Wentworth Falls Lake

Wentworth Falls Lake is a railway dam, built in 1878 to supply steam trains on the mountain line and kept now for recreation. It is small, about six metres at its deepest point and holding around 300 megalitres when full, with a dam wall at one end, a spillway at the northern corner of that wall, a boat ramp, a park on the southern side and a shallow western end. The persistence chart on this page shows how reliably it holds water through the year, which on a town dam in this rainfall is most of the time.

The western end is the water to understand. It is shallow, and in a small dam the shallow end is where the food is: weed, snails, nymphs and yabbies in the margins, and the odd brown cruising them in low light. The deep water along the wall is where the trout go when the shallows are bright or warm, and it is where the bait anglers fish for them.

The lake sits downstream of a golf course and housing, and this reportedly shows in the water quality. It affects what you should do with a fish more than whether you will catch one.

Brown trout are the fish the lake is stocked and known for, and rainbows are reportedly caught here too. The stocking chart on this page shows the pattern of releases; what it means for you is that the fishing here runs on stocked fish, so the months after a release are the ones to fish, and a stocked trout that has been in the lake a season learns the margins quickly. Australian bass have been stocked in recent years as well, and redfin are now being caught.

The reported forage is telling: the browns take worms and small yabbies, which means they are feeding on the bottom of the shallow end for whatever crawls. Add the food a shallow, weedy town dam always carries, midge, damselfly nymphs, snails and small baitfish, and you have the fly selection.

Carry a small brown or olive Woolly Bugger as the yabby and the baitfish in one fly, a Pheasant Tail and a Hare’s Ear for the nymphs, a couple of black midge pupae for still, cold mornings, and a small popper or dark streamer for a summer evening in case the bass have taken.

There is no record of when this lake fishes best, so this is our judgement built on what the lake is and where it sits.

This is a cool-water lake in the upper mountains, and trout are a cool-months fish in it: autumn through to spring, on the mornings when the shallow western end is in shade and the fish are along the margin. In the middle of winter the mountains are cold and the fishing is slow but honest; on a still, bright day in late winter you can polaroid the shallows.

Summer pushes the trout deep and towards the wall, and the shallow end becomes the place to try for bass on a warm evening rather than trout. The months after a stocking release are the best months of any year; the chart shows when releases have come in the past.

The lake is a general trout dam under the NSW notification, and whether that category carries a closed season is a matter for the current NSW guide, not this page.

Fish a five-weight with a floating line and a leader of three metres or more, tapered to a fine tippet; the fish are close to the bank and a lake this small is easily disturbed. On the shallow western end fish from the bank or wade the margin quietly, cast along the edge rather than out into the middle, and let a small Woolly Bugger or a nymph sink before you move it. Retrieve in slow short pulls with long pauses, and watch the line for the take.

On a bright, still day, walk the shallow end slowly with the sun behind you and polaroid the margins for a cruising brown before you cast. One good cast to a seen fish beats an hour of blind searching on a lake this small.

From a canoe or kayak, drift the open water with a team of two or three flies fished loch-style: a Woolly Bugger on the point and a nymph or midge pupa on the dropper, cast ahead of the drift and worked back slowly.

Through the deep water along the wall, if you fish it, count a weighted fly down and crawl it along the bottom, which is where the bait anglers’ worms and yabbies are working.

Barbless hooks make releasing a stocked trout quick, and on this lake releasing is the sensible default.

The access card on this page shows the way in to the lake. The notes here describe the spots local anglers fish; they are not a statement of what is permitted, and a town lake carries council rules on boats, dogs and hours that this page does not hold.

The popular bank spots are the stretch west of the boat ramp up to the top of the dam, the spillway at the northern end of the wall, and the first hundred metres or so of the walkway on the northern side. The small jetty in the southern park is described as too shallow to fish from but fine for launching a canoe. Power boats are reportedly not permitted and canoes and kayaks are.

Two cautions. Local advice warns of water-quality problems downstream of the golf course and housing and advises against eating large quantities of fish from the lake; that is a local caution rather than a health-authority advisory, but it is reason enough to put the fish back. And this is a public park with families and walkers on the paths; keep your backcast clear of the walkway and the spillway edge, and treat any spillway edge as slippery.

Wentworth Falls Lake is listed under general trout dams in the NSW Fisheries Management (Trout and Salmon, Fishing Closure) Notification 2023 and in the fishing department’s guide. The listing covers the backed-up water of the dam; the creek above it, upstream of where it enters the backed-up water, is not part of it. What the trout-dam category sets for season, size and bag limits is for the current NSW guide to say, so read it before you fish and fish only as it says.

Before you fish, read the current NSW fishing rules and regulations, the freshwater bag and size limits and the general freshwater closures, and confirm the fishing fee.