We recently hiked in to a lesser known Blue Mountains trout river, hoping to find some spawn running fish in June. 18km in, 18km out. A big F'n Hill and one okay-ish Rainbow.. Stupidly we thought we would go again. A slightly different attack this time round, still a huge hill and a some good hours hiking.
But this time we struck some gold. It was a little late on the spawn run, but there was some hope for a few stragglers or at least some resident rainbows. We head out towards The Blue Mountains from Sydney. A few dirt roads we got the car as close as we could before we hit a few gates.
After a solid hike down hill, a beautiful spot on the river had us setting up camp and cooking up some delicious steaks over the fire with some Kakadu Plum Wildfire seasonings. This is something we'll never leave home without now. Australian ingredients never tasted so good! Do yourselves a favour and add this to your camp kitchen.
Rising early, I headed solo down river and found plenty of crystal clear water running well from the weeks rain previously. Pulling up at a pool that just had trout written all over it. I chucked a cast in with a hares ear and unsuspectingly it dropped instantly... I'd missed the strike completely.
This will be the only fish I see all weekend, i'll go home empty handed, hike up a hill in tears, what had I done. All these thoughts going through my mind as I sent another desperate cast up towards the rock ledge and watched my indicator float down towards me.. BANG!! I was on and this time I didn't miss.
It was an absolute ripper of a rainbow that gave me a good go in this beautiful rain forest pool. Scooping him up, stoke levels were through the roof. Fishing solo means one thing; Must. Get. Photo! Setting up the camera for a few selfies I slipped the bow back in to his home unharmed and happy. What a morning with a few more to come.