Thirty-four kilometres of slow, deep-pooled brown trout water through the Grassmere and Woodford farm country inland of Warrnambool, with the Woodford gauge to read it by and the weir site at Wollaston as the bottom bound.
The Merri above the old weir is a farm river, and it asks to be fished like one. It is small, slow water an hour from anywhere in the south-west, a bridge from the car, and on a still spring evening with a brown rising under the willows it is as good a small river as the coast has.
The stretch is thirty-four kilometres from the headwaters down through Grassmere and Woodford to Wollaston, at the Bromfield Street Weir site. The river winds across the volcanic plain in deep pools between short riffles, the banks cut into dark soil, willows and reeds along the edge and dairy paddocks to the fence.
The trout are brown, wild and wary. They live under the undercuts and in the shade, and the first cast to a pool is the one that counts.
Spring is the trip, September to December, while the pools are full from winter and the water is cool. Fish a parachute Adams to the fish that show and a slim nymph along the undercut when nothing does. From Christmas a hopper tight to the grass in the afternoon. Summer thins the riffles and warms the pools and turns it into a first-light river, and autumn is a quieter second season. The road bridges at Grassmere, Woodford and Wollaston are the natural ways in; a gate and a fence are the answer, and a bridge is not a right to walk the paddock beyond it.
The Woodford gauge reads flow and height two-thirds of the way down the stretch, and its readings sit under Conditions. After rain the Merri colours and rises, and a few dry days settle it. Read it the day before you drive.