Farmland river alternating between confined bedrock and small gravel and sand floodplains: the fall of the river on this page shows the pattern, a pinch and a flat, a pinch and a flat, for sixty-one kilometres. The pools are in the flats and the runs between them are shallow, so the fish live in the pools. The Lett comes in at Glenroy and lifts the flow below it. Below Sandy Hook the sand gives way to gravel and the timber closes, and at about the ninety-kilometre mark on the whole-river drawing the profile drops a hundred and seventy metres in seven kilometres, which is the gorge above the Little River junction and the hardest water on the Coxs to reach or wade.

The bank survey reads open woodland with up to a third of the corridor in grass and up to a sixth under cultivation through the farmed middle, then a switch to closed forest as the gorge begins. Shade is scarce on the farmed water and the pools warm through summer; the bottom end under the timber stays cooler on the same afternoon.

Brown trout and rainbow trout, in the survey record from the 1990s on. Nothing is stocked into the river: the fish are wild, or have used Lyell and come back down. They hold in the permanent pools, not the skinny runs, and the deeper bends against a cut bank or a willow root are the lies to cover first. Carp show in the slower farmed pools, and redfin, goldfish and gambusia with them. The department’s classification is a rule about how you fish, not a survey.

Caddis in the gravel runs at dusk, mayfly on the flat pools, and from Christmas the grasshoppers off the paddock banks in numbers that make a hopper the afternoon fly across the whole farmed stretch.

The classified water opens on the October long weekend, and the weeks after it are the roadside trip: pools full from winter, the river cool, the fish unpressured. That window runs into December in a normal year. Midsummer thins the riffles and warms the pools, and the fish are in the deep water in the first and last hours; a hot forecast is a reason to fish the timbered bottom end toward the Six Foot Track, or to stay home. Autumn is quietly good until the close.

Read the Conditions card on this page first. Lithgow reads flow, height, water temperature and turbidity; Island Hill reads flow and height at the Little River junction. After rain in the Lithgow country the river colours at Lithgow before it rises anywhere, and a turbid reading means the pools are unreadable for a day or two. A water temperature in the low twenties at Lithgow is a reason to fish first light, keep fish wet, and stop early.

Do not come here for the winter rainbow run. This stretch is closed from the June long weekend to the October one. The fish pushing up from the storage in July and August are in the gorge below Little River, a different page.

Cover the pools. The runs on this stretch are not where the fish live when the river is down, and walking past a shallow riffle to reach the next deep bend is the single best thing you can do here.

A four or five weight covers everything. A dry-dropper with an Adams or a Royal Wulff over a hot-spot Pheasant Tail is the starting pair and covers most days. When the hoppers are in the paddocks, a hopper tight to the grassed bank in the afternoon; an Elk Hair Caddis in the evening runs. When the water is carrying colour, a small Woolly Bugger or a worm pattern is the honest fly, and a Hare’s Ear fished deep through the head of a pool.

Room to cast in the open farmed holds; tighter as the timber closes toward the Six Foot Track. In the gorge above the Little River junction it is Kowmung fishing: bedrock seams, boulder pockets, and one cast per lie.

Mixed country. A gate and a fence are the answer. Confirm who holds the bank before you walk it.

The named ways in from the highway side, pinned on the whole-river page: McKanes Falls Road bridge, a few minutes off the Great Western Highway at South Bowenfels; Glenroy camping area at the Lett junction on the Jenolan road near Hartley; Duddawarra bridge on Coxs River Road, with a short stretch of riverfront at the bridge; and the unfenced frontage along Cullenbenbong Road toward Sandy Hook, reached off Table Rock Road on a four-wheel-drive track. The Six Foot Track crosses a few kilometres above the Little River, about five kilometres’ walk from the Aspinall Road end; that walk is the start of gorge country, not a roadside session.

Little River is the bottom of this stretch, a tributary rather than a Coxs reach. The gorge below the junction is a different page, and the drop into it above the junction is steep, slick and a long way from a road.

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. This stretch is that water down to the junction. A general trout water carries the NSW trout season, which closes this water from the June long weekend to the October long weekend, and the general-trout-water size and bag limits.

The dates follow the public holidays and the numbers move. Take them from the current NSW freshwater synopsis and the trout closure notification, not from this page.