ARRIVING at Lake St Clair – or as the locals know it, Glennies Creek Dam – north east of Singleton, one cannot be impressed by the mountains that fringe this idyllic body of water.
The headwaters rise in the surrounding Mount Royal Range which is part of the larger Barrington Plateau; clear water from this mountain wilderness flows down the two main tributaries of Carrow Brook and Fal Brook and is captured and retained in the natural amphitheatre.
Glennies Creek Dam was named after James Glennie, a former captain in the Royal Navy who was granted creek frontage land in earlier days.
We were busily setting up our home for the next week within a short cast of the water. Peter Hanrahan, my long time mate of more decades then I care to remember, hastily worked feverishly to remove the burden from the boat – that was our camping gear and other necessities to make the next few days a very pleasant experience.
We had the park to ourselves. There were no other campers, although by the time we had all the domestic duties done, two other day trippers had launched their boats and were out fishing.
With a boat launched ready for fishing we each rigged a couple of fly rods, one with a sinking line and another with a floater; the tactics were to fish deeper in the daylight hours and shallower in the dark.
Night bite – Peter Hanrahan and a typical St Clair golden taken on fly.
The fish that most people chase here are Australian bass, but the dam is also regularly stocked with golden and silver perch and holds good numbers of freshwater catfish and eels. Indeed, when I first fished Glennies Creek dam in the mid-eighties I can remember a large scale commercial eel fishery operating here with a large floating eel holding cage.
It was that first mid-eighties trip that I caught my first catfish on fly when fishing below the dam wall in search of bass.
The lake also holds good numbers of freshwater catfish and eels.
I had fished this dam with Peter and his wife Sally in previous years although only for a couple of days. Unfortunately, commitments at home had meant Sally couldn’t make this trip, although Pete’s mate and keen lure fisher Tim Bentley was to join us later in the week.
The first rocky bank we fished looked superb with water visibility at two to three metres.
It wasn’t long before Pete gave the call, “I’m on“ and the six-weight rod bent nicely to the butt while subduing a nice bass of around 42cm. The thrill with catching bass is their hard strikes and dogged fighting abilities.
The last few years Pete has fished this dam during the last month of winter and enjoyed extraordinary night fishing with captures of thirty plus fish per angler per night. This surprises many anglers who believe winter is too cold for good bass fishing – I can tell you that myth has been seriously busted.
Ken with a bass taken from a rocky bank on fly.
An examination of stomach contents could be mistaken for those of a trout as they revealed a mixture of nymphs, bugs and small fish – possibly galaxias.
Maybe it’s the fish’s diet that makes them more readily caught on fly at this time of year than lure…
As evening approached we switched to floating lines and worked the shallow flats. It wasn’t long before I was rewarded with a savage take but missed the fish … a move along and then my first hook up and a nice bass was landed. Releasing the fish, my very next cast was rewarded with another bass.
Pete now gave the fly that I was using a very close inspection and came to the conclusion that the heavier bead head fly was doing the trick where the lighter fly he was using wasn’t getting down to the action.
Muttering something about not having to be told twice, Pete also changed to a heavier bead head and was straight away into fish.
Fish were encountered pretty frequently with the majority being bass but there were a few golden perch in the mix which made things very interesting.
Pete Hanrahan (top) with a solid fly eating golden and keen lure fisher Tim Bentley with a typical sized St Clair bass that ate a softie.
The following days were pretty much the same with fish scattered throughout the day, again being mostly bass with the odd golden perch thrown in for good measure.
At times the bite was hot with both of us hooked up to fish at the same time and we also had multiple captures on successive casts.
Night time was when the big numbers of fish were encountered although we didn’t reach the previous year’s 30 plus fish each a night, but we did get around a dozen fish each on some night sessions.
Fishing for bass after dark is loads of fun and can produce good numbers of fish.
During the day we fished from the bank and the only boat we had seen trolling lures passed us close by and we asked how they were faring.
They told us they had never seen things so quiet and they had towed hard bodies and tried plastics to no avail.
These same blokes were camped near us and they soon pulled their boat out and just fished from the bank in front of their camp where they caught bass and catfish on worms.
It was while I was moving the boat that I saw some good arches on the sounder. I had with me a Berkley Nomadic travel spin rod, so fitted it up and rigged a Gulp Alive 3” Minnow weedless and unweighted. A few casts in the open water and I came up tight to a nice bass. Dozens of casts later I’d had no more results.
I then fished the weedless rig from the bank across the top of the prolific weed beds and took another nice bass. I think the Minnow was matching the galaxias we’d seen in the stomach contents of the earlier fish. Numerous occasions when fish were close to the bank they would regurgitate their entire gut contents in their efforts to get rid of the hook.
Tim Bentley arrived later in the week. A keen lure angler he fished plastics and hard bodies and suspending lures and while he met with some success the effectiveness, was not matched by the fly.
Tim was fishing one point and had taken a nice bass on a Z Man Curlytail Grub in Blood worm. After releasing the fish he worked the point over thoroughly before moving on. Pete moved into the position that Tim had just vacated and was instantly rewarded with another good fish.
I rigged an Edgegrub curly tail minnow in Red Watermelon and also had success with my best bass for the trip which measured 46 cm. This was the only time Tim and I gave Pete a run with the fly, with about half a dozen fish falling for plastics in a short space of time.
All up, Lake St Clair is a fantastic spot to fish and although the few anglers who we spoke to over the course of the week found things pretty tough on lures they did assure us as the temperatures warm up the lure fishing can be hot. I expect the surface fishing of a night would be fantastic.
There was one night the fish were actively feeding on the surface. Pete reckoned we were in the midst of a caddis fly hatch as fish broke the surface regularly for the best part of an hour.
At the end of our trip we had lost count of how many bass we had caught but it was many dozen. The number of golden perch would have been close to the dozen mark as would have been the catfish. Although we decided to fish a worm bait just for fun we couldn’t crack a silver perch.
Pete ‘s knowledge and experience on these lakes are unsurpassed and is the key to some extraordinary fishing. I reckon he needs to work on trying to crack the code on silvers on fly!
