The Coxs is the closest serious trout river to Sydney, two hours west of the city in the Lithgow
country, and it is the river most Sydney anglers learn on. What makes it worth learning is that it
is really three rivers wearing one name. Two dams, Lake Wallace and then Lake Lyell, cut it into an
upper, a middle and a lower river, and each fishes as a different trip. The month you have free
decides which one you take.
The middle river is the one to start on. Below the Lyell wall the Coxs runs sixty kilometres
through farmland, and you can reach it from a road at four named points: the McKanes Falls Road
bridge, the Glenroy camping area, Duddawarra bridge, Sandy Hook. It holds wild brown and rainbow
trout, and it is the water people mean when they talk about fishing the Coxs. This stretch is a
classified trout water, which in practice means it is closed through winter and opens on the
October long weekend. From then until the summer heat thins the riffles, the fish sit in the
deep permanent pools, and a morning from a bridge will find them.
The lower river is the winter trip, and it is a different proposition. At the Little River
junction the paddocks end and the Coxs drops into a forested gorge, the steepest water on the
whole system, with the Kowmung and the Jenolan coming in from wilderness. The winter closure does
not apply below that junction, and through July, August and September rainbows that have grown
big in Lake Burragorang push up into the gorge. You walk in for them: the Six Foot Track
crosses the river about five kilometres from the Aspinall Road end, and the lowest water runs into
WaterNSW's special area around the storage, where the water authority's rules replace the park's.
Plan it as a long day in cold country, not a session from a car.
The upper river, above Lake Wallace, is a small tableland stream between farms and power-station
land. It is fishable, but it is the trip you take because you are already there, not the one you
drive up for. The trophy water in that country is the walk-in dam at Thompsons Creek Reservoir.
Each stretch has its own page with the access points, the current rules and a live gauge that
tells you whether the river is worth the drive. Pick the month, then read that stretch before you
pack.
Water and habitat
A hundred and seventy kilometres of mainstem falling from the tableland at nearly a thousand
metres to the storage at just over a hundred, and the fall of the river below tells you where
each kind of water is. The first fifteen kilometres are a valley-fill stream in open, farmed
country, easing gently; then two flat shelves where the water sits in Lake Wallace and Lake Lyell,
with a short bedrock connector between them. Below Lyell the river alternates for sixty
kilometres between confined gorge and small gravel and sand floodplains, which is the farmed water
of Glenroy, Duddawarra and Sandy Hook. Then, at about ninety kilometres, the profile drops off a
shelf: a hundred and seventy metres of fall in seven kilometres through confined bedrock down to
the Little River junction. Below that the gorge runs on sand and gravel between forested walls,
easing all the way into the top of Lake Burragorang.
Headwaters to Lake Wallace is the start: a
small tableland stream north of Wallerawang, roads and farms and power-station land, with the
first gauge on it.
Lake Wallace and Lake Lyell are their own waters, each with a page, and the river runs through
both. The connector between them is on the map, not a page.
Below Lyell to Little River is the
classified trout water, and it is the river most anglers mean: farmland pools, the Lett junction
at Glenroy, Duddawarra, Sandy Hook, and the Six Foot Track country as the timber closes in. Two
gauges sit on it.
Little River to Warragamba Dam is the
gorge. The Kowmung and the Jenolan join on this lower water, the
trout classification does not apply, and the storage is the end of the map.
The bank survey from space draws the same three rivers. The tableland and the farmed water below
Lyell read as open woodland with a third of the bank in grass and up to a sixth under cultivation.
Below the Little River junction that cultivation vanishes and dense forest takes over, seventy to
eighty per cent of the corridor, all the way to the storage.
Fish and forage
Brown trout and rainbow trout, both
in the survey record from the 1990s onward, mostly from the upper river around Lithgow and the
lakes. Nothing is stocked into the river itself: the fish are wild, or have used the storages and
come back. The survey record also carries the small fish a farmed tableland river collects, mountain
galaxias in numbers, eels, gudgeon, and the unwelcome redfin, goldfish and gambusia in the slower
pools. Carp show in the farmed water. The department's general trout classification above Little
River is a rule about how you fish, not a headcount.
The fish that make the gorge worth a winter walk are rainbows that have grown in Lake Burragorang.
They are not the fish you cover from McKanes Falls Road in November.
What the trout eat changes with the country. On the farmed water it is caddis
in the evening runs, mayfly on the flatter pools, and from Christmas the
grasshoppers off the paddock banks. In the gorge it is whatever falls
out of the forest, and in winter the running fish are not feeding so much as reacting.
When to fish it
Three trips, three calendars. The classified water opens on the October long weekend, and late
spring is the roadside window: the pools are full from winter, the river is cool, and the fish
have not seen a fly since June. Midsummer runs the tableland and the farmed water low and warm,
and the permanent pools are where the trout are; fish the first and last hours, and if the
forecast is hot, stay under the timber toward Sandy Hook or leave the river alone. Autumn on the
farmed water is quietly good.
Winter is the gorge or nothing. The classified stretches close from the June long weekend to the
October one. Below Little River, rainbows run up out of the storage through July, August and
September, and that is a long, cold walk-in rather than a session from a bridge.
The gauges tell you whether to go. Wallerawang, Lithgow and Island Hill all read flow and height,
and the two upper stations read turbidity, which colours before the river rises after rain in the
Lithgow country. Their latest readings are on the stretch pages. After rain in the Kanangra country
the gorge comes up fast and is genuinely dangerous; give it a few dry days.
How to fish it
Above the gorge, fish it as a farmed tableland river. A four or five weight, a
dry-dropper with an Adams or a Royal Wulff
over a hot-spot Pheasant Tail, and the patience to cover the pools rather
than the skinny runs. A hopper along the grassed banks once the paddocks dry off.
An Elk Hair Caddis in the evening riffles. When the river is carrying
colour after rain, a small Woolly Bugger or a worm pattern is the honest
fly.
In the gorge it is the same job as the Kowmung: bedrock seams, the soft edge behind a boulder, the
tail of a gravel run, and the first cast into a pocket is the one that counts. In winter you are
fishing for lake fish on the move, so a Woolly Bugger or a small streamer swung through the deeper
slots, and a heavier nymph dead-drifted through the tail-outs at first light.
Access and safety
The upper river is mixed country: roads, farms, power-station land. A gate and a fence are the
answer, not an invitation to find a way around. The roadside ways in are named on the classified
stretch, McKanes Falls Road bridge, Glenroy camping area, Duddawarra bridge on Coxs River Road,
Sandy Hook off Table Rock Road, and they are pinned further down this page. The Six Foot Track is
the walk into the top of the gorge, about five kilometres from the Aspinall Road end.
The lower river is park and walk-in, and the lowest water runs into WaterNSW's special area around
the storage, where the water authority's rules replace the park's. Carry what you would need a
long way from a road, and give yourself the daylight to get back out.
Regulations
NSW DPIRD classifies the Coxs as a general trout water upstream from its junction with the Little
River, including the creeks and tributaries above that junction, but not the Little River itself.
That classification brings the NSW trout season with it, closing the classified water from the
June long weekend to the October one, and the general-trout-water size and bag limits. It is
stated on the two stretches above the junction. Below the junction the classification does not
apply, and the ordinary NSW freshwater rules do.
The dates follow the long weekends and the numbers move. Check the current
NSW freshwater synopsis
and the trout closure notification before you fish.