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Trouts of a feather: the brown and rainbow |
From Sydney, travel southwest (after all, east of Sydney only offers the big, blue ocean!) to the Monaro region. It's about a four-hour drive down a dual-lane highway most of the way, so the region is well within striking distance by car. Alternatively, you could take a plane by Eastern Australia Airlines to Cooma, a small town of 5,000 townsfolk, and then hire a car from the airport.
Cooma caters for the traveling fly-fisher with a range of accommodation options and several fishing stores, including The Alpine Angler, which will even hook you up with a guide. The two most famous lakes near Cooma are Eucumbene and Jindabyne, and both are huge, stretching 30 and 20 miles respectively. Because of their altitude, both are prime trout waters and regularly yield four- and six-pound wild trout to all kinds of fishing methods. Neither a boat nor a float tube is necessary, although naturally both create more options. A standard two-wheel-drive car is perfectly adequate. The midge fishing in spring is exceptional and the mudeye fishing over summer is no less so. Over the late winter, polaroiding the shallows for worm-feeders is the stuff of dreams.
The Monaro and the region around Cooma and Canberra, Australia's capital, is fly-fishing perfection. There are countless small, slow-flowing streams, which are weed-rich and filled with fat, cunning fish. Two to four pounders are relatively common. Temperatures steadily increase from October, resulting in some delightful hatches of the local duns and some top-notch fishing. Timed to coincide with the famous horse race, the Melbourne Cup, in the first week of November, there is also a trout fishing festival centered in the town of Jindabyne, all of which obviously creates considerable excitement.
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