Somewhere past the halfway mark on the Gingra Trail, with the pack starting to bite, you hear
the river before you see it and understand why nobody fishes the Kowmung. Then you come out at
Cedar Ford onto a gravel run between forested walls, water clear enough to count the stones, and
understand why you should.
This is the gorge, and it is most of the river: seventy-four kilometres from the Morong Creek
junction down to the Coxs, as wild as water gets within a day of Sydney. Bedrock at the top
where the headwater gorge finishes, then gravel runs and pools between confined banks for most
of its length, the drop easing as it goes until the last few kilometres run almost level. The
canopy closes over it, nearly ninety per cent at the bottom, and there is not one cleared paddock
on the river.
Know what you are walking in for. One fish is on record here, a blackfish from 1910. Nothing has
been stocked and nobody runs a survey. That is an absence of sampling, not of fish: a gorge this
steep, cold, shaded and remote is where wild brown trout persist once the roadside water has been
fished down. Treat it as unproven, and let a day on the water do the counting.
The trip is a two-day walk with a four weight. In on the Gingra Trail from the Kanangra tops,
about fourteen kilometres to Cedar Ford, base there, fish up into the tighter water one day and
down through the longer runs the next. From late spring until the first frosts is the time,
with a dry-dropper fished once into every pocket and an Elk Hair Caddis in the evening runs.
The trout classification that closes the headwaters in winter does not apply here, but the
ordinary NSW rules do, and the bottom of the gorge runs toward WaterNSW's drinking-water
special area, where the water authority's rules replace the park's.
The river's only gauge sits at Cedar Ford, right where the trail meets the water, and its
readings sit under Conditions. Read it the day before you walk, not the morning of. After rain on
the plateau this river colours before it rises, and a wet forecast is a reason to wait.
Water and habitat
Gorge country from end to end, but not the same gorge all the way. The fall of the river on this
page shows the confined bedrock of the headwaters finishing a few kilometres below Morong Creek,
and from there the bed is gravel between walls that never quite let go. The occasional small flat
where a side creek comes in, then walls again. The gradient eases steadily downstream and the
runs lengthen: by Cedar Ford the pools are long enough to fish properly, and below it the river
is a chain of gravel runs, riffles and pools that a Monaro angler would recognise, only with a
cliff on each side.
The bank survey from space is the other half of the picture. Closed canopy for most of the
length, open enough here and there to let light down, and no cleared or farmed ground anywhere.
The bottom five kilometres before the Coxs are the darkest water on the river. That shade is what
keeps this stretch fishable on afternoons that would shut down an open tableland stream, and it
is what makes the terrestrials matter more than the hatches.
Cedar Ford is where the river is measured and where the Gingra Trail comes down. It is the
natural base for a two-day trip: fish up into the tighter water on one day and down through the
longer runs on the other.
Fish and forage
Wild, and almost entirely unrecorded. The only survey record bound to this water is a single
river blackfish from 1910. Nothing has been stocked, and nobody runs a survey here. That is an
absence of sampling, not of fish. A gorge this steep, cold, shaded and remote is exactly where
brown trout persist in the Blue Mountains once the roadside water
has been fished down, and the headwaters above this stretch are classified as trout water by the
department. Treat it as unproven and let a day on the water do the counting. If you find trout
here and it fishes well, you know something almost nobody has written down.
What they eat falls from the trees. Beetles, ants and cicadas out of the closed canopy from late
spring through summer, onto water that sees a fly perhaps once a season. In the gravel runs,
caddis larvae under every stone and a good hatch in the evening from the
runs below Cedar Ford.
When to fish it
Read the Conditions card on this page before you decide, and read it the day before you walk, not
the morning of. Cedar Ford reads flow, height, temperature and turbidity, and the turbidity is the
one anglers forget: after rain on the plateau the river colours before it rises, and a turbid
reading means the pockets are unreadable for a day or two even if the flow looks manageable. This
is a rain-fed gorge, not snowmelt country. After a solid fall above Kanangra the river comes up
fast and is genuinely dangerous through the confined sections. Give it a few dry days.
From late spring until the first frosts it is at its best: settled, clear, cool under the canopy,
with the terrestrials falling and the evening caddis on. Autumn is the quiet prime. A closed gorge
like this runs cooler than the same day on the open Monaro, which is a reason to fish early and
keep fish wet on a hot day, not a reason to assume the water is cold.
If the forecast is wet, wait. If the river is up or dirty when you get to the bottom of the
trail, that is your answer for the trip, and you fish the edges from the bank or you rest.
How to fish it
You are covering ground on foot in clear, confined water, and the first cast into a pocket is
usually the only one that counts. Fish the seams along the bedrock, the soft edges behind
boulders, and the tails of the gravel runs once the gorge opens a little. Keep your approach low
and your shadow off the water.
A four or five weight and a floating line covers everything. The dry-dropper
is the rig: a Stimulator or a Royal Wulff you can see
in broken light, with a tungsten Hare's Ear or Pheasant Tail
two feet under it, so the fish choose the level without you changing flies every ten minutes. In
the evening runs below Cedar Ford, an Elk Hair Caddis on its own until
you cannot see it. When the water is carrying colour, or the fish are deep and tight after a rise,
a small Woolly Bugger swung through the deeper slots.
Casting room is the job. Roll casts, bow-and-arrow casts into pockets under the timber, and next
to no room behind you almost anywhere. A short leader you can control beats a long one you
cannot.
Wading is the real work, and it is slow. Bedrock turns slick, the walls pinch in, and a fall in
this country is a long way from help. Felt or studded soles earn their keep on this river. If you
cannot see the next footing, do not take it.
Access and safety
Remote gorge, reached almost entirely on foot. The two mapped walks are long: the Gingra Trail
from the Kanangra tops drops to the river at Cedar Ford, and the Uni Rover Trail comes in further
upstream off the Morong Creek fire trail, each around fourteen kilometres from the car. Roots
Ridge, Bulga Ridge and Black Snake Bend are bushwalkers' routes into the gorge, named on the maps
anglers pass around but not mapped as tracks, and they are for people who already know them.
Scotts Main Range Road and the Denis Ridge trail come within several hundred metres of the river
on the eastern side, but the last stretch to the water is off-track and steep. All of it is
Kanangra-Boyd and Blue Mountains national park; a track on a map is not a right to walk it today,
so check the current NPWS alerts before you go.
The bottom of the gorge runs toward WaterNSW's special area around Sydney's drinking-water
storage, where the water authority's rules replace the park's. Check with WaterNSW before you plan
on fishing that far down.
Treat this like the remote walk it is. Carry what you would need to look after an injured person
overnight a long way from a road, tell someone your plan and your exit day, and give yourself the
daylight to climb out comfortably rather than in the dark. There is no signal in the gorge and
there is no second gauge on the walk in; the call is yours, standing on the bank.
Regulations
NSW DPIRD's general trout classification on the Kowmung stops at the Morong Creek junction, and
this stretch is below it, so the classification does not apply here. What does apply is the
ordinary NSW freshwater rulebook for the fish you catch, trout included.
Check the current
NSW freshwater synopsis
before you fish. The numbers move. Do not take them from this page.