Sixty-one kilometres of classified trout water from the Lyell wall to the Little River junction, with two gauges, farmed pools that hold fish through summer, and a gorge at the bottom that drops off a shelf.
This is the stretch to start on. Below the Lyell dam wall the river runs sixty-one kilometres through farm country. The fish are brown and rainbow trout, and in our experience they live in the pools and the deep bends, not in the shallow runs between them. Learn that first and the rest of the stretch makes sense.
The shape of it is simple. The top half is open paddock water. Lower down the timber closes in and the river drops off a shelf into a gorge that ends at the Little River junction.
The season decides the trip. This is a general trout water; take the season dates from the current NSW freshwater synopsis. Fish it in the weeks after the opening while the pools are full and the fish are fresh. Come back from Christmas for the hopper afternoons along the grassed banks. In the heat of summer the riffles run thin and the fish sit deep, so fish first and last light or head for the shaded bottom end.
Two gauges watch this water, one at Lithgow near the top and one at Island Hill lower down, and their readings sit under Conditions. Read Lithgow before you drive.