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Fly fishing the Central Tablelands

Region

Fly fishing the Central Tablelands

Small farmland trout streams around Oberon and Bathurst that join to make the Macquarie, best after rain, plus a stocked town dam and a trophy trout lake.

Waters

Thompsons Creek Reservoir

The Central Tablelands is small-stream trout country on farmland, and the fishing runs on rain. The rivers around Oberon and Bathurst are narrow, mostly private on both banks, and capable of holding a brown trout far bigger than the water looks. Get the timing right, a week or two after a decent fall, and they fish. Get it wrong and some of them are a chain of stagnant pools.

The name is NSW DPIRD’s, from its Central Tablelands district, which the department describes as mostly a sub-alpine plateau, typically over 600 metres, with waters ranging from large dams and fast mountain streams to slower lowland rivers in the valleys. This page takes the trout half of that district; its dams around Orange, Mudgee and Cowra are on the Central West page. Here that means a handful of trout streams that gather into the Macquarie above Bathurst, two very different trout lakes, and one river that runs the other way, south to the Lachlan.

The country

Open, grazed tableland with willows on the creeks, state forest in the hills, and towns that are fishing bases in their own right, Oberon in the east and Bathurst on the Macquarie. Past Oberon the roads run out toward Jenolan and Kanangra, and the Blue Mountains begin. They are the other trip from here. That is gorge water you walk into for a day or two, draining toward Sydney. This is water you drive to, park at a reserve or a bridge, and fish across someone’s paddock with their permission, and it drains inland.

What decides a trip is the weather of the previous month. The Campbells River is the extreme case: after about two months without a good fall it breaks into isolated pools with dry stretches between them. The Turon is said to fish best after good rain, when the bigger fish show among the small ones. Watch the rain before you watch the calendar.

The rivers that make the Macquarie

Three of these streams meet on their way west. The Duckmaloi runs through farms just east of Oberon and joins the Fish River below the town. It holds a naturally reproducing population of browns and rainbows, topped up with stocking after drought years, and the upper river has a local reputation for big browns. Typical fish run half a pound to two pounds; a good season produces some of four or five.

The Fish River is two rivers split at the village of Tarana. Above it, in state forest, cold releases from Oberon Dam steady the flow and browns of forty to fifty centimetres are not uncommon. Below it the river slows through willowed farmland toward O’Connell, and the fish are mostly rainbows of about twenty-five centimetres that take a dry readily. Drought, silt, willows and the water drawn off for the Fish River Scheme have cut it back from the big-fish river it once was, and good fish are still there.

The Campbells is caught by Ben Chifley Dam and then meets the Fish to form the Macquarie. Its Swallows Nest stretch, reached off Mount David Road beside Dog Rocks State Forest, is known for very large browns. Further down, the Turon comes in as a largely natural feeder with big resident browns in headwater country near Sofala that takes young legs to reach, and with carp now thick through the river.

From Bathurst the Macquarie itself changes character. It is native water, rocky pools with Murray cod and golden perch pushing up from Burrendong, and the trout fishing stays in the tributaries. The river’s run down to the dam and beyond belongs to the Central West; from here, the Bathurst town water and the parks at Eglinton just downstream are the easy taste of it.

The lakes

The two lakes could hardly be less alike. Oberon Dam sits on the edge of town on the Fish River, with bank access at the wall and from reserves off Jenolan Street and The Reef Road. It is stocked mostly with rainbows, fewer browns, and in recent seasons Murray cod and golden perch; local anglers fish its edges at dawn and dusk, and a team of wet flies from the shore in the colder months.

Thompsons Creek Dam, near Wallerawang, is 157 hectares of clear tableland lake on private land, opened to anglers under an access arrangement the department, the landholder and anglers negotiated. Browns and rainbows are stocked every year and the department manages it as a trophy fishery. You walk in from the Willow Vale Road car park and fish from the bank. Expect to work for a fish: change depth before you change fly.

The odd one out is the Abercrombie, which rises near Mount Werong and runs south through farmland and Abercrombie River National Park to Wyangala Dam on the Lachlan. Murray cod and golden perch are said to be its most prolific natives, carp probably outnumber everything, and trout above the Retreat River are now mostly spoken of in the past tense. The park has camping areas close to the water.

Where to start

Start on the Duckmaloi at the Bindo Creek reserve, said to be the best public stretch, with riffles, runs and pools close together. Come in summer with a hopper tied on and walk upstream to the first long pool. If the Duckmaloi is low, drive to the Flat Rock picnic area on Mutton Falls Road for the lower Fish, where small rainbows will rise to a dry and there is camping.

Save Thompsons Creek for a day when you want one big fish more than many small ones.

Through the year

The trout streams wake up in spring. At that cool end of the season a small nymph through the runs is the fly, on the Campbells especially after a little rain, and in the forest water above Tarana a bead-head through the rapids. From Christmas the fishing goes to the grass: grasshoppers, beetles and ants along the grazed banks, a Royal Wulff or a red tag on the Campbells. In a hot, dry summer, look at the rainfall before you drive; a river that has not seen rain for two months may not be worth the trip.

Autumn brings the cooler water back to the nymph. In winter the lakes carry the region. Oberon Dam with wet flies from the bank is the cold-weather choice, and Thompsons Creek in winter means a sinking line fished slowly down the drop-offs for the big browns.

Rules and access

Seasons, closures, limits and licence requirements change; check NSW DPIRD’s current freshwater fishing rules and closures before you fish.

Most of this country is freehold, and access is the hard part. Use the reserves, crown land and named roads on each water’s page, ask at the house before crossing a fence, and leave gates as you found them. A line on the map is not access permission. At Thompsons Creek the landholder can refuse access at any time, and the arrangement lasts only as long as anglers keep to its conditions.