Trevor worked hard for this rainbow in excellent fishing conditions.
There are times of the year when fishing days speed up and slow down. Summer can last forever with long doldrum days of still heat; winter’s the same, waiting for spring. But the shoulder seasons always seem to rocket along, with, for my money, autumn being the fastest as I squeeze in as much time as I can, before the trips reduce to one or two a week on short winter days. There’s also something special about the brown trout fishing as winter approaches.
Now I admit I’m living this autumn vicariously through my reportees as I enjoy a Cornish spring, and look forward to my first river day for the season later this week. But that doesn’t stop me thinking about Lake Eucumbene every morning, and eagerly watching the weather forecast and the moon phases, trying to figure out just what will be influencing the big browns to start moving around. I did spot that the Swamp Creek fish-cam reported a 98 cm fish in late March, and to be honest, I have no printable words for that.
How’s the fishing?
How’s the fishing? Well, not awful, but not as good as it’s been. Trevor & company had a few days out of Buckenderra in March and gave me regular updates. It was nice to see some rainbows, even if they worked hard for them. They covered a lot of the lake from the boat, including Rushies, Brookwood, Wainui, and Cobrabald. Trevor reports: “…headed over to Cobrabald and fished that area all day in various places including Crows. The water temperature was 19° in the morning but got up to 20.6 in the afternoon. We only caught one rainbow in that area. It was a beautiful day and the conditions were pretty good, but we didn’t see a fish rise all day. The fish I caught was on a Magoo. This evening, I pulled in three more rainbows at Wainui between a pound and a quarter and a pound and three quarters, all taken on a brown nymph.”
Elsewhere on Eucumbene, Rod Allen reports good bank fishing from Rushies, with big Zonkers fished with a strip, strip strip…. and then long pauses. Keith got onto a couple of nice rainbows on Woolly Buggers earlier this week when a lot of people were catching nothing.
Rod sent in these pictures of some cracking fish taken on a Zonker at Rushies.
On Jindabyne, reports are scarce, and those I’ve received suggest the fishing has been tough. I haven’t had a recent fishing report from Tantangara, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give it a go, in fact given there’s probably grass to the water line right now, I’d be heading there if I could.
Lake levels
Lake Eucumbene is at 42.3%, down from 55.3% this time last year, with a steady fall since mid-December. Nothing to really scare the fish.
Lake Jindabyne is at 51.6%, down from 66.1% this time last year, with a stop-start but steady fall since mid-December.
Tantangara Reservoir has been steady at around 11.4% since mid-February – hence the comment about grass to the water line.
Hot tips
Trevor’s action on the brown nymph suggests there might be a few stick caddis around, and Keith and Rod’s fish on big flies are exactly what I would expect at this time of the year. Let the fly hover and stay in touch, watching the line for any sign of a take. Don’t shy about hanging a big fly under an indicator up to 4 metres from the indicator to the fly. And lift on everything. They can be ever so subtle!
Lake levels trending down (from Snowy Hydro website).
