Back into the High Country – Upper Murray River Fishing
Well, we have been back home from our Round OZ trip for a few months now, and I have been hanging to get back up into the Victorian hills to do some more hiking, exploring and of course trout fishing!
Easter Weekend was to be the date a few of us could all get off together, and we decided to head up to the Upper Murray River, also known as the Indi river. I haven’t fished the Murray before, but it has always been on my radar as a good backcountry river with heaps of really remote water to explore.
We left Saturday afternoon and headed up the hwy towards Albury, then veering off towards corryong, then finally on to Tom Groggin. We decided to hike in to our starting point even though it was after dark when we got there. It was a beautiful balmy night with a full moon which made the hike in really nice and definitely one to remember.
Our plan was to hike our way up the river over the next few days, see where we got to and just enjoy the fishing. Unfortunatley for us one of the crew came down with gastro on the saturday night after we had set up camp, and it ended up he could not move for or hike for a few days. So we ended up setting up camp on a nice grassy spot just above the river and used it as a bit of a home base instead.
Over the next few days we explored the river both upstream and downstream of where we were and enjoyed some great fishing and luckily great weather. We caught heaps of browns and rainbows on both our spinning gear and on fly, with some good size fish also being taken. The fish were not being picky luckily, taking small hard body lures and celtas readily, and most of the generic dry flies like the royal wulff, royal stimulator and geehi beetle worked just as well.
Unfortunately we didnt get to explore as much river as we would have liked, but it will definately be a river which I will go back to and do some more exploring, with absolutely beautiful bush and great scenery it is a must for all adventurers and fishermen.
Tight lines!
hey great report .. have been trying to plan a similar trip for a while now ..
you said you were just guna see where you got to up the river . was the plan to just then bush bash your way up to the cascade track and hike out or how were you planning on doing it ?? any help would be appreciated
About time you blokes got back to God’s own country. I am now living in the Kiewa Valley. It’s been a pretty poor summer fishing wise. There has been so much rain since Christmas its been difficult to get near the water. It’s only since early April that the water has been good. I had hoped to fish a particularly inaccessible stretch of the Upper East Kiewa, between a few kilometres upstream of Bogong Village and Howmans Gap. Unfortunately the high water made it just to dangerous and the fishing would have been poor anyway, maybe next year. I did get one afternoon on another stretch of the East. I put a picture on my blog, for some reason it won’t let me link to an individual post but if you go here http://justasuburbanboy.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/east-kiewa-rainbow-trout.html it is about half way down the page. I had a few days at Frying Pan at eucumbene last week but after a few days hail and snow I went home. I was hoping to get out this week on the Kiewa, maybe tomorrow. The trip up north would have been mighty fun.
Yeah we were glad to get back into the bush for a trek, we do take it for granted when we are always out there. Our timing was great, the rivers were down to really good levels, and like you said any earlier or later the rain would make things too hard. Nice rainbow you got on the East kiewa, that is another river on my long list of rivers to checkout. cheers.