Pondage to Peters Bridge

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. 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, in our experience, gain a trout stream that holds its cool later into summer.

The fish are wild browns, the most common trout in the survey record here, with rainbows in smaller numbers, and no trout appears in the river’s stocking record.

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, at Bowlers Lane, Eskdale Bridge and Tallandoon, the last reading water temperature as well as flow, and their readings sit under Conditions. As on any river below a dam, a release can lift the water while the sky is clear, so read them before you wade and get out when the push gets louder than you like.

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 having a hook and line within twenty metres of the water. The dates move each year. Check the current Victorian guide before you book.