Snowy Mountains Trout Tour April 18th -22nd 2011

Finally our Snowy Mountains Trout tour had arrived. Myself, Michael Kanck and Matt Kanck, had organised to fish a variety of Snowy Mountain dams and streams over the course of a few days. We based ourselves in Old Adaminaby because it was central to all the places we wanted to fish. With a lot of talk about early spawning runs, we planned on fishing areas that had rivers running into them. Creel Bay, Anglers Reach and the top end of Tantangra. The plan was to fish the impoundments in the morning from our Hobie Outbacks and hit up a stream or river of an afternoon.

Tuesday 19th

Had a morning session at Creel Bay on Lake Jindabyne. Michael had fished this bay three weeks earlier and had a great session, so hopes were high. Started fishing at about 7.30am and trolled up to the Thredbo River. A disappointing session with only 6 small Atlantic Salmon boated. We had a walk up the Thredbo for a kilometre or so and sighted quite a few big fish, but couldn't manage to get a strike out of them. We headed off back to Old Adaminiby a little disappointed.

Michael had sussed out a little stream for the afternoon, and he assured us that it had plenty of small trout and the odd big fella in the pools. The stream will remain undisclosed because of its size and how good it fished. The majority of the stream was only 3-8 feet wide with a pool every 100m or so. We landed plenty of small fish, but our eyes were really opened when Matt Kanck hooked up to a 4lb Rainbow in one of the pools. Another 30 minutes later and I hooked up to another nice fish, a 3lb rainbow. Both of these fish were quite old, their jaws were pretty weathered!

This really improved our day after the poor session at Jindy.

Wednesday 20th

Started the day of with a nice session on Eucumbene. An average Eucumbene session of about 25 rainbows between the three of us, was a pleasing start to the day. Michel also managed to land a nice Brown on our way back to the car. The weather wasn't great with a few showers and a little bit of wind, but it didn't effect the fishing which was the main thing.

The afternoon was spent at Providence Portal and the Eucumbene. Again this stream session was very productive, with another 20 odd fish landed, a few nice ones as well. This session was also dominated by Rainbows, with only a couple of small browns landed.

Thursday 21st

The plan for this day was to fish the top end of Tantangra, where the Murrumbidgee is. This plan was quickly thrown out the window after a 40 minute bog session on the track that lead to the top end. So we put the yaks in down near the dam wall... what a good decision. The day started at 8.30am and finished at 3pm with 72 fish boated for that time. 5.5lb rainbows were the biggest, with the average rainbow coming in at between 3lb & 4lb. Big rainbows made up half or the catch and small browns accounted for the rest. The fight in the small browns was unbelievable! We left the dam fully satisfied with our efforts and agreed that any more fish for the trip would be a bonus.

Spent a short session on a small stream that afternoon and landed a couple of nice Rainbows.

Friday 22nd

The plan for today was to explore a few spots on the Eucumbene river between the lake and Kiandra. However a last minute decision had us stopping in for a short session at Providence again. This ended up being a great decision! We ended up cleaning up on good browns, with about 6 or 7 landed for the hour.

We stopped at two other places on the Eucumbene River, one of which was Suicide hole. It looked very good, but it didn't produce for us.

Overall the trip was a great success, with plenty of quality fish landed and a few new places sussed out! We all trialled a few new techniques, some of which were very successful. The highlight for me was Tantangra Dam, it was 1000 times better than I expected it to be, and also very easy to fish a consistent depth. The final total for the trip was up around the 170 mark, which isn't a bad effort for three blokes. What made it even better was that the majority of the fish landed were over 40cm.