Kiandra was a gold town for one hard winter in 1860 and it has been a ghost ever since. The
Eucumbene runs past what is left of it as a creek you would not look at twice from the car,
cutting through tussock and snow grass on a plain that lies open to every wind in the Alps. This
is the small-stream trip on the river: one dry fly, a long leader, and knees in the grass.
The stretch is the top twelve kilometres of the river, from the source on the snow plains to the
highway bridge at Kiandra, with the Snowy Mountains Highway close enough that the walk in is the
length of a car park. The fall is gentle. It winds across its plain in pools and undercut bends
you can see the bottom of, gravel-bedded and clear, and it shrinks to a chain of pools in a dry
summer.
The fish are wild browns and rainbows, mostly small, and they are exactly where you expect them
to be. That is the whole pleasure of a meadow creek: there is no puzzle, only the discipline of
getting a fly to a rising trout in eight inches of water with the sky for a backdrop and nothing
to hide behind. The fish that survive up here are the ones that saw you first.
The season is summer, December to April, because the melt keeps the water high and cold into
November and snow can sit on the plain into October. Fish it through the warm middle of the day
when the hoppers are moving and the trout are looking up, with a size fourteen dry and a
hopper from January. This is not the spawn-run water; the lake fish rarely come this far, and by
the time they would, the law has closed the river after the June long weekend.
It is fly-and-lure-only spawning-stream water like the rest of the river above the lake, and it
is alpine country at every step. There is no shelter on the plain, so carry a shell and a warm
layer in January. Stand here in April with a southerly coming across and you will understand why
the town emptied.
Water and habitat
This is the top twelve kilometres or so of the river, from the source on the snow plains to the
Snowy Mountains Highway bridge at Kiandra. The bank survey on the whole-river page draws it
plainly: native grass and heath along most of this stretch, patches of snow gum along the rest,
and the highest, most open ground the river ever sees. The fall is gentle. The river winds across
its plain in pools and undercut bends rather than dropping, and the gradient only picks up as it
approaches the old township.
Gravel bed, clear water, banks you can see over. In a dry summer it shrinks to a chain of pools
joined by trickles and the fish concentrate in the deeper bends. After a storm it colours for a
day and clears.
Fish and forage
Brown trout and rainbow trout, born
here or walked up a long way. Expect small fish and be pleased by a good one. The forage is what
falls in: grasshoppers through the warm months in numbers that matter,
beetles and ants on the wind, and the small mayfly and
caddis of any alpine creek. A fish holding under a tussock bank in February
is waiting for a hopper. Give it one.
When to fish it
Summer. The melt keeps this water high and cold well into November and the snow can sit on the
plain into October, so the season here is really December to April. From Christmas the dry-fly
fishing comes into its own, and it holds until the frosts start to bite in April. By May the fish
are thinking about other things and by the June long weekend the law has closed the river.
Fish it through the middle of the day when the wind allows. This is not a river that rewards the
dawn start; it rewards the warm afternoon when the hoppers are moving and the trout are looking
up.
How to fish it
A three or four weight, a long leader and one fly. You are casting to fish you can see, or to the
one spot in the bend where a fish must be, and the cast is short. Keep low, keep the sun behind
you where you can, and walk upstream. A Royal Wulff or an
Adams fished parachute-style in a size fourteen covers the search fishing;
switch to a hopper when you see one land on the water and get eaten.
If the fish will not look up, a small tungsten Pheasant Tail under the
dry, dropped a foot below it, fishes the deeper bends; the dry-dropper
page has the rig. Do not go heavier than that. The creek is not deep enough to need it, and a
heavy nymph in thin water is a stone.
The discipline is in the approach, not the cast. Trout in a creek this open see everything. Move
slowly. Cast from further back than feels natural. When you spook one, and you will, sit down for
a minute before you move on so the next pool does not get the same news.
Access and safety
The Snowy Mountains Highway runs beside this stretch and crosses it at Kiandra, and the bridge is
the obvious way in. NSW DPIRD's inspected angler access sites along here carry the plain names
they were given: Kiandra Bridge, Upstream of Kiandra Bridge, Sawyers Hill, Gooandra Track, and
a highway pull-off further up. Two of them are called Locked Gate and They Put In A Gate, which
tells you what to expect and whose land you are on. The pins are on the
whole-river page.
All of this is inside Kosciuszko National Park. The highway is open in summer and can close in
snow. There is no shelter on the plain: carry a shell and a warm layer in January, because a
southerly change at fourteen hundred metres is not a rain shower. If the cloud drops onto the
plain, walk back to the road before you lose it.
Regulations
NSW DPIRD classifies the whole Eucumbene above the dam wall of Lake Eucumbene, including this
stretch and every creek that feeds it, as artificial fly and lure water and as a trout spawning
stream. In practice that means fly or lure only, a small daily bag through the open season, a
tighter one-fish limit from the start of May, and a full closure from the Tuesday after the June
long weekend until the October long weekend.
Those are the shape of the rules, not the day. Check the current NSW trout fishing closure
notification before you fish; the dates move with the public holidays.