The Kowmung is the wildest river within a day of Sydney, and almost nobody fishes it, because
getting to it costs a day each way. That is the whole proposition. Stand on the Kanangra Walls
at first light and it is the one sound in the valley below you, far down through the mist.
The river runs eighty-six kilometres from the Boyd plateau to the Coxs, dropping eight hundred
metres through two national parks, timbered to the bank the entire way, with one road crossing
near the top and not a single paddock on it. It splits into two very different stretches at the
Morong Creek junction. Above the junction it is a tumbling headwater stream, tight and shaded,
and the one part of the river a fire trail actually reaches. Below it is the gorge, seventy
kilometres of gravel runs and pools between confined walls, easing all the way down to the Coxs.
Be clear about the fish before you walk. Nobody has stocked the Kowmung, nobody surveys it, and
the only fish on record is a blackfish caught in 1910. The headwaters are classified as general
trout water, which tells you what the authority expects to find there, and a river this cold,
steep and remote is exactly where wild brown trout persist in the Blue Mountains. Treat it as
unproven, not empty, and let the river tell you.
The headwaters are the day trip: fire trails off Kanangra Walls Road, small pocket water, a dry
fly from the October opening until the frosts, closed through winter with the rest of the
classified water. The gorge is the expedition: a fourteen-kilometre walk in on the Gingra Trail
to Cedar Ford, where the river's only gauge sits, two days with a pack, and a dry-dropper fished
once into every pocket. The classification does not apply down there, but the ordinary NSW
rules still do. The lowest water runs toward the drinking-water special area, where WaterNSW's
rules take over.
Read the Cedar Ford gauge on the gorge page before you commit. A wet forecast on the plateau
is a reason not to go in at all.
Water and habitat
The Kowmung begins where the Tuglow and the Hollanders come off the Boyd plateau, nine hundred
metres up, and for its first sixteen kilometres it is a confined bedrock gorge dropping hard. The
fall of the river below shows that first pitch clearly. Then the walls stay but the bed changes:
from about the sixteen-kilometre mark to the Coxs the river runs on gravel between confined
banks, with the occasional small flat where a side creek comes in, and the drop eases steadily
until the last ten kilometres are close to level.
Above Morong Creek is the top: the Tuglow, the
Hollanders and Morong Creek country, short, steep and cold, the stretch the trout classification
is written for.
Morong Creek to the Coxs is the gorge,
and it is most of the river. Cedar Ford, where the Gingra Trail comes down, is the one place the
river is measured. Below it the walls open a little and the runs lengthen toward the junction.
The bank survey tells you what to pack. Satellite cover along the whole corridor reads as
two-thirds dense forest and a third open woodland, with no cleared ground at all. The top ten
kilometres are more open woodland, which is why the headwaters have a little more light in them,
and the bottom of the gorge is the darkest water on the river, close to ninety per cent closed
canopy in the last five kilometres. That shade is worth an hour of afternoon fishing on a day
that would shut down the open tablelands to the west.
Fish and forage
Wild, and mostly unrecorded. Nothing has been stocked here, and the only survey record bound to
the river is a single river blackfish from 1910. The department classifies the headwaters as
general trout water, which tells you what the authority expects to find there without counting
anything. Brown trout are the fish the Blue Mountains gorges are
known for, and a river this cold, shaded and remote is where they persist when the roadside water
has been fished out. Treat the whole river as unproven rather than empty.
What they eat comes off the trees. In a closed-canopy gorge the terrestrials matter more than the
hatches: beetles, ants, the odd cicada from late spring, dropping out of the overhang onto water
that has not seen a fly all year. The gravel runs below Cedar Ford carry caddis
and a nymph's worth of larvae under every stone, and the evening riffle is the reliable hour.
When to fish it
This is a rain-fed gorge, not a snowmelt river, and the calendar below is a guide's read of it
rather than a gauge's. After a decent fall in the country above Kanangra the river comes up fast,
coloured and genuinely dangerous through the confined sections, and it takes a few dry days to
drop back into something you can read from the bank. Check the forecast for the plateau, not for
Sydney, and check the Cedar Ford readings on the gorge page before you commit to the walk.
From late spring to the first frosts the river is at its best: settled, clear, warm enough for
the terrestrials, and cool in the shade on days the tablelands bake. Autumn is the quiet prime.
Winter is cold, short and wet underfoot, and the headwaters are closed under the trout rules in
any case.
How to fish it
Pack for a walk first and a river second. A four or five weight that breaks down small, a floating
line, and a box that does one job well. The dry-dropper is the rig
for the whole river: a dry you can see in broken light, a Stimulator or a
Royal Wulff, with a tungsten Hare's Ear or
Pheasant Tail two feet under it. Fish every pocket once, as if it holds a
fish, because in water nobody fishes it probably does, and move on. The first drift is the one that
counts. In the evening runs an Elk Hair Caddis on its own. When the
river is carrying colour after rain, a small Woolly Bugger swung through
the deeper slots is the honest fly.
Casting room is the constraint. Roll casts, bow-and-arrow casts into pockets under the timber, a
short leader you can control. The stretch pages say where the water opens up.
Access and safety
Everything is national park and almost all of it is on foot. Fire trails off Kanangra Walls Road
and the Boyd plateau reach the headwaters, and the Ben Lomond trail touches the Hollanders near
the top. Into the gorge the walks are long: the Gingra Trail off the Kanangra tops drops to the
river at Cedar Ford, and the Uni Rover Trail comes in further up, both around fourteen kilometres
from where you leave the car. Several named ways in, Roots Ridge, Bulga Ridge and Black Snake Bend
among them, are bushwalkers' routes rather than mapped tracks. The ways in are pinned further down
this page; a pin is a route that reaches the river, not a promise about its condition today.
The lowest water runs toward WaterNSW's special area around Sydney's drinking-water storage,
where the park rules give way to the water authority's. Check with WaterNSW before you plan a
trip that far down.
This is remote gorge country. Bedrock is slick, the walls pinch in, and a fall is a long way from
a road and further from a signal. Carry what you would need to look after an injured person
overnight, leave your plan with someone, and give yourself the daylight to walk back out. If the
forecast is wet, do not go in.
Regulations
NSW DPIRD classifies the Kowmung as a general trout water upstream of, and including, Morong
Creek. That classification brings the NSW trout season and the general-trout-water bag and size
limits with it, and it is stated on the
headwater stretch. Below the Morong Creek
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 go.