Steve enjoys mixing up his summer Snowy Lakes fishing, with time on the many nearby streams.

As the days warm into December, the Snowy Mountains settle into a (mostly!) benign rhythm. The spring wet fly fishery – throwing streamers, dedicated nymphing, and jigging Squirmy Worms, is largely over. The rivers and creeks settle into a pattern of stable, more predictable flows, which are also lower and warmer. Many flyfishing opportunities will now involve dry flies. For many flyfishers, this presents the ultimate challenge: choosing a fly that’s a reasonable fit for the prevailing bug life, the perfect cast and presentation (especially drift without drag), the moment of deception, the surface eat, the hard fight, the photo, the release.

To provide a guide to success, and to capture the essence of all this in a single article (even one split in two parts!), is a true challenge. There are literally a hundred Snowy Mountains streams, a thousand or more different spots, and more potential fishing scenarios than I can imagine or recall.

So later, what I’ll do is discuss three summer streams, which collectively do a fair job as examples of river and creek fishing in the area. They are:

• the Eucumbene River upstream of Lake Eucumbene, as an example of one of the larger Snowy Mountains rivers, with (like the Thredbo River) a significant head of migratory lake fish, some of which can stay for summer – particularly the first part.
• the Murrumbidgee River upstream of Tantangara Reservoir, which is a somewhat smaller example, with a less significant head of lake fish.
• the Yarrangobilly River near the Snowy Mountains Highway – a typical smaller stream; more a creek than a river.

I’ll also listed some other favourites, though in less detail.

The Dream

Predicting conditions for a whole summer is fraught, especially one following a spring with less snowmelt than usual, and lots of predators of both the feathered and non-feathered kind. Still, this piece isn’t intended as a prediction, rather it’s based on my experiences over more than 3 decades.

In a perfect world, as I approach a given Snowy Mountains stream in summer, I want to see reasonable flows across clean rocks and gravel, clean sand on the inner edge of pools, and no real sign of rock or surface algae. I want it to look like somewhere I’d want to swim. There are nice long rippling runs, semi-submerged boulders, some freestone stretches, deeper, slower pools, and both overhanging and streamside vegetation, all topped off with an undercut bank on one side of the river. When I put my hand in the water, I want it to be cool to the touch. Cool enough that if I did swim, I would expect, after a while, to turn just a little blue on the extremities!

It’s ideally a warm sunny day with no more than a zephyr of a breeze; a lightweight shirt day. Or it can be overcast and a little humid; maybe a thunderstorm tomorrow. The bugs love that. There is a crackle to the streamside vegetation suggesting we’ve had a few days of dry weather, an encouragement for terrestrials to be on the move. Just writing about it, I’m getting excited!

Some top spots

Like I said earlier, there are so many good summer options, it was hard to narrow down – even to my ‘sample’ three, which I’ll cover in more detail later.

The Thredbo River is perhaps the premier option in the southern Snowy Mountains, well covered by David Anderson’s recent feature. Immediately over the range to the west, the upper Snowy tributaries like Spencers Creek and Betts Creek can be good on the right day, as can the ‘natural’ Snowy River itself above Guthega Pondage – if you don’t mind a bit of a walk. The water below Guthega and all the way to Lake Jindabyne has its moments, although flows vary massively depending on Snowy Hydro releases and can mess up fishing plans. Sudden rises may be a problem if you’re caught on the wrong side, and even dangerous if you push your wading luck.

The Snowy River downstream of Jindabyne is an excellent, predominantly brown trout fishery – though with a lot of the best water only accessible through private land.

South-west of Jindabyne off the Barry Way is the renowned Moonbah (Mowamba) River which in parts is serpentine, winding its way through waist-high tussocks. A fertile fishery with fat browns and rainbows – and carry hopper patterns for your summer fishing.

Further north, if you drive into Tantangara Reservoir on Tantangara Road, you cross Nungar Creek, a beautiful small creek both above and below the culvert crossing. Not easy going, but worth the effort on the right day. Keep driving to the dam, and drive past the dam wall and down the hill. Here you cross the Murrumbidgee again. Fish right or left, it’s all good water, or hike along the bush track before the bridge and walk for a few kilometres downstream. As always, the further you’re prepared to walk, the less the fish have seen of other fishers. Abundance and naivety definitely improve catch rates!

