Last Resort

‘Yep, I’m clear for the long weekend. Any chance the fish are doing anything, anywhere at this time of year?’

For a fly fisher, the end of trout season is always an anxiety-riddled time of year. With only a week left before the close, text messages like this become a flurry across anglers’ phones.

In most regards the season is already over. Falling stream temperatures have subdued all but the most resilient trout and suppressed most anglers’ enthusiasm. It’s a despondent window left for desperadoes who probably should have fished more during the season proper.

As with most trip planning, the weather forecast became the next port of call.

‘There’s blizzards forecast over the next few days in the alps and rain in most of our favourite valleys. But the weekend looks mint.’

Inevitably, the spawn runs came up.

‘Remember we’re trying to pretend we’re above the whole spawn-run thing these days.’

Yeah… sure we are.

Then another idea resurfaced.

‘It’s looking like a fair amount of snow is going to fall to quite low levels. With sunny skies for the weekend, why don’t we finally do that snow trip we’ve been talking about?’

It was a strange thing to be hoping for snow on a fishing trip, but we’d been waxing on about this idea for years. Between us we’d spent countless days in the Victorian Alps—sleeping in huts, camping beside rivers and trudging through blizzards on various adventures—but we’d never carried fly rods into fresh snow. We’d often wondered what happened to these little alpine streams at the very end of the season. Were there still trout up here? If there were, would they still feed? Or had we simply convinced ourselves winter switched the rivers off? It was finally time to find out.

As we pulled up beside the Ovens River in Bright on the drive north, it was running high, hard and chocolate coloured. Any lingering doubts disappeared as we climbed towards Mount Hotham and encountered snow about halfway up the mountain.

‘Well, at least there’s plenty of what we came for.’

Dropping down the first snow-covered slope towards the valley in our waders, the sun blazed across the mountain tops beneath a bluebird sky while our wading boots crunched through fresh snow. The contrasts were immediate.

The walk down gave us plenty of time to revisit the questions that had brought us here. Were there even trout left this high at the very end of the season? If there were, would they still be feeding, or had falling water temperatures finally switched them off? We had theories, but no answers.

The snow started to become patchy as we reached the valley floor at Silver Brumby Hut. Although only a stone’s throw from one of Mt Hotham’s ski lifts, it felt a million miles from anywhere with its typical rustic cattleman’s hut charm. The remaining snow lent the valley a pristine stillness, with the gentle burble of Swindlers Creek the only welcome interruption.

We kept our equipment simple. One creek rod rigged with a dry dropper and another with a streamer, with the option to swap to nymphing if we got desperate enough to wake fish out of their ‘hibernated’ state. We ran with the theory that spawning time seems to trigger an instinctive response in trout, whether they were on the job or not, so orange beads were the order of the day.

Stepping past the fringing icicles into the creek, the water level was ideal. Gosh, it would be wonderful if the levels were like this during the height of summer! We began picking apart each little pool and run, every one looking better than the last.

The contrasts were striking. Bright winter sun reflected off the snow-crusted bank opposite, throwing light back into the shaded side of the valley. Stalks of button grass stood snap-frozen like crystal wands. Steaming breath and cold hands slowly gave way to the sun’s radiant warmth, and before we realised it the hours had drifted by as we meandered upstream.

If there is such a thing as stream punctuation, then this was the perfect sentence—a deep cobalt pool with a delicate bubbling run that simply screamed trout station. Abrupt little pour overs fed chutes of the clearest water nature can produce. Everything was pristine, with nothing between us and the headwaters but another short cast upstream.

Cresting one final rise we were surprised to find ourselves beneath the dormant chairlift at the base of the ski resort, still waiting for the first ‘real’ snow of the season. We hadn’t seen a single trout, but somehow an entire day had passed in quiet meditation.

The short day already had the afternoon sun skirting the ridge above us by the time we climbed back out of the valley. The irony of our day’s pursuit wasn’t lost on the visitors in the mountain village, who eyed off our waders and fly rods with more than a few curious looks. Clearly we’d taken a wrong turn somewhere—or packed the right waterproof gear for the wrong activity.

