Upper reaches. (All pics © Max Caruso & Cale Berry.)
It must be at least 5 years since I last caught up with Cale, Riley and Dale. You know, life, Covid and all that jazz.
I helped Cale and Riley along a bit at the start of their flyfishing journeys. Not that they really needed it. They were gun fishers even back then, and now I’m struggling to keep up with them.
These guys look like they have just walked off a scene from ‘A River Runs Through It’ remake. They can fish 12 hours straight and get the best out of any piece of water.
Straight out of 'A River Runs Through It'.
It was great catching up with Dale too. My flyfishing partner in crime for many years… old acquaintances are not necessarily forgot.
Back on the water with Dale after a break of a few years.
We all had a ball fishing but perhaps the highlight for me was taking Cale and Riley to our hidden away fishing beats in true wilderness and returning to blue ribbon ‘gentlemanly’ streams in the valleys, where a bit of tweed and a ghillie would not be out of place. Revisiting historical huts and running into some locals, true salt of the earth people we hadn’t seen for a while.
The fishing
As usual the weather had its say. This year’s strong El Nino seems to have thrown weather forecasts even more askew than normal. More than ever, take forecasts a week out or even a few days out, with a grain of salt.
All the rain predicted did not eventuate. The rain forecast turned out to just be a drizzle and that drizzle morphed into light hail and snow flurries.Breakfast was drawn out and the second and third shot of espresso was a given as we sat in front of the roaring fire hoping the sun would peak out and the air temp would rise above 4C.
Eventually we rugged up, bit the bullet and headed out to a nearby stream; a stream which I have somewhat ignored the past few years after a couple of poor sessions. I figured that if we were going to waste our time in bad weather, we might as well devote it to exploring this stream - just to see if there were a few fish around this season.
Light rain and decidedly frigid weather persisted. The icy wind hitting our faces almost put an end to the fishing before we even started! The warmth of the cabin was calling out to us as the sirens did for Ulysses.
Still, we held strong and did not succumb to temptation. Cale and I approached a lovely section of the stream. A nice run, shallow at one end, and then plunging a metre or so around a rock face.
First cast…We were distracted, chat, chat, chat! Not really focusing on the flies. Our eyes performed some sort of vision acrobatics as we managed to retain eye contact whilst peripherally seeing a two pounder take the fly. Unfortunately, that slightly cross-eyed delay gave the trout a head start. It bolted downstream and within a few seconds wrapped the leader around a rock. All over.
Cale hooked up... temporarily.
The weather doom and gloom was immediately shrugged off, and our focus became laser sharp. And then it started to snow…. but the fish didn’t care. If anything, it activated their feeding. We were catching very fit trout, bigger than typical for this stream, whilst simultaneously being enveloped in snow flurries. I’m sure this will be a fishing story repeated many times in the future.
As evening approached, we decided to retreat to the cabin and warm up a bit, have another caffeine hit and head to the main river nearby for hopefully a decent mayfly hatch.
The hatch didn’t really eventuate, but persistence paid off as we picked up good fish in running water. The water was so clear that even in the gloomy fading light, we could see the trout following the nymphs and eating them, or even smashing the large Parachute Adams I was using as the indicator fly. When we could no longer see our flies and our hands were too cold to function, we called it quits in anticipation of the open fire, good food and wine.
All the more welcome after a cold day on the rivers.
On the last day, the wind persisted but the weather improved. A session up high in the forest was only moderately successful. The river levels are still a bit high, making wading difficult whist contending with a strong headwind. After an hour or so with a few mountain trout landed, we headed back down to the more open stretches of the river, where we all experienced good fishing.
A gold bead PTN was the most successful nymph.
The successful dry this weekend was predominantly the trusty Parachute Adams. Whilst this fly may appear mundane - an easy go-to, and perhaps unadventurous - the caveat here is that the size 8 and size 10 which I had custom tied by Roo@rooster.tail.flies is what worked for me, instead of the ubiquitous size 12-14-16.
We only saw a few oversized duns, but judging by the behaviour of the trout, it appeared that recently, big mayflies and Kossie duns had been on the menu. The gold bead PTN was the top subsurface pick.
What a great weekend! North-east Victoria at the moment is just bursting with life. A magnificent landscape painted in every shade of green imaginable and ultra clear, crisp water flowing down all streams and rivers.
Whist the fishing was good, the location magnificent and the food delicious, for me the highlight was catching up with old buddies. We picked up exactly where we left off.
We won’t be waiting another 5 years to catch up again.
