Spending the first Saturday in October on the banks of Eucumbene River has become a tradition for Andrew and me. This year was the fourth in a row, incidentally corresponding to Melbourne Storm's appearances in the NRL grand finals. For most of the 7 hour drive I was accompanied by pelting rain, and as I learned later, Andrew was too. This had me worried about the level and colour of the water, especially given that weekend prior my plans to fish the Ovens near Beechoworth were a non event once I found the river in flood. Having arrived at Kiandra around 1 am, I grabbed my torch and braved the freezing conditions to check the state of the river, waiting till the morning was not an option. Realizing I still had one bar of phone signal I phoned Andrew to break him the good news, it was high but clear. Upon his arrival we opened a bottle of 12 year old Tullamore to toast the new season and to keep us warm. We took our first casts of the new season before dawn, and it wasn't long till we were both playing beautifully conditioned rainbows onto the banks. Great fishing continued into the morning and throughout the day, pity the same could not be said about the weather. At first, fishing in the snow seemed somewhat adventurous, but the novelty quickly wore off. We decided to call it a day once our fingers had lost all the feeling in them and it was near impossible to tie on a replacement fly. By this stage we were nudging 20 fish between the two of us, quite a respectable tally.
In the afternoon we tried the lake. Fishing turned out to be a bit slower on the lake, but seeing water in bays that we haven't fished for some years proved motivation enough to persist with it. On the first night Andrew got a couple out of the lake and I got my first lake rainbow for the trip on the next night.
The river fishing continued to be brilliant. When it finally seemed to slow down, we took advice from a local fishing identity and went deep, really deep. Tying on the heaviest fly I had in my box, the Tongariro bomb, brought instant results. I had one of my best sessions on the last afternoon, catching 8 in 2 hours or so, and loosing or missing at least twice as many.
There was one negative on this trip, and that was the crowds. If you prefer your own space and are not a fan of sharing water, you probably should wait for at least a week or two after the opening weekend before fishing Eucumbene. On a number of occassions we had people drop in on us, some of them fly fishermen, but with the fishing that good we didn't really worry about them. It was definitely one of our best opening weekend trips and what a great way to prepare for a two week fishing adventure in New Zealand. Bring it on!
