This is the Macquarie of the books. From the Midland Highway bridge at Ross to the Brumbys Creek junction eighty-three kilometres downstream, the river winds across the floor of the Midlands in long, slow, clear glides between short riffles, dropping barely a metre a kilometre, with willows and poplars along cut banks and the paddocks of some of the oldest farms in the country behind them. The Elizabeth River comes in from Campbell Town, then the Isis, then the Lake River, and two gauges sit either side of the Elizabeth junction to tell you what the river is doing. The fish are wild browns, and on this water they behave the way the dry-fly tradition says they should: they hold in the lanes of the glides and in October and November they drift up under the red spinners and take them, or refuse them, in full view. It is not fast fishing. It is walking a glide slowly with polaroids on, finding a fish, and making one cast. Summer thins the river and moves the fishing to the first and last hours; autumn brings the hoppers off the grass and the browns tight to the bank for them. Almost all of it is private land, and the access IFS negotiated and signed is a privilege the next angler needs you to keep. Come in spring for the spinners, and come back in March for the hoppers.