Imagery © Esri
Burns Creek is a small stream that runs into the Tumut River in NSW, and the reason to go is a quiet day after rainbow trout on light gear.
Start at the access point on the access card and fish upstream with a small dry and a nymph under it, working the pools and deeper runs. No water-specific rule was found, so read the current NSW trout guide before you settle on a date.
Mountain galaxias live here too. They are small natives, not a target.
A small creek feeding a larger river. On water this size, cover matters more than almost anything else. Where the banks are open, trout see you coming across the grass; where they are shaded, overhanging growth gives fish somewhere to sit and drops food into the water. The habitat charts on this page show the bank cover and the fall of the creek, so read them before you pick a stretch.
In our experience, trout in a creek like this hold in the deeper water: the head of a pool where the run tips in, the seam beside faster current, an undercut bank, the slack behind a log or boulder. Shallow, even-bottomed stretches hold fewer fish and spook them first.
Rainbow trout are recorded in the creek, and mountain galaxias with them. On a stream this size, expect modest trout and expect them to be wary of a heavy cast.
The fly box is a guide's read. Small-creek trout feed mostly on nymphs drifting along the bottom and on whatever lands on the surface, which in warm weather includes grasshoppers, beetles and ants off the bank. A few buoyant dries, a hopper and some bead-head nymphs in sizes 12 to 16 cover most of it.
Settle the rules first: take any season for the creek from the current NSW trout guide. Within whatever it allows, a small NSW trout creek usually fishes best from late spring into autumn. Late spring brings the first steady hatches and water with some push in it. Summer is for hoppers and terrestrials along the banks, fished early and late when the light is off the water. After heavy rain, give a small creek a day or two to drop and clear.
Travel light and fish upstream. A 3 or 4 weight rod of around 8 feet, a floating line and a 9 foot leader tapered to 5X is plenty. Keep low, stay back from the edge, and make short casts with as little line on the water as you can.
Start with a dry and dropper: a size 12 to 14 Royal Wulff with a size 14 to 16 bead-head Pheasant Tail or Hare's Ear under it on a short tippet. Put it in the head of each pool and let it ride down the seam. Two or three good drifts tell you whether a fish is home; then move up. In summer, swap the dry for a hopper and land it close to the bank wherever grass meets the water. In deeper, slower pools, a small Woolly Bugger stripped past cover can move a trout that will not come up.
The access card names the access point. Treat it as a location, not a statement of permission, and respect any fence or sign you meet on the ground.
As on any bush stream, tell someone where you are going and when you expect to be back, carry water and a small first-aid kit, and watch your footing on wet rock and undercut banks. A small creek can rise quickly after rain, so keep an eye on the sky and never wade a crossing you are unsure of.
No water-specific rule was found for Burns Creek. Before you fish, read the current NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development trout guide, check its trout-water and closed-waters lists, and take any season, bag and size limits and licence requirements from it.
These authority-listed points are separate from the mapped track intersections above. Some were inspected and some are public boat-ramp records; each row says which. A listing does not grant permission across private land, so check closures, signs and gates when you arrive.
Sources: NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development.
The year on this water
A year at a glance; check current rules
The river's year
Daily flow at Burns Creek upstream Burns Pondage, every year 1983 to 2026
Bureau of Meteorology — Water Data Online series catalogue (Snowy/Monaro stations). Bureau of Meteorology, © Commonwealth of Australia. Licensed from the Commonwealth of Australia under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. retrieved 2026-08-12.
How often it runs this high
15,727 days at Burns Creek upstream Burns Pondage, 1983 to 2026
Bureau of Meteorology — Water Data Online series catalogue (Snowy/Monaro stations). Bureau of Meteorology, © Commonwealth of Australia. Licensed from the Commonwealth of Australia under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. retrieved 2026-08-12.
The fall of the river
Elevation along the river, source to end
Falls 595 m over 7 km, bedrock bed, confined gorges for much of its length.
Geoscience Australia — 1 second SRTM-derived DEM-H v1.0 (NCI tile store). Geoscience Australia, 1 second SRTM-derived DEM-H v1.0, © Commonwealth of Australia, CC BY 4.0. retrieved 2026-08-16.
NSW River Styles spatial dataset — geomorphic character and dominant bed material. NSW River Styles spatial dataset, © State Government of NSW and NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water 2023. retrieved 2026-08-21.
The banks, seen from space
Land cover in the 120 m beside the water, Landsat 2023 to 2024 to 2025
DEA Land Cover (Landsat) — Level 4 classification, continental mosaics. © Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia). DEA Land Cover (Landsat), Digital Earth Australia. retrieved 2026-08-19.
How well this water has been surveyed
8 capture records, 1 decade of 1 on file
Atlas of Living Australia — freshwater fish occurrence records (open licences, with coordinates). Occurrence records from the Atlas of Living Australia and its contributing datasets, including the Victorian Biodiversity Atlas, NSW BioNet Atlas, Sustainable Rivers Audit, Murray-Darling Basin fish monitoring programs, OZCAM museum collections and iNaturalist Australia. Each record carries its own licence and originating dataset. retrieved 2026-08-13.
Burns Creek upstream Burns Pondage
m³/s
No reading shown: The organisation supplying this gauge (Snowy Hydro Limited) has not licensed its readings for republication (licence restricted).
m
No reading shown: The organisation supplying this gauge (Snowy Hydro Limited) has not licensed its readings for republication (licence restricted).
Readings from the Bureau of Meteorology's Water Data Online, © Commonwealth of Australia, licensed CC BY 4.0. Nothing here is a forecast. Check the gauge before you rely on it.
Live weather for Burns Creek upstream Burns Pondage loads here. If it does not, check the Bureau of Meteorology forecast before you go.
Rainbow trout and mountain galaxias are the fish recorded in the creek. Plan around the rainbows and treat the galaxias as the small native fish you may see in the shallows.
No water-specific rule was found for Burns Creek. Check the current NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development trout guide, including its trout-water and closed-waters lists, and take any season, bag and size limits from it before you fish.
Use the access point on the access card as a starting location, walk to the water and fish upstream from there. It marks a place, not permission, so read the signs and fences on the ground.
A 3 or 4 weight of around 8 feet suits a small creek. Short, accurate casts matter more here than distance.
