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Sorry about the hiatus in the regularity of my fishing reports. Over the last few months I have been thoroughly occupied preparing and attending the World fly fishing championships in Slovenia. Anyway I'm back on deck now and having a ball fishing my local lakes.

Water levels remain fairly high with Jindabyne around 87% capacity and Eucumbene dropping back to 58% capacity which is still a mega lot of water.

It's been a fantastic start to the polaroiding season on Jindy with us regularly spotting big browns either cruising or just sitting doggo watching the world go by. Most of the cruising fish are clearly hunting and a well presented bag fly set just inshore of their path normally does the trick. You will see the fish speed up slightly as they see the fly and the subtle change of direction. In most cases its just a matter of watching for the white of the mouth as they take the fly and a then executing a strip strike. If they have missed the fly let it sit as the strip strike should have only moved the fly a foot or so and often the fish will fire up and have another hit. I always try to cast just inshore of the fishes cruising path in order to have the fish make a conscious decision to move into slightly shallower water as I find this makes the fish want the fly and to get back to the relatively safer deeper water of the natural cruising path. The doggo fish are quite catchable also as in many cases they are watching for yabbies or other food and delicately presented smaller flies on the outer edges of their line of vision often gets a positive response.

Evening fishing has also been very good in Jindabyne and I recommend you fish just a little up from the back of any of the drowned inlets. My choice of line is an intermediate line which I load with 3 flies on a 16 foot leader. If you not comfortable with 3 flies drop back to just 2 or even 1 fly. That won't be a problem as most of the fish I have taken have been on the point fly which has generally been an olive damsel bugger tied without a bead head. Long casts and relatively fast stripping actions definitely work best.

I had two loch style sessions on Lake Eucumbene last week and both resulted in double figure numbers for both my boat partner and myself. The catch was about 6:1 browns as opposed to bows and some of the browns were corkers. Most of the rainbows too were very good fish with the average size being on the high side of 40 cm.

Keep in mind that conditions are cold so make sure your rugged up for your winter fishing sojourn and if your in a boat always fish with a mate and make sure you have your PFD on.

Tight Lines,
Chatto

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