The lower Macquarie, twenty-two kilometres from the Brumbys Creek junction past the Cressy pumps to Longford, where the river ends in the South Esk, wild browns with rainbows among them, the Cressy gauge, and an extended season that keeps this water open about four weeks longer than the river above it.
Below the Brumbys Creek junction the Macquarie has one more job before it ends: twenty-two kilometres past the Cressy pumps to Longford, where it meets the South Esk and stops being a river of its own. This is the lower Macquarie, and two things make it different from the meadow water above. Brumbys Creek joins at the top of it, so this stretch carries both waters, and Inland Fisheries Service keeps it open about four weeks longer than the rest of the Macquarie, alongside the lower Brumbys, the Meander and the South Esk. The fish are the same wild browns, with rainbows among them here in the lower reaches, and the water, in our experience, is the same slow glide-and-pool country through farmland, with the Cressy gauge to read it by. It fishes the same way as the meadow water in spring and autumn, spinners and duns then hoppers, and it gives you most of an extra month at the end, after the river above has closed: cold water, deep pools, a wet fly or a streamer swung slow, and the season’s last fish. Longford and Cressy are the towns. IFS says foot access runs across private land through landowners’ goodwill and is marked with signs, and the South Esk at the bottom is another river with its own page.