A hundred and seventy kilometres of mainstem falling from the tableland at nearly a thousand metres to the storage at just over a hundred, and the fall of the river below tells you where each kind of water is. The first fifteen kilometres are a valley-fill stream in open, farmed country, easing gently; then two flat shelves where the water sits in Lake Wallace and Lake Lyell, with a short bedrock connector between them. Below Lyell the river alternates for sixty-one kilometres between confined gorge and small gravel and sand floodplains, which is the farmed water of Glenroy, Duddawarra and Sandy Hook. Then, at about ninety kilometres, the profile drops off a shelf: a hundred and seventy metres of fall in seven kilometres through confined bedrock down to the Little River junction. Below that the gorge runs on sand and gravel between forested walls, easing all the way into the top of Lake Burragorang.

Headwaters to Lake Wallace is the start: a small tableland stream north of Wallerawang, roads and farms and power-station land, with the first gauge on it.

Lake Wallace and Lake Lyell are their own waters, each with a page, and the river runs through both. The connector between them is on the map, not a page.

Below Lyell to Little River is the classified trout water, and it is the river most anglers mean: farmland pools, the Lett junction at Glenroy, Duddawarra, Sandy Hook, and the Six Foot Track country as the timber closes in. Two gauges sit on it.

Little River to Warragamba Dam is the gorge. The Kowmung and the Jenolan join on this lower water, the trout classification does not apply, and the storage is the end of the map.

The bank survey from space draws the same three rivers. The tableland and the farmed water below Lyell read as open woodland with a third of the bank in grass and up to a sixth under cultivation. Below the Little River junction that cultivation vanishes and dense forest takes over, seventy to eighty per cent of the corridor, all the way to the storage.

Brown trout and rainbow trout, both in the survey record from the 1990s onward, mostly from the upper river around Lithgow and the lakes. Nothing is stocked into the river itself: the fish are wild, or have used the storages and come back. The survey record also carries the small fish a farmed tableland river collects, mountain galaxias in numbers, eels, gudgeon, and the unwelcome redfin, goldfish and gambusia in the slower pools. Carp show in the farmed water. The department’s general trout classification above Little River is a rule about how you fish, not a headcount.

The fish that make the gorge worth a winter walk are rainbows that have grown in Lake Burragorang. They are not the fish you cover from McKanes Falls Road in November.

What the trout eat changes with the country. On the farmed water it is caddis in the evening runs, mayfly on the flatter pools, and from Christmas the grasshoppers off the paddock banks. In the gorge it is whatever falls out of the forest, and in winter the running fish are not feeding so much as reacting.

Three trips, three calendars. The classified water opens on the October long weekend, and late spring is the roadside window: the pools are full from winter, the river is cool, and the fish have not seen a fly since June. Midsummer runs the tableland and the farmed water low and warm, and the permanent pools are where the trout are; fish the first and last hours, and if the forecast is hot, stay under the timber toward Sandy Hook or leave the river alone. Autumn on the farmed water is quietly good.

Winter is the gorge or nothing. The classified stretches close from the June long weekend to the October one. Below Little River, rainbows run up out of the storage through July, August and September, and that is a long, cold walk-in rather than a session from a bridge.

The gauges tell you whether to go. Wallerawang, Lithgow and Island Hill all read flow and height, and the two upper stations read turbidity, which colours before the river rises after rain in the Lithgow country. Their latest readings are on the stretch pages. After rain in the Kanangra country the gorge comes up fast and is genuinely dangerous; give it a few dry days.

Above the gorge, fish it as a farmed tableland river. A four or five weight, a dry-dropper with an Adams or a Royal Wulff over a hot-spot Pheasant Tail, and the patience to cover the pools rather than the skinny runs. A hopper along the grassed banks once the paddocks dry off. An Elk Hair Caddis in the evening riffles. When the river is carrying colour after rain, a small Woolly Bugger or a worm pattern is the honest fly.

In the gorge it is the same job as the Kowmung: bedrock seams, the soft edge behind a boulder, the tail of a gravel run, and the first cast into a pocket is the one that counts. In winter you are fishing for lake fish on the move, so a Woolly Bugger or a small streamer swung through the deeper slots, and a heavier nymph dead-drifted through the tail-outs at first light.

The upper river is mixed country: roads, farms, power-station land. A gate and a fence are the answer, not an invitation to find a way around. The roadside ways in are named on the classified stretch, McKanes Falls Road bridge, Glenroy camping area, Duddawarra bridge on Coxs River Road, Sandy Hook off Table Rock Road, and they are pinned further down this page. The Six Foot Track is the walk into the top of the gorge, about five kilometres from the Aspinall Road end.

The lower river is park and walk-in, and it ends in Lake Burragorang, Sydney’s drinking-water storage and a WaterNSW dam. Treat the bottom of the gorge as closed water until WaterNSW tells you otherwise. WaterNSW’s own page for Warragamba Dam, as it stood in September 2026, sets out the restrictions in force there: no fishing, no boating, no swimming, no camping, and no entry to the restricted and Special Areas, with penalties of up to $44,000. The one public way onto the dam is on foot, to parts of the wall, on weekends and public holidays only between 10am and 4pm, not on Christmas Day or Good Friday, and that is a walk to look at the lake, not a way to fish it. WaterNSW also says that within the Greater Sydney drinking-water catchment there are areas, water storages among them, where the public is kept out or restricted to walking to protect water quality, and that going into one for any other purpose needs its written consent, which few people get. Neither page draws the line on the Coxs itself, so where the closed country begins above the lake is a question to put to WaterNSW before you plan a trip that far down, not something to find out at the bottom of the gorge. Carry what you would need a long way from a road, and give yourself the daylight to get back out.

NSW DPIRD classifies the Coxs as a general trout water upstream from its junction with the Little River, including the creeks and tributaries above that junction, but not the Little River itself. That classification brings the NSW trout season with it, closing the classified water from the June long weekend to the October one, and the general-trout-water size and bag limits. It is stated on the two stretches above the junction. Below the junction the classification does not apply, and the ordinary NSW freshwater rules do.

The dates follow the long weekends and the numbers move. Check the current NSW freshwater synopsis and the trout closure notification before you fish.