Lachlan River

Water and habitat

The Lachlan is a long river, and the gradient chart shows how it falls from the higher country into the flat inland. Along the way it is held back by Wyangala Dam and by several weirs, and it ends as a tributary of the Murrumbidgee.

In our experience a lowland river like this fishes as a chain of slow pools, bends and snags. Cod and golden perch are ambush feeders, so they sit where there is cover and depth: a fallen tree, a root ball on the outside of a bend, a deep hole below a bar. The inside of a bend is usually shallow and soft, and that is where carp cruise. In the cooler upper water any trout will hold where the current is quickest and the water coldest, at the heads of runs.

The flow chart shows how often the river runs high or low, and the bank cover chart shows what lines its banks. Check the live conditions panel before you go; a clearing river after a dry spell fishes very differently from a brown one after rain.

Fish and forage

The natives lead. Murray cod and golden perch have both been recorded in the river and both are stocked; the stocking chart shows which seasons they went in. Silver perch, Macquarie perch, river blackfish and trout cod have been recorded too, so learn to tell them apart and check their status in the current NSW guide.

Brown and rainbow trout are stocked. The introduced fish recorded in the river include carp, goldfish and tench, along with eastern gambusia.

The forage that matters to a fly box is small fish. Australian smelt, mountain galaxias, bony bream, carp gudgeons and two kinds of hardyhead have all been recorded, and in our experience a cod or a golden perch will eat any of them. In summer add grasshoppers blowing in off the banks. A dark streamer covers the baitfish and a hopper covers the rest.

When to fish it

Nothing specific to the Lachlan sets its calendar, so this is a guide's read.

Summer is the heart of it for natives. Warm water wakes golden perch and cod up, and the long evenings let you fish a hopper or a popper tight to the banks after dark falls. Spring, as the water warms, is a good bet for golden perch on a streamer and for carp feeding in the shallows.

Autumn stays worth a trip while the water holds its warmth. In winter the natives slow right down, and a fly fished slowly and deep is the only approach we would bother with. For trout, the cooler months in the cooler water make more sense than high summer. Whatever the month, look at the live river height first.

How to fish it

A seven or eight weight with a floating line covers most of it, with a sink tip on a spare spool for the deep holes. Use a heavier leader than you would for trout; cod live in timber and you get one chance to turn a fish.

A Woolly Bugger in olive or black, sizes 4 to 8, is the workhorse. Cast it past a snag, let it sink, and strip back in short pulls so it swims along the edge of the timber. Golden perch often take on the drop. Cod tend to hit hard and head straight back into the wood, so keep your rod low and your drag firm from the first second.

On summer evenings, go to the surface. A hopper or a popper dropped tight to a log or a grassy bank, left to sit, then twitched, is how you find golden perch. For carp, a small dark nymph such as a Hare's Ear put in front of a feeding fish in the shallows beats blind casting. For trout in the cooler water, a smaller Woolly Bugger or a nymph fished through the heads of runs is a sensible start.

Access and safety

The access card lists the sites where anglers get onto the river. Use it to pick a starting point. A listed site tells you where people fish, not what land you may cross, so treat the banks either side as somebody's property unless a sign or the land manager says otherwise.

As on any inland river, tell someone where you are going and when you will be back, carry more water than you think you need in summer, and keep clear of the bank edge where it is undercut. Stay well back from any dam wall or weir, and watch the live river height for a rise after rain upstream.

Regulations

Check the current NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development recreational fishing guide before you fish, for the licence, the closed-waters listings near dams and weirs, the trout rules and the native fish closures and bag and size limits that apply. Check it too for the status of the rarer natives recorded here, including Macquarie perch, trout cod and silver perch.