194 km²

Water area

20

Access places

A big storage on the New South Wales and Victoria border. Fish the edges from the bank or a boat, and read both state guides before you go.

Lake Hume is a big storage on the New South Wales and Victoria border. Fishing World’s writers list it with Lake Eildon and Blowering Dam among the dams that built the reputation for chasing outsized golden perch. That is a magazine’s account rather than a survey of the lake, but it is the reason to make the drive.

It is a dam, so it fishes as one body of water rather than a string of reaches: open water in the middle and a long shoreline around it. What divides it is a line on the map rather than a feature in the water. The lake sits on the state border, and that matters for your licence and your rules more than for the fish.

The easier trip is from the bank. The access card lists a spread of shore sites around the lake. In our experience fish in a storage like this sit along drop-offs and flooded edges once the water warms, so pick a point or a shore with the wind pushing onto it and work a weighted fly slowly down the slope. No water-specific rule was found, so check both state guides before you go.

The second trip suits a boat, and it is the one we would plan around if you have one. The card includes boat ramps from the Maritime NSW list. A boat lets you reach points and edges no walk gets you to, and lets you move when a stretch goes quiet. Count the fly down, fish it with long pauses, and slow down further than feels right.

A big storage has more edge than you can fish in a day, and fish are rarely spread evenly along it. Give each point a fair go, then move.

Start with a boat if you can get one, on a warm still morning, working the drop-offs off the first points you reach from the ramp.

No live gauge

No gauge readings are available for this water.

Season

Access & parking

20

Driving directions

Water and habitat

A dammed storage, fished around its margins and along the slopes off its points. In our experience fish in a big lake hold where the bottom changes: a drop-off, a submerged edge, the old shoreline under a few metres of water. Read the lake as a line of edges and points rather than as open water.

A storage rises and falls. When the level changes, the edge you fished last trip moves with it, and the productive line may be well up or down the bank from where it was.

Fish and forage

Fish in a warm storage tend to feed on small fish and crustaceans along the bottom and the edges, in our experience. That points your fly box at baitfish and yabby shapes in olive, brown and black (colours, not species), weighted, from about size 6 to 1/0.

When to fish it

In our experience a big inland storage fishes best through the warm months, from about October into March. Early and late in the day are the usual windows in summer, and a warm, settled spell tends to fish better than the day after a cold change.

Winter is a slower proposition on any inland storage. If you go then, fish the middle of the day and fish deep.

THE YEAR ON THIS WATER

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Working the edges as the water warms

Fly · Oct–Mar

A guide’s read. A weighted baitfish or yabby-coloured fly counted down along drop-offs and fished slowly with long pauses.

Small fish and crustaceans along the margins

Food · Oct–Apr

In our experience the flooded margins of a warm storage are where small fish and crustaceans gather through summer.

How to fish it

A seven or eight weight with an intermediate or sinking line covers most of it. Let the fly get down before you start the retrieve and keep it near the slope. Retrieve in short pulls with long pauses; a fish will often take as the fly sits still or starts to sink.

From a boat, hold off a point and cast up onto the shallower shelf, then work the fly down the drop. From the bank, fan casts along the slope rather than straight out, so the fly spends longer in the depth band where fish sit. If an edge gives you nothing in twenty minutes, move.

Access and safety

The access card names the shore sites and boat ramps around the lake, drawn from NSW angler access layers and the Maritime NSW ramp list. A site on the card is a place people reach the water, not a permission to cross land to get there; follow the signs where you arrive.

As on any big storage, watch the afternoon wind before you take a small boat into open water, and wear a lifejacket.

All Times

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Directions

Regulations

No water-specific rule was found for Lake Hume. Because the lake sits on the border, check both the current NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development fishing guide and the current Victorian Fisheries Authority guide before you fish, for the licence, bag and size limits that apply, and confirm which state’s rules apply where you plan to fish and launch.

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Lake Hume