Fly fishing the Kimberley

Western Australia’s fisheries department, DPIRD, puts the Kimberley in its North Coast bioregion, which runs from the Ashburton River south of Onslow to the Northern Territory border. That is a management area, and it is the one whose rules page you read before a trip.

The Fitzroy River is best treated as a chain of pools, rock bars and snag-lined runs that you find and fish one at a time. The one stretch most people can name is a gorge, Danggu, also called Geikie Gorge, inside a national park of the same name. After heavy rain the river can run high and coloured, and then the trip waits.

Manning Creek runs through Manning Gorge. The useful landmark is the swimming hole that most visitors head for; the fishing that has been described is upstream of it.

Both are remote waters. Carry more drinking water than you think you need, cover up against the sun, tell someone where you are going and when you will be back, and ask locally about what lives in the water before you wade.

Sooty grunter hold against cover: rock bars, fallen timber and the deeper water under a steep bank. They slide out to feed where current runs past that cover, and they go straight back into it when hooked. On Manning Creek a stretch is said to hold one bigger fish with several smaller ones around it.

The Fitzroy has more besides. Barred grunter and spangled perch take a smaller fly in the shallower water at the edges of pools, and spangled perch are recorded in Manning Creek too. Black catfish, blue catfish and Hyrtl’s catfish have been recorded in the Fitzroy, and so has the freshwater whipray. The small fish the predators eat are western rainbowfish, tank goby, mouth almighty and bony bream, which is why a slim baitfish pattern belongs in the box.

A five to seven weight with a floating line covers most of it, with a sinking tip for the deep pools. Keep the leader short and fairly strong. Cast tight to the cover, let the fly sink a moment, then strip it back in short, sharp pulls; most takes come in the first few strips, as the fly leaves the snag. A small dark Woolly Bugger, size 6 to 10, is the first fly to tie on. On a still morning, drop a hopper-style surface fly ahead of fish cruising the edges and leave it alone. If a grunter refuses twice, go smaller and darker. The streamer fishing page covers the retrieve.

For a first look, go to Manning Creek and walk upstream from the swimming hole. The fish there are reported to be plentiful, and a creek is easier to read than a big river. Confirm how you reach the water, and where you may fish, before you set out.

Make the Fitzroy the second trip, once you have local advice on where you are welcome to walk in. Fish the edges of the deeper pools with a small streamer early and late, and keep the spangled perch and barred grunter in the shallows for a slow afternoon or a day the sooty grunter will not come.

Northern rivers like these fish best, in our experience, once the flow has dropped and the water has cleared, when grunter can see a fly and settle into the pools. On the Fitzroy page we give that as May to October; it is a guide’s read of the conditions, not a season set by any authority. Inside a day, fish the shallow edges and the surface early in the morning and late in the afternoon, and go deeper and closer to shade in the heat. Check the river’s conditions before you commit to a date, and be ready to wait a few days after rain.

Seasons, limits, licence requirements and closures change; check DPIRD’s current WA recreational fishing rules and North Coast bioregion rules before you fish. DPIRD has an office in Broome for local questions, and the Danggu Geikie Gorge National Park page covers the park.

A line on the map is not access permission. Where a bank is on private or managed land, ask the holder first, and treat a track as a way to the water only where you have been told you may use it.

Castabout’s other Western Australian region is the trout country of the South West.