Fifty-nine kilometres of mainstem from the headwaters to the inflow. The upper river is confined and timbered, dropping through gorge country; around Hinnomunjie it opens into a grazing valley where the river runs in gravel riffles and pools between grassed banks and willows; below the bridge it tightens again toward the lake. Big River and the Gibbo are the tributaries that matter, and they are other waters, not extra pages of this one. The Hinnomunjie gauge sits in the valley and reads flow, height, water temperature and conductivity.

You are in the Victorian high country, and the river has not yet been held in a storage. That matters for how it fishes: the temperature follows the air, the flow follows the rain, and neither is smoothed by a wall upstream.

Brown trout are the fish of this river, and the survey record for the whole Mitta Mitta is thick with them, hundreds electrofished through the 2000s and 2010s. Rainbow trout are in the record in smaller numbers. Both are wild; no trout has been stocked into the river. Twospine blackfish share the pools, and redfin have reached even this far up. Treat it as wild trout country rather than a put-and-take beat, and let a day on the water do the counting.

The trout eat caddis and mayfly in the runs, and through summer the grasshoppers and beetles off the open valley flats around Hinnomunjie, where a fish tight under a grassed bank in the afternoon is waiting for one.

Read the Conditions card on this page before you drive. The Hinnomunjie gauge tells you whether the spring water has gone through and whether the river has settled after the last rain, and the temperature line tells you whether a summer afternoon is one to fish early and keep fish wet.

This is alpine country. Spring rain and melt hold the river high and cold; from late spring to the April frosts it drops into small, clear pocket water and is at its best. After rain or a dump in the headwaters it comes up fast and coloured, and the confined upper river is dangerous while it does. Give it a few dry days. A hot afternoon on the open valley banks is a reason to fish first light and keep fish wet, not a reason to assume the water is cold.

If the forecast is wet, wait. If the river is up or dirty at the bridge, that is the answer for the day.

Fish it as a mountain river. Seams along the current, the soft edge behind a boulder, the tail of a run, and the first cast into a pocket is usually the only one that counts. Keep your approach low; this water is clear when it is in order.

A four or five weight covers it. A dry-dropper with a Royal Wulff or a Stimulator you can see in broken light over a tungsten Pheasant Tail or Hare’s Ear, so the fish choose the level. A hopper tight to the grassed banks through the valley in summer, an Elk Hair Caddis in the evening runs, and a small Woolly Bugger when the water is carrying colour.

Wading is the real work. Bedrock is slick in the gorge sections, and a fall here is a long way from a hospital. If you cannot see the next footing, do not take it.

Hinnomunjie Bridge, on the Omeo Highway, is the named way onto this stretch, and the valley around it is mixed country: road, grazing and public land. A gate is the answer. Confirm who holds the bank before you walk it. The Victorian Fisheries Authority’s northern inland angling guide for the Mitta Mitta basin lists access in this country; a pin is not a right of entry. Check current closures before you go, and treat the upper gorge as the remote walk it is.

Lake Dartmouth is the downstream end of this stretch, not a carpark for it. Do not treat the storage foreshore as this river.

Victorian rules apply. The trout and salmon closed season on the river below the pondage does not apply here; this stretch is the water above the lake, and the ordinary Victorian trout rules govern it.

Check the current Victorian recreational fishing guide before you fish. The dates and numbers move. Do not take them from this page.