Below Dartmouth Dam the Mitta Mitta comes out as a different river, and the first thing to understand is that the sky is no longer in charge. This is the tailrace, the summer trip, and the easiest water on the Mitta to reach. It is also the one stretch with a closed season of its own.

The stretch runs fifty-eight kilometres from the Banimboola pondage below the wall down to Peters Bridge, through the grazing valley of Tallandoon and Eskdale with the Omeo Highway alongside the whole way. The flow is what the dam lets down: cold, even and strong when a release is on, and a smaller river in the same wide bed when it is not. That is the trade. You lose the mountain river’s honesty about the weather and gain a trout stream that stays cold through February.

The fish are wild browns, by the hundred in the survey record, with rainbows in smaller numbers, and no trout has been stocked into the river. What the tailrace gives them is a cold, even flow through weeks that shut down the valley streams around it.

Fish it as a regulated river. Seams off the main push, inside bends, tail-outs where the release eases. Heavy nymphs when the water is up, a caddis at dusk from November to April when it drops, a hopper along the grazing banks in a summer afternoon. Three gauges sit on this stretch, Tallandoon at the top reading water temperature as well as flow, then Bowlers Lane and Eskdale Bridge, and their readings sit under Conditions. A release can lift the river while the sky is clear, so read them before you wade and get out when the push gets louder than you like. The dam does not care that you are wading.

The rule to know before you plan: during Victoria’s trout and salmon closed season this stretch is closed to all hook-and-line fishing, and the rule reaches to carrying a rod within twenty metres of the bank. The dates move each year. Check the current Victorian guide, not this page.