Plan B Perch

There are three things that really get me going when it comes to fly fishing: beautiful fish, beautiful water, and any sort of visual or sight fishing. It’s very rare that I come across something that ticks all three boxes, but the far north Queensland sweetwater scene, with its lush rainforests, gin clear streams and jewel-like jungle perch, seemingly has it all and then some.

Exploring the hinterland streams of the north’s ‘Cassowary Coast’ has been on my personal bucket list for some time now, and after salivating over the contributions from fellow FlyLife contributors over the past few years, best mate Hugh Cherry and I finally bit the bullet and locked in the 2000km trip from Coffs Harbour north.

As the months preceding the trip went by, we fully immersed ourselves in the planning and daydreaming that often comes with bucket list trips, allowing the excitement to rise as the trip’s date crept closer and closer. Hugh fortuitously had a family friend stationed at Mission Beach, who had graciously offered to host us for the duration of our trip, and with a week or two left to go, we were brought jarringly back down to earth by some less-than-ideal news from our host in the north.

Torrential rain had been unrelenting for several weeks in the north, and the long range forecasts showed no end in sight. Our host informed us that those gin-clear wadable streams we had been daydreaming of were now torrents of muddy and angry water, and getting muddier and angrier by the day. It would be weeks, if not months before the weather would relent. Begrudgingly, we made the call to pull the pin.

LOOKING LOCAL

With the northern Queensland sweetwater off the table for the foreseeable future, we needed to find a suitable outlet for the immense excitement and anticipation we had amassed over the months preceding the cancellation. To truly scratch this itch, we desperately wanted to find something that was as close to that tropical experience as possible. A tall order to fill this far south by any stretch of the imagination — or was it?

Despite being over 2000km apart, the Coffs and Cassowary coastlines share a remarkable amount in common. In fact, both regions are among the very few locations in the country where the Great Dividing Range meets the Pacific Ocean. Here, the headwaters of the rivers and streams of both coastlines tumble from mountainous origins, fast and clear through humid, high rainfall, subtropical-to-tropical rainforests.

With the climate and geomorphology between our home waters and those further north more similar than we thought, could our search for a local jungle-perch-esque experience not be as crazy as we first thought?

Just as the Cassowary Coast has a catadromous perch species inhabiting its coastal sweetwaters, in the jungle perch, so too does the Coffs Coast — the iconic Australian bass (or ‘perch’ as the locals call it here). Fly fishing for bass is great fun, but it is a style that usually shares very little with the jungle perch fishing of the north. We were hoping (desperately hoping), however, with the strong parallels between the Coffs and Cassowary coasts, there could be the possibility of a comparable fishery right on our doorstep.

THE SEARCH

With so many likely streams in the region, knowing where to start was daunting to say the least. Leveraging our local knowledge, as well as pouring over online maps, helped narrow down our search to a handful of likely locations based on four prerequisites: the stream needed to flow through rainforest, run clear, be suitable for wading and have unimpeded access between the fresh and salt.

With a list made, ground truthing was the next step in our hopeful search for this fishery, and after a month or two worth of weekends shared among a handful of fishos, our list was looking incredibly lean with many of our locations disappointingly ruled out.

Some had natural barriers preventing the migration of fish upstream; others ended up either being too wadable or not wadable enough! While some were productive on the fishing front, they lacked that special something that truly made it feel like we were wading deep into the Tully Gorge or Daintree Rainforest chasing those stunning platinum natives.

EL DORADO

The sun had been up for an hour or so by the time we’d arrived at our destination, though it was hard to tell through the thick fog that sat in the narrow rainforest-clad valley we had begun to walk into. It was to be one of our last locations to scout before giving up on the ‘north in the south’ pipedream we had clung to since cancelling our trip.

We were cautiously optimistic (emphasis on cautiously) as we weaved our way along an old game trail, cutting through the thick air as we ducked under rotting hardwood giants and around unknown thorned rainforest beasties as we made our way deep into the enveloping jungle.

After a little over an hour, we pushed our way through a final thicket of fern fronds and stumbled out onto the riverbed. We had hiked to the very headwaters of the system — any further would require some serious climbing equipment and a death wish. The water here ran cool and clean over rounded stones in long and shallow runs, before emptying into seemingly bottomless jade green pools and repeating the process again.

The banks were completely enclosed in lush sub-tropical rainforest from which exotic bird calls carried out across the valley’s warm, wet air. As we stood there catching our breath and wiping the sweat from our eyes, we shared a knowing look — if ever there was going to be a tropical sweetwater fishery hidden on the Mid North Coast of NSW, this surely had to be it.

A short walk up the middle of a nondescript riffle had us at the tail-out of an impossibly deep and fishy looking pool. Hugh, practically salivating at the water in front of him, had the first cast honours. The anticipation was palpable, as Hugh began to strip line off his reel and clear the leader from his guides. With both sets of eyes glued to his cicada imitation as it touched down on the mirror-like surface, we braced ourselves for the take.

Disappointingly, it never came. Chalking it up to a bad cast, Hugh tried again. Then again. Then again. After half a dozen casts into the fishiest looking spots, Hugh’s fly remained untouched.

Feeling somewhat disheartened, I left Hugh at the bottom of the pool and started working the water towards its inflow. Picking apart the water that looked the most bassy, I too came up empty. As I arrived at the small waterfall that fed the pool from the riffle above it, I made a ‘what the hell’ cast up into the shallow and tumultuous inflow and, to my total surprise, the cicada fly was annihilated from below, almost on touch down.

Equal parts elation and disbelief flooded my mind as I did my best to regain composure and control of the fish as it thrashed amongst the shallow, swift waters.

By the time I’d guided the fish into more manageable water, Hugh was by my side and ready with the net. The fish was in impressive condition, with a deep bronze hue to its flanks, and broad shoulders. It was the type of fish you’d be ecstatic to catch from more conventional bass water, so catching it out of water akin to that found in the tropical north was a truly unforgettable experience.

With that success, it dawned on us that although we had found the jungle-perch-esque water we’d so badly been searching for, our conventional bass fishing mindset had us looking for the fish in all the wrong places. It seemed that the bass in this rainforest headwater not only resided in strikingly similar water to their northern cousins, but they behaved like them too — preferencing the shallow, fast flowing riffles and plunge pools over the more traditional slower, deeper pools that we regularly associate them with.

PARADISE FOUND

The next few hours spent on that glorious little stream were some of the best fly fishing for Australian native species that we have ever experienced. Clambering over rocks, wading and jungle bashing our way up that little stream, we fished as if jungle perch were the target — no water was too fast, too shallow, nor too clear.

We were suitably rewarded, too. The clarity and shallow depth of the stream provided exceptionally visual fishing as we watched grey smudges streak out across pools from under logs, rocks and current lines to steamroll our surface presentations with reckless abandon.

Streamers fished quickly across and down the current also produced some incredibly exciting action as fish fought one another to hunt down the fly. Pack attacks and double hook-ups were common place; we really had found a little slice of the tropical north in our own backyard. It was precisely what we had been hoping to experience earlier in the year in northern Queensland, albeit with flanks of bronze instead of platinum.

Exploring Far North Queensland’s sweetwater for jungle perch is still very much on the bucket list for both of us, and plans are already well underway for our next trip. For now, though, we are more than happy with the tropical sweetwater experience we’ve discovered here on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales.