MY phone rang and my mad fisher mate Pete “Bagsey” Hanrahan was excitedly telling me that Wyangala Dam had risen over a metre since the recent rain. Pete reckoned that the natives would be going ballistic and we should get up there ASAP.
Now Pete’s enthusiasm is always infectious and he could have told me that we were in with a chance of catching black jew at Wyangala and he would have had me convinced! We would be mainly fishing fly for natives but Wyangala also has a very large population of carp which can provide fantastic fly fishing, but generally this is during the warmer times of the year.
Targeting carp in summer is great fun and can be a mixture of sight fishing to edge cruising mud suckers or even dry fly fishing, as these fish have no hesitation to rise to the surface to feed. Fishing blind for other species will also account for a lot of carp.
We hit the dam amid a sky that was blued out and air temperatures that would allow one to be comfortable in a T-shirt. Water temperatures of around 13 C lowered my expectations slightly!
The first couple of banks we hit we’re very encouraging with exceptional water clarity but we had no luck with the fish. Further along and the peace and solitude was broken by an excited yell from Pete; I was sure he must have hooked a metre plus cod but it turned out he had only had a follow from a carp!
We eventually ended up at the hottest bank for yellowbelly and fished for about 15 minutes for no result until Pete’s scream got me running. I was thinking he had hooked a yella, but after a couple of minutes of a tough fight a deep bodied thickset carp rose to the top. Great sport, but a slight disappointment when targeting natives.
Peter Hanrahan with a carp hooked from the bank at Wyangala.
As this photo demonstrates, the large scales of the mirror carp make it distinctly different in appearance to the European carp.
Travelling higher up the dam, we came into muddier water and fished the colour change without luck. We motored slowly back towards home and targeted some big granite boulders that just screamed cod, but they didn’t come out to play.
Wyangala Dam is one of the most scenic dams one could hope to fish, with heavily wooded and rocky mountains tumbling down to meet the backed up waters of the Abercrombie and Lachlan Rivers.
Spring time can see fishing unsurpassed by other dams in the district, early summer will see Murray cod taken on a regular basis and many of these easily exceeding a metre.
Golden perch, silver perch and catfish are also likely to be encountered with a rare chance of a Macquarie perch. Trout numbers are again increasing thanks to recent stockings and a few are starting to fall to trollers.
Wyangala in winter is a great place to be.