If you’ve fished the Eucumbene River and want something different, head up the Link Road for about 40 kilometres past Cabramurra, and beyond Tumut Pond Reservoir until you reach Ogilvies Creek. Here, if you fish upstream, you have a better than even chance of catching a brook trout from one of the region’s very few well-established wild populations.

There are so many other Snowy summer options, but this is an article, not a book! Get some maps out, and virtually every other blue line inside the KNP carries trout – at least most of the time.

Detailed summer example 1 – The Eucumbene River upstream of Lake Eucumbene.

Getting there

Let’s say there are around 30 kilometres of fishable riverbank above Lake Eucumbene, taking into account all the wiggly bits. Some spots are quite easy to get to, others require either a bit of walking, or a four-wheel drive. Just leave Adaminaby, head west on the Snowy Mountains Highway, and soon enough the river will be on your left-hand side. The first stop is 17 kilometres from Adaminaby, the Providence Park cabins and campsite, where, if the lake level is at 50%, you will find the start of the river. Here, there are always a few hundred metres of deep, slow moving lake to river transition water that’s quite easy to fish. Do not discount this for blind prospecting Woolly Buggers, or for great midge hatches, or the occasional Kosciusko dun hatch – and hoppers in summer.

The next stop is another four kilometres, passing Tantangara Road and the Gang Gang Creek culvert. Turn left then hard left for the Denison Campsite, or straight on for Alpine Creek. At both spots, you can park and walk, with bank access to several kilometres of river, above and below the tree line. There are well-defined and easy to access tracks, to the old road bridge pool and the tree-line, to the Millenium Trail, and to the Flying Fox (only for the fit!). Alpine Creek itself can be worth a look on the right day, although its small and hard to fish well.

Heading west on the highway again for another eight kilometres, we start to climb into the higher country, until Sawyers Hut appears by the roadside. The Four Mile Track will take you right to the river from the hut – turn right to reach Four Mile Creek and beyond, or left for Rocky Plain Creek (which has an impressive waterfall).

There are other places you can park roadside and walk, both before and after Sawyers, dropping in to reach the river after a good bush-bash. The easiest access point however is at Kiandra Bridge, another five kilometres from Sawyers. As the mountain road opens up from the wooded hills into high plains, you first see the river in full panorama, with the Kiandra Bridge like a scale model in the distance. As you drive on and cross the bridge, there’s off-road parking immediately on the left. Or, if you’re feeling brave, a four-wheel-drive-only track will take you through up to 60 centimetres of water to a parking area about a kilometre downriver.

Where and how to fish

Today, I’ll park at the Kiandra Bridge. I suspect we’ll have company at some point, with this being one of the most fished stretches of trout stream, per square metre, in Australia.

When I can, I start early in the day. I like to have the river to myself, for a while at least. The first decision is whether we go up or down river. If we go up, we’ll be fishing ahead of anyone arriving afterwards. There’s a kilometre or so of open country with classic runs and corner pools, a rocky gorge loaded with riffles, then another two kilometres of slower river, with longer, deeper pools. A nice mix of water types with lots of opportunities to try different tactics.

If we start by going downriver and fishing back up, there’s some amazing water, but be prepared for others to jump in ahead of you before we get back to the bridge. Two kilometres below the bridge is the Suicide Hole gorge, a name that goes back to the 1860 Kiandra gold rush, when a 15,000-strong mining camp sprung up out of nowhere – to then rapidly decline by 1861 – a tough and depressing place in winter. There are remnants of the gold rush everywhere. Sluice leets, pools, boulder mounds from the diggings, old huts, the Police Station/Post Office (repaired after the 2019/20 bushfires), and a well-populated cemetery.

The Suicide Hole is obvious when you get there: a high gorge cliff, dropping into a deep pool. There are always trout here, even though they are cunning. The path to the top of the gorge isn’t too steep, but it can be slippery. Try to avoid the slide track down to the first pool. It’s better and safer to stay high and cut across the top, past the first three or four pools, and then steadily fish back up to the gorge. Look back from the top of the rise to check there’s no one coming in behind you before you drop down to the river.

No matter where I fish, I look for water with a bit of depth and character. Whilst it’s tempting to fish from the bank, if I can safely and comfortably wade, I always seem to catch more fish. There is very little streamside cover here, just a big Snowy Mountains sky, against which an angler’s profile on a bright day looks very much like danger to the trout.

