This is the stretch most people mean when they say they fish the Coxs, and it is the one to start
on. Below the Lyell dam wall the river runs sixty kilometres through farm country west of the Blue
Mountains, close enough to Sydney for a day trip, with a bridge or a camping area every few
kilometres and a deep permanent pool below each one. The fish are wild brown and rainbow trout,
and they live in those pools and the deep bends, not in the shallow runs between them. Learn that
first and the rest of the stretch makes sense.
The shape of it is simple. The top half is open paddock water with road access at named points:
the McKanes Falls Road bridge near the highway, the Glenroy camping area where a tributary called
the Lett joins, Duddawarra bridge, and the unfenced miles toward Sandy Hook. Below Sandy Hook the
timber closes in, the Six Foot Track crosses on its way to Katoomba, and the river drops off a
shelf into a gorge that ends at the Little River junction. That last gorge is the steepest water
on the whole river and the hardest to reach.
The season decides the trip. This is a general trout water, which means it is closed from the
June long weekend to the October one. Fish it in the weeks after the October opening while the
pools are full and the fish are fresh. Come back from Christmas for the hopper afternoons along
the grassed banks. In the heat of summer the riffles run thin and the fish sit deep, so fish first
and last light or head for the shaded bottom end. Leave it alone through winter, when the law says
so and the fish you want are in the gorge below the junction anyway.
Two gauges watch this water, one at Lithgow near the top and one at Island Hill at the bottom,
and their readings sit under Conditions. Read Lithgow before you drive.
Water and habitat
Farmland river alternating between confined bedrock and small gravel and sand floodplains: the
fall of the river on this page shows the pattern, a pinch and a flat, a pinch and a flat, for sixty
kilometres. The pools are in the flats and the runs between them are shallow, so the fish live in
the pools. The Lett comes in at Glenroy and lifts the flow below it. Below Sandy Hook the sand
gives way to gravel and the timber closes, and at about the ninety-kilometre mark on the whole-river
drawing the profile drops a hundred and seventy metres in seven kilometres, which is the gorge
above the Little River junction and the hardest water on the Coxs to reach or wade.
The bank survey reads open woodland with up to a third of the corridor in grass and up to a sixth
under cultivation through the farmed middle, then a switch to closed forest as the gorge begins.
Shade is scarce on the farmed water and the pools warm through summer; the bottom end under the
timber stays cooler on the same afternoon.
Fish and forage
Brown trout and rainbow trout, in
the survey record from the 1990s on. Nothing is stocked into the river: the fish are wild, or
have used Lyell and come back down. They hold in the permanent pools, not the skinny runs, and the
deeper bends against a cut bank or a willow root are the lies to cover first. Carp show in the
slower farmed pools, and redfin, goldfish and gambusia with them. The department's classification
is a rule about how you fish, not a survey.
Caddis in the gravel runs at dusk, mayfly on the flat pools, and from
Christmas the grasshoppers off the paddock banks in numbers that make a
hopper the afternoon fly across the whole farmed stretch.
When to fish it
The classified water opens on the October long weekend, and the weeks after it are the roadside
trip: pools full from winter, the river cool, the fish unpressured. That window runs into December
in a normal year. Midsummer thins the riffles and warms the pools, and the fish are in the deep
water in the first and last hours; a hot forecast is a reason to fish the timbered bottom end
toward the Six Foot Track, or to stay home. Autumn is quietly good until the close.
Read the Conditions card on this page first. Lithgow reads flow, height, water temperature and
turbidity; Island Hill reads flow and height at the Little River junction. After rain in the
Lithgow country the river colours at Lithgow before it rises anywhere, and a turbid reading means
the pools are unreadable for a day or two. A water temperature in the low twenties at Lithgow is a
reason to fish first light, keep fish wet, and stop early.
Do not come here for the winter rainbow run. This stretch is closed from the June long weekend to
the October one. The fish pushing up from the storage in July and August are in the gorge below
Little River, a different page.
How to fish it
Cover the pools. The runs on this stretch are not where the fish live when the river is down, and
walking past a shallow riffle to reach the next deep bend is the single best thing you can do here.
A four or five weight covers everything. A dry-dropper with an
Adams or a Royal Wulff over a hot-spot
Pheasant Tail is the starting pair and covers most days. When the
hoppers are in the paddocks, a hopper tight to the grassed bank in the afternoon;
an Elk Hair Caddis in the evening runs. When the water is carrying
colour, a small Woolly Bugger or a worm pattern is the honest fly, and a
Hare's Ear fished deep through the head of a pool.
Room to cast in the open farmed holds; tighter as the timber closes toward the Six Foot Track. In
the gorge above the Little River junction it is Kowmung fishing: bedrock seams, boulder pockets,
and one cast per lie.
Access and safety
Mixed country. A gate and a fence are the answer. Confirm who holds the bank before you walk it.
The named ways in from the highway side, pinned on the whole-river page: McKanes Falls Road bridge,
a few minutes off the Great Western Highway at South Bowenfels; Glenroy camping area at the Lett
junction on the Jenolan road near Hartley; Duddawarra bridge on Coxs River Road, with a short
stretch of riverfront at the bridge; and the unfenced frontage along Cullenbenbong Road toward
Sandy Hook, reached off Table Rock Road on a four-wheel-drive track. The Six Foot Track crosses a
few kilometres above the Little River, about five kilometres' walk from the Aspinall Road end;
that walk is the start of gorge country, not a roadside session.
Little River is the bottom of this stretch, a tributary rather than a Coxs reach. The gorge below
the junction is a different page, and the drop into it above the junction is steep, slick and a
long way from a road.
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.
This stretch is that water down to the junction. A general trout water carries the NSW trout
season, which closes this water from the June long weekend to the October long weekend, and the
general-trout-water size and bag limits.
The dates follow the public holidays and the numbers move. Take them from the current
NSW freshwater synopsis
and the trout closure notification, not from this page.