Freshwater Trout Fishing: Eucumbene Lake & River - Day 3

The Gear: Day 3

Intro

After a couple of days lazily but successfully trolling the boat around the lake, and with my Tenryu in hand, the Mrs and I decided to ditch the boat and go for an adventure, intent on finding walking tracks and various access points along the Eucumbene River in preparation for the days ahead. But, it wasn’t long before we saw running water and free jumping trout which all quickly became a bit too tempting!

The Preparation

The Alpine Creek region of the Eucumbene River is rather hilly with steep tracks surrounded by dense forest, and you can only take the car in as far as Alpine Creek itself, so we packed light and only the essentials such as food, plenty of water, our first aid kit, sunscreen, but most importantly a single rod, reel, leader and a small box of lures along with a pair of cutting pliers. A hat and good pair of walking shoes doesn’t go astray for this region also.

A Serene Short Heavy Hike

We parked the car and I immediately took off out in front in anticipation of a potential cast, whereas the Mrs took it easy over the steep tracks to soak in the atmosphere which actually paid dividend as she stumbled across a rarely seen lyrebird which was quickly spooked and took off (she didn’t even get time for a photo unfortunately).

The views were incredible over the mountains and the first appearance of the river definitely made the small hike worthwhile.

Locating Trout and Formulating a Plan

At the end of the track I made my way down a roughly made stone stair which leads to a relatively big pool at a bend in the river, and being the first access point with tricky surrounding terrain it was fairly obvious this pool had been fished a lot. But, the trout were airborne from the moment we arrived so I was dedicated to making it work without hiking it any further. The plan was simple, scramble onto the central rock ledge and just keep changing lures until I find a lure and action the trout haven’t seen and are interested in.

The Battle

Initially I was focussing on shallow and mid depth divers of various shapes/sizes but I just couldn’t get an eat. I was thinking about all the possible fly, lure and bait choices this pool of fish would be custom to, and decided it was time to go back to basics, a simple but effective Bait Breath Fish Curly Tail in red (#135), and just very slowly work it off the bottom letting the river flow naturally work the tail, and funnily enough about 3 casts in it had worked, we were on! After a few jumps reminiscent of a rainbow trout I stumbled to a better landing position and awkwardly netted a brown trout est. at approx 2lb. Check out the footage!

Video Footage Link

Misson Complete, until….

It was an hour well spent, at one stage it even started lightly snowing which was pretty amazing (and cold) and complemented the rapids wrapping around the mountains,

We called it a successful mission and immediately headed back to the car.  Then, as soon as we got back into range my phone lit up with missed calls and messages, I had a feeling there’s only thing this could be… and sure enough it was both the olds, littering my phone with various trout photos and messages. Apparently the old man also took his rod and went a bit further upstream, and evidently had an amazing little session on the brown trout, landing multiple fish including with one ‘allegedly’ up to 5-6lb. Going by the photo (above) I recon 4-5lb is more like it haha, but judge it for yourself, a great fish and capture none the less, and we all know a standard photo of this nature by amateurs like ourselves doesn’t display the true size.

Conclusion

Combined by the end of day 3 we’d fished for no more than 8 hours and already landed well in excess of 20 trout, could the trip possibly get any better…..

Jake

For prior days try the following links:

Day 1 - Trout Fishing Made Easy
Day 2 - Trolling up a Trout Storm