When you’re ready for your first cast, get downstream of the run or pool you want to fish, and carefully enter the water. Having chosen a fly (I like to start with a size 10 or 12 Elk Hair Caddis, well dabbed in floatant) I start with a few short casts into every pocket, behind every boulder, and along the bank, then lengthen my cast to the conditions. If you’re not landing the fly where you want it gracefully, and ahead of your leader, be less ambitious. You don’t have to cast far. Five to eight metres is usually plenty, and no more than ten. On a windy day you can get away with shorter casts.

The best spots are those seams of transitional water between the darker, deeper water and the shallower, faster edges. And focus on the bubble-lines. If the bubbles (from the broken fast water above the pool) is being channeled into one strip, that’s where you’ll also find a lot of trout food.

Nothing happening? Don’t stop now. Tie on a bead-head nymph, green or black, on about 60 cm of 4X tippet. Tie the tippet to the bend of the dry fly hook and fish the same water again. This dry/ dropper rig catches many fish, although I still generally prefer to fish the dry on its own initially. Incidentally, the first trout I ever caught on the dry/ dropper was at this very spot, just below the Suicide Hole, a couple of decades ago. Fishing with the Editor, he guided me onto a fishy spot, directed my cast, then called, “Wait, wait, wait, wait…” until the dry was literally at my feet in the tail of the pool… then down it went. The fish literally chased the escaping nymph as it accelerated up and out of the deeper water at the tail of the pool – what an eyeopener that was!

Same spot, 15 years later, and I was spotting for mate Stephen. The caddis drifted through the pool, over the lip, and towards a tussock leaning over the runout. Wait, wait, wait… a golden flash, the caddis disappeared and a 3lb brown ripped up the pool, with all the ensuing madness.

Having fished back up to the Suicide Hole with the cliff face looming above, it’s worth taking some time to fish the depths with a dedicated indicator rig. Tie on enough tippet to temporarily lengthen your leader to as close to 5 metres as you can cast – that’s about the depth of water. And use a tungsten beaded fly; maybe even a split shot or two. For this pool, I like the indicator to be fixed around 30 cm below the fly line loop. Cast upriver, into the gorge and let the indicator slowly drift back towards you. If the nymph doesn’t get a take, try a Squirmy Worm. Not quite dry fly purism, and this rig can be really awkward to cast (very long pause on the back cast and no more than one false cast), but it can pay dividends.

There are times, even in summer, when the river is in spate. The volume, depth, speed, and colour of the water all change after very heavy rain. If you see the river is in the bankside grass, it’s higher than average. It can be treacherous, so be extra cautious when wading, and use a wading staff. When the river’s up, it’s easier to fish from the bank, which is what I do. However, you can still find cutouts in the bank where you can stand to lower your visible profile, and getting on your knees can be a serious option – another good reason to carry a wading staff, to help you get up again!

And while I rarely fish euro-nymph style on the Euc in summer, when it is high like this, I might make an exception.

Continue to fish up the river in the same way. Try different techniques for different water, and do not ignore the undercut banks. I have a favourite undercut. I hooked a good fish one Christmas near the head of a pool. It ran upriver, and ‘did me’ under a bank. In fact, it swam so far under, I lost the whole dry/ dropper rig. I caught what I assume was same trout, from that same undercut, two weeks later. Then, sometime later, I foolishly pointed out the same spot to the Editor, who, with typical precision, dropped his Stimmy right on the spot, tempting a three pound plus brown first cast. As he was releasing that fish, I marched upriver to get the jump on him for the next pool, when I heard the yell ‘Another one!’ From the exact same spot! Apparently, it was a touch smaller though, so I kept going!

If you drive further north-west from Kiandra Bridge, you track the Eucumbene River, now on your right-hand side. Three kilometres from the bridge, there’s a track and a parking area on the right, just before the Link Road to Mount Selwyn.

Another six kilometres along the highway is the Gooandra Trail, which you can drive down to reach the river. Between Kiandra and the Gooandra Trail, there are several small creeks on the left-hand side, including Bullocks Head Creek and Racecourse Creek. The latter has a beautiful little waterfall and plunge pool, about a kilometre up from the highway.

Next time, we’ll look at a couple more ‘sample’ streams in detail, and also cover some useful gear.