{{start}}

After a some of the best fishing for years in late 2011 expectations were high and most of us anticipated a really good fishing in 2012 ... how wrong could you be.

The fishing started off very good with the midge/damsel season extending well into January but as the midge and damsel settled down so did the fishing.

At that time of the year and the water warms we do expect fishing in the middle of the day to be tough but as long as you fish close to the deeper cool water or in the cooler parts of the day the fishing can still be very good. There is also generally a good run of mudeyes in February March, plenty of hoppers around and of course beetles and other terrestrials on the water all of which keep the fish fired up.

As we moved further into 2012 the fishing on both lakes became increasingly patchy and whilst there were individual days with reasonable catches, but by in large, the common thread on both lakes were very hard fishing.

As the open season for the rivers season finished and we headed into the spawning season anecdotal reports left me with the feeling that whilst there were plenty of fish being caught in the rivers a highlight of the spawn run river fishing was a lack of rainbows. NSW Fisheries of course reported it was quite a normal spawn run for both browns and rainbows fisherman were reporting in both their pre and post spawn run river fishing fishing that catch rates were down and in particular catches of rainbows were less than normal.

After the various stages of the spawn run we expect lake fishing to fire up as fish return from spawning and keen to put weight and condition and lake waters at very comfortable temperatures for trout for there to be plenty of both browns and rainbows searching the margins for food. It certainly started that way but whereas the polaroiding that targets those patrolling fish generally continues well past the end of winter dried up almost as quickly as it started.

Incidentally, as that polaroiding was starting, Snowy Hydro initiated the fist of the bigger environmental flows for the season down the Snowy River. That certainly fired up the brown as the water dropped and yabbies followed the water down and that of course got the brown into the margins and actively feeding and easy targets for fly fishers. Unfortunately as as quick as the frenzied activity started it stopped. There have been a couple of environmental flows since then but in each case they have only resulted in short windows of good fishing activity.

A good example of the poorer than normal fishing was the 2012 National Fly Fishing Championships that were held out of Eucumbene in Mid November. Expectations for that competition were that around 1500 to 2000 fish would be caught in the lake sessions ... the actual number was closer to 300.

In Jindabyne and Eucumbene that trend continued and whereas the midge/damsel fishing season which is generally a highlight of our November and December fishing was fantastic in 2011 it was almost non existent leading up to Christmas 2012.

Looking forward to much better fishing in 2013.

{{end}}