stimulator.
At about 8pm, the rises stopped again. I decided to make the most of the remaining light and break in the action to re-rig – a little parachute caddis on the point, and a red parachute spinner on the dropper. Once set up though, there were still no more rises. JD leapfrogged me, spent a few minutes on the big pool above, then walked back down past me. He reported the odd rise, but had decided he liked his original spot more.
8.05pm and I could hear the proverbial clock ticking. The sun was long gone, and although my position where a gravelly riffle spilled into a broad run looked perfect, all that showed was one huge Kossie spinner overhead, and a couple of unmolested caddis.
By now, the light was too low to make out great detail on the upstream pool JD had just left, but I thought I could make out suspicious disturbances. With nothing to lose, I walked up for a look.
Bang! Fish were suddenly rising everywhere; to the point I initially thought some had to be creases and boils in the current. From where I stood, for the next half hour, I must have seen literally dozens of different trout rising, and most seemed to be reasonable fish.
To salve my conscience, I made a rushed advisory phone call to JD, and then started casting. The Goulburn’s reputation as a ‘technical’ fishery is often borne out during big rises, and I knew that finding the action was likely to be only half the battle. However, this time I got lucky: my caddis/ spinner combo proved just right. As well as the regulation misses (I could barely see the flies, so I was mostly striking on a guess), I landed a neat half dozen browns: all peas in a pod at 14-16 inches. I don’t know what pleased me more: finding the rising fish, or having them eat my flies – three on each in fact.
The next evening, after a solid day on some neighbouring streams, we headed to another convenient and popular Goulburn spot. We were of course hoping for a repeat, while resigned to the possibility of not much. In the end, we got what you could call ‘evening rise lite’ – enough trout got up to keep us interested, but well short of the previous day’s crazy action. Fishing only the spinner this time (it turned out my caddis had disintegrated on the final fish the previous night) I was able to catch a couple of fat 12 inch rainbows.
A fat little rainbow from 8.30pm, night two - demonstrating why it's usually not really worth taking half-light trout pics once the rise is in full swing.Meanwhile, JD fished far enough upstream of me that direct communication was patchy, but I think he had about the same amount of activity. That is, he enjoyed perfectly reasonable evening fishing, but like me, he didn’t feel like he’d won the last light lottery.
