There’s a heatwave coming and mountain lake fishers know what that means. Adelaide gets hot, the Hydro Corporation generates electricity for air conditioners, water levels drop, the shallow bays dry up and the remaining water warms up – but that’s not all bad news surely?  For the last couple of weeks lake levels and temperatures have been quite stable. Jindabyne has been dropping with some water heading into western flowing rivers; Eucumbene has dropped but in a manageable way that doesn’t appear to have bothered the fish too much; Tantangara has grass to the shore line and is table at summer levels.  At the moment all reports say it’s still all about the browns. The unanimous view is there are less rainbows than a typical year. What this means is the browns can feed closer to shore without being harassed mercilessly by their marauding territory defending rainbow cousins.  The browns like to mooch around in close and when the rainbows are terrorising anything that moves, I think the browns either head for deeper waters, are upset by all the commotion the rainbows make when they’re caught, or are simply out competed for the fly.  The other thing is to think dry and big. Beatles, hoppers, moths, muddlers, blow flies have all accounted for fish in the last week – the browns are looking up – literally. 

Corrigan got a cracking brown on a dry, whilst Mickey “fluked” the smaller fish. Mickey is the flukiest fly fisher I’ve ever met – I’ve seen him catch a fish at Middlingbank with his rod tucked under his arm whilst trying to light a ciggy; and my modest contribution to the pictures is a small brown with a fat belly that felt like mud eyes.

Caddigat Lakes are still fishing well in the heat although it’s exclusively sunk lines, and mostly big flies, moved slowly that are accounting for fish. We managed the annual trip to Mount Kosciusko last week – cold and windy but amazing to visit the top of Australia and see where all our snow-melt comes from – it was even cold in Adaminaby with a healthy frost on the car roof.

I expect things to slow down for the next few weeks after this week’s high temperature forecast, and expect another blog after next weekend – four days in the mountains with another blogger – at least 8 good sessions, great breezes forecast, a few showers, and cooling temperatures – even some hoppers and dragon flies around.

Tight tippets all.  Steve www.nakedtrout.com.au