What can I say, I caught the Trout bug on my last trip down there and it gave me an itch that could only be scratched by heading back there again.
Wes and I formulated a plan earlier on in the week to use the limited time we had available which would see us leave Nowra at around 11am Friday after Wes finished work, head down for an arvo fish, free camp at Dennison, fish the morning through to lunch then head back Saturday afternoon. As the week went on, my wifes uncle Peter said he’d come too.
Friday rolled around and I was off to Wes’ house to pack his gear and pick him up and once we reconfigured the packing a little it was off to Pete’s place to add more gear and another body. The FJ was full to the brim carrying firewood, swags, sleeping bags, backpacks and a fridge of beer and food.
We headed off at around 11am and made our way towards Queanbeyan where we stopped for a quick bite to eat, then powered through to Adaminaby. I called into the local Ampol service station to pick up a few Rapala F7 and CD5’s in spotted dog pattern and then we left town to head to Dennison to hit the spot I saw blokes pulling fish after fish out of when I was down there 2 weeks ago.
We arrived to find the pool free of any other people fishing which was awesome considering how many cars there were around the place. We pulled up, rigged out gear and started casting. The next minute another car pulls up and they do the same thing, annoying but not much you can do about it. About 3 cast in I hook up and a big brown starts jumping all over the place then spits the hooks. This was such an amazing feeling compared to how hard we fished the other week for no result. I then proceeded to drop another 2 fish in a row. This had the makings of a good session! It wasn’t long until Pete landed the first fish of the trip.
It wasn’t much longer after that until I had hooked another and after some massive runs all around the pool that Wes had to jump in as I was still wearing runners and he had gumboots on. The fish kept running from the net which saw Wes with well above his gumboots and knees. Totally worth it in my eyes after getting to see this fish weighing in at 8lb.
It went on like this for some time, hook and drop, hook and land and then that rain rolled in! Luckily I had packed some wet weather gear that was at Wes’ house when I picked him up otherwise I would have got soaked like the other 2 who forgot to pack anything.
Pete and I finished up with a couple of fish each for the afternoon and it was hard to wipe the smile off our faces, but it made it better that would could rub it in Wes’ face as he was yet to land one.
We headed back up to the free camp grounds at Dennison to get set up for the night. Me in my roof top tent and the boys in their swags under the awning. The rain prevailed until about 10pm which saw us heading to bed pretty early after a meal of steak sandwiches, as not being able to sit around the fire for a bit of warmth was a touch annoying and the slight chill in the air under the dryness of the awning was starting to take hold.
We arouse in the morning after an unintentional sleep in until 6.30am. The dirt road running beside our camp had become a highway of fisherman heading down to the river. We pack up camp and the FJ and made our way down to see what the new day would bring.
The road down was greasy after all the rain and not wanting to go exploring because of the limited time we had available to fish, we went back to our hole that we had been at the afternoon prior. The same 2 guys who had jumped into it with us yesterday were there and had a nice fish laid out on the bank. They reported the fishing was slow last night as they had continued until 10pm, but they had already caught a few this morning. We got back into it and started catching straight away. It’s just so nice to go and do something completely different than what you are used to doing back home. The terrain, the water way and the style of fishing couldn’t be any further from what is on offer on the South Coast.
Rather than bore everyone with a story about each fish, I’ll just post up some photos. We didn’t move from our spot all morning and we guess that we would have landed around 40 fish and hooked and lost probably half of that again. We were chasing fish up and down into rapids that lead into other pools, all over the pool we were fishing and trying to steer them around other peoples lines, as there was now a crowd of at least 10 people fishing our hole after they saw us catching. Funnily enough though the 5 or 6 guys on the opposite bank didn’t hook one fish the whole time we were there and could be seen shaking their head or swearing every time we hooked up which was about every 5 minutes. After a little talk to Wes about the lack of fish he was catching and showing him the “special secret technique” I was using, he almost instantly hooked up and started landing fish. We used a variety of lures and managed to land fish on hardbodies, plastics and glo bug and nymph rigs.
Our time at the Eucumbene River was coming to an end and so we packed the car for our trip home. We left the 2 other guys which we had been fishing with for the past 2 days, as one was up to over 70 fish landed for the morning session so far. We took a nice little back road from Adaminaby to Queanbeyan that the local police officer told us about which weaves through the mountains as well as Namadgi National Park. I think Pete is planning on heading back this weekend, but I think I’m out of available days before the close season. Oh well, time to start planning the trip for next year!
