The Eucumbene below the wall. A small tailwater that drops steeply off the dam, eases through the open country around Nimmo, then runs a timbered bedrock gorge down to Lake Jindabyne. Different water, different rules, nobody about.
Above Lake Eucumbene the Eucumbene is famous. Below the dam wall it is a rumour: a small river that falls off Eucumbene Dam and runs down to Lake Jindabyne through the most heavily timbered country on the whole river. In our experience this is the trip for being left alone.
The stretch runs from the dam wall to Lake Jindabyne, and it comes in three parts. It drops steeply off the dam through a short confined channel, opens out and eases through the country around Nimmo, then closes into a timbered bedrock gorge for the last run to the lake. It lives on what the dam lets through and what the side creeks add. In our experience that is not much, so the pools are small and the fishing is intimate rather than grand.
The Eucumbene is one of the region’s brown and rainbow trout rivers. Below the wall, expect them at the size a small shaded river grows them; that is our read of the water, not a count.
It is a different river from the famous water in two ways that matter. The melt that keeps the water above the lake high and cold goes into the lake, not into this river, so in our experience the tailwater can be in order early in the season while everyone else is waiting. And the fly-and-lure and spawning-stream listings that govern the river above the lake run upstream from the dam wall, so they do not reach this water; no water-specific listing was found here, so check the current NSW trout fishing closure notification before you fish.
Fish the timbered water in spring and early summer with a short rod, a dry-dropper flicked into the white water at the head of each kitchen-sized pool, one drift, then move. We find that from January the open water around Nimmo fishes like the rest of the Monaro, with a hopper from further back than feels reasonable. NSW DPIRD lists angler access around Nimmo and, further down, off Pretty Pot Trail. After a storm on the Monaro, give it two dry days before you go.