A NSW trout stream feeding the Delegate River, with brown and rainbow trout stocked over recent seasons and fished with nymphs, dries and small streamers from spring into autumn.
The Bombala River is a trout stream, and the reason to drive to it is simple: NSW has released both brown and rainbow trout into it across recent seasons.
Read it as one river rather than a set of named reaches. It runs down to join the Delegate River, and the gradient chart shows how it falls along the way. Plan the day around one choice: which access point to start from, and how far you are willing to walk from it.
The first trip, and the easiest, is rainbows in spring. Choose a point from the access card, find the nearest broken water, and drift a weighted nymph through the heads of the runs. Stocked rainbows tend to sit in the faster, oxygenated water and take readily, so in our experience this is where a first visit should start. Before you go, read the current NSW fishing guide, because that guide, not the river’s reputation, decides whether the trout season is open and what you may keep.
The second trip is for browns in autumn. As the days cool, walk further from the access point, slow down, and fish the deeper pools and undercut edges with a small streamer. Browns are warier than rainbows and punish a careless approach, so stay low and cast from well back. Give each deep pool a few careful casts from the tail before you step into it, because the fish you want is often lying in the slow water right at your feet.
Summer sits between the two. On mild afternoons a dry fly along grassy banks is worth an hour; on a hot, bright day we would rather fish early and late, or wait.
Pack a 4 or 5 weight, a box of nymphs, a few dries and a handful of small streamers, and open the NSW fishing guide before you leave home.