Fly fishing Victoria's South West and the Grampians

The water runs two ways across this region. The VFA’s Wimmera basin guide describes the Grampians and the southern Pyrenees as the source of nearly all that basin’s water, which flows north onto the flat Wimmera plains. On the other side, its Otway basin guide describes steep forested ranges with 1,000 to 2,000 millimetres of rain a year, and short, high-gradient streams running off their southern slopes through cascades and rapids to small estuaries on the sea.

Between the two is volcanic plain: dark soils, cut banks along the Merri, and crater lakes in their old bowls of rock. It is open country with little shade, and the wind off the Southern Ocean comes with it.

Lake Bullen Merri, at Camperdown, is a very deep, brackish crater lake, mostly rocky-shored, stocked with brown and rainbow trout, and with chinook salmon when they are available. The VFA’s basin guide records spectacular growth in good years, and a long history of fish deaths in hot, still, dry spells. The salmonids come in near the shore mainly in the cooler months and in low light, so fish windward shores and rocky points at dawn through winter and spring, when they are often chasing baitfish.

Lake Purrumbete is the clear, fertile one, with lush weed beds that grow trout fast and a name for very big fish. Brown and rainbow trout have gone in across many seasons, chinook salmon as well, and redfin live there too. The eastern shore has dark gravel and sand channels between the bank and the weed, easy to wade and the favourite spot for anglers on foot. It starts fishing well as the air and water cool.

The Merri at Warrnambool is two trips divided by Bromfield Street Weir. Above it, thirty-odd kilometres of slow, willowed stream through dairy country hold wild brown trout, at their best in spring while the pools are full and cool. Below it the river runs through town into an estuary of perch and bream, a summer-evening streamer fishery. The VFA files Warrnambool under its West Coast destination region and lists the lower Merri and estuary for brown trout, black bream, estuary perch and mullet.

East along the coast, the Otways streams are small and wild. The Barham at Apollo Bay holds a self-sustaining population of brown trout in its shaded upper water, and larger sea-run browns move into the lower river and estuary after rain or cooler flows from late autumn through spring. The Erskine runs through rainforest into the middle of Lorne, with small wild browns above and below Erskine Falls and a walking track reported from the mouth to the falls. Painkalac Creek at Aireys Inlet is a smaller prospect: black bream are recorded there, and angler access was improved with a recreational fishing licence grant, but little more is known about it as fly water.

Near the Surf Coast, Wurdiboluc Reservoir is Geelong’s main storage, regularly stocked with brown and rainbow trout and honest about being fickle. A big population of small redfin keeps you busy when the trout will not. Fish the grassy south shore.

Lake Fyans, on the eastern side of the range, is a shallow, treed lake stocked with both trouts, and its whole shoreline is said to be easy to reach. Fyans Creek runs down to Lake Bellfield as a small, very clear stream over orange and red rock, with mostly rainbow trout and some browns, and Grampians Road beside it for easy roadside access. Wartook Reservoir sits under the sandstone escarpments, its water stained like weak tea, and in a light wind loch-style tactics are highly effective there.

New to the region: Bullen Merri on a winter or spring morning, walking a windward rocky shore with a baitfish pattern. For a river, the Merri above the weir in October, fished upstream slowly with a small dry. For a short stream and a light rod, the Erskine from Lorne in spring. In the Grampians, start at Lake Fyans and give a summer evening to it.

The lakes around Ballarat, Daylesford and Bendigo are on the Central Highlands page.

Cold weather is the crater lakes’ season. The trout and salmon come shallow as the water cools, and on Bullen Merri the hot months push them deep, where a fly line struggles to reach them. At Lake Fyans the winter trout are on Australian smelt and perch fry, and at Wartook they cruise rocky shores and flooded margins after baitfish and mudeyes; a streamer is the fly for both.

Spring is when to fish the Merri above the weir. Lake Fyans can have strong mayfly hatches then, and Wartook’s trout take dry flies readily on calm days as the midge, mayfly and caddis pick up. The Barham’s sea-run browns are still about in the lower river, and in early spring the Erskine fishes well to a dry.

Summer dry-fly fishing is a highlight of the Barham’s upper water. By late summer the Erskine can run low and warm, and Fyans Creek’s trout get very spooky in low, bright water; that creek fishes better, and gives bigger fish, after rain. Lake Fyans has evening rises and night-time mudeye feeding along its timber and reeds. Down at Warrnambool, the Merri estuary’s perch come on at dusk from November.

Autumn brings Fyans’ second mayfly window and the first of the cool-water fishing on the crater lakes.

Seasons, closed waters, limits and licence requirements change; check the current Victorian recreational fishing guide before you fish.

Wurdiboluc is a town supply run by its water manager; check its current notice before you drive out. The Merri above the weir runs through dairy and grazing country, where a bridge is not a right to walk the paddock beyond it. A track on a map is not permission anywhere on this page. Use the roads, reserves and formed access the water pages describe, and obey fences and signs.