Fifty-nine kilometres of Victorian alpine trout river from the headwaters through Hinnomunjie Bridge country to the Lake Dartmouth inflow: wild browns and rainbows, Big River and the Gibbo coming in, and a gauge at Hinnomunjie that reads temperature as well as flow.
Above Lake Dartmouth the Mitta Mitta is still a mountain river, and it fishes like one. This is the alpine trip: wild trout, clear pocket water, and a river that answers to the weather rather than to a dam.
The stretch runs fifty-nine kilometres from the headwaters south of Omeo down to where the lake takes it. The top is timbered gorge. Around Hinnomunjie Bridge it opens into a grazing valley of gravel riffles and pools between grassed banks and willows, gathers two tributaries, Big River and the Gibbo, and then tightens again to the inflow. Nothing has held the water yet, so it is whatever fell on the high country last week: cold and clear when it has settled, coloured and pushing when it has not.
The fish are wild browns, with rainbows among them, and no trout has ever been stocked into the river. They live where mountain trout live, in the soft water beside the current, behind the boulders, in the tail of every run.
In our experience the fishing comes on in late spring, once the rain and melt have gone through. A four weight and a dry-dropper fished one cast per pocket. Along the valley flats in summer, a hopper tight to the grassed bank in the afternoon. The winter closed season that applies to the tailrace below the dam does not apply here, but the ordinary Victorian trout rules do, so check the current guide.
Hinnomunjie Bridge on the Omeo Highway is the named way in. The gauge at the bridge reads water temperature as well as flow, and its readings sit under Conditions. Read it before you drive.