The upper Cobungra was our next hope in what still felt like a bit of a fool’s errand. We dropped out of the snowline as we drove to the Brandy Creek Fire Trail head. The walk into this valley was a little longer and gave us plenty of time to revisit our theories, despite having very little evidence from the day before.

This part of the Cobungra was a magnificent open snowgrass plain downstream of the confluence with Swindlers Creek. It felt much bigger than Swindlers—a proper river rather than a creek—and the water level looked ideal as Sean pushed excitedly through the button grass towards the edge of the…

He disappeared, swallowed up by one of the hundreds of holes and undulations hidden between the clumps of grass. You can’t see them for love nor money before committing your weight to the next step, only to disappear to your knees (if you’re lucky) or face plant while hurling your rod clear to avoid snapping it in two.

‘I’m all good!’ Sean exclaimed as he climbed back to his knees. No broken bones or twisted ankles, thankfully.

The river was stunning, sucking the winter sun straight into the square bottomed valley and lighting up the water and the delicate little spinners that danced across the surface—OK… this looked promising.

We fished with an intensity that can only come from knowing this was absolutely the last short day of the season. If Swindlers Creek had been meditative, the Cobungra drew us into a trance. The first fish came with a start that snapped us straight back to reality.

‘Did that just eat the dry?’ I yelled upstream as I reached for the video review in my head.

Yep. The garish fluoro-posted Klinkhammer we’d tied on purely for its visibility as an indicator bobbed down a well-defined run before a sprightly late-season trout scrambled over and clipped it from the surface. We looked at each other dumbfounded. A dry eat was the last thing we were expecting.

There was a little more breeze than the day before, arriving in little downstream puffs just as the cast was about to turn over, hijacking its trajectory. More than a few landed offline in the softer margins and the dry was promptly inhaled by an excitable rainbow. Fortunately, trout don’t always read the script.

The fish weren’t big, but they were a welcome reward for the effort we’d put into simply being there, and proof we weren’t completely bonkers. Well… at least to a fishing audience.

This day felt even shorter than the last, as they do at this time of year. Our opportunity was slipping away, but we decided to push on to the confluence. We figured we had just enough time to negotiate the dreaded button grass in fading light on the way back. Several more holes had already claimed both of us unawares.

Selectively we fished the best looking water poking in and out of gaps in the scrub. At a crossing of sorts we were greeted by the most promising pool we’d seen all afternoon. The wind had abated and a deep blue oily pool extended up around the grassy bend out of sight.

‘Rise,’ I squealed as a fish sipped something off the surface next to a log, leaving telltale rings drifting out toward the edges of the pool.

It rose again. We were just about to abandon caution and pursue it mid-way up the pool when another two fish rose downstream in the tail of the pool.

With the sun already slipping behind the towering ranges, this would be our last pool. We picked our way through the fish giving themselves away each happily taking the dry. Fishing up to the head of the long pool the original fish hadn’t come to the party. Switching to nymphing a little Orange Bead Pheasant Tail didn’t let us down and we hooked a reasonable sized brown.

The confluence was only a short walk beyond the head of the pool, disguised as a turbulent, frothy change in gradient. It felt right to stand astride the meeting of the two waters we’d spent the weekend exploring.

Looking back, the landscape suddenly made sense. Two broad alpine valleys gently folded together—one draining the slopes of Mount Hotham, the other Mount Feathertop. Beneath them the waters collided in a noisy, chaotic rush before settling into a single river. It was a curious contrast—the timeless tranquillity of the valleys and the restless energy of the waters still shaping them. The snowline traced the hillsides above like someone had shaded the contours on a map.

A fire ring of river rocks and a half-worn walking trail on a nearby grass flat gave me the clue that this was the route to Dibbins Hut at the headwaters of the Cobungra. As we wound our way back out of the valley, it didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to the next trip.

‘Let’s bring the girls back here in summer and we’ll walk, camp and fish our way up the valley to Dibbins.’

I’m sure our wives can’t wait! Yet the desire to share these beautiful valleys with the people we love was overwhelming.