Wonderful Woods Point - a side dish of solitude by Aeno Crous

The dust angrily erupts from under the vehicle as we enter yet another corner at a speed that brings the tail out a bit over the loose corrugations, but a measured counter steer keeps it in check while the right foot keeps feeding the engine to climb the next rise at the corner exit. The road undulates like a roller-coaster as it weaves side to side and up and down to the rhythm of the mountainous terrain. A wall of towering trees closely hugging the road are a constant reminder of caution against losing concentration.

Driving gravel roads sort of comes with the fly fishing package. Yes, one might get to a lot of the fishing spots, some not half bad, with mostly tarmac under the wheels but somehow the quantity of gravel under the wheels seems in direct proportion to the quality of the fishing, or at least according to me. It is thus best to learn how to drive the slippery stuff! (On a side note, the roughness of the gravel under the wheels also comes into the equation, once you start stretching the theory out a bit, and some of the tracks I have had to tackle in Australia to get to the ‘good stuff’ would make a fit mountain goat break out in a sweat.)

The vehicle’s progress seems to fade to the subconscious background as we excitedly analyse the day’s fishing. A day that would easily lull one into a false sense of having cracked the secret trout code, but more later about what happened on the day.

Our fishing destination of the day was a last minute choice. I have fished, always with success, and camped there several times in the past but haven’t been there for a few years. Daryl hasn’t been there at all yet and we didn’t mind travelling a bit as we were keen to find some alone time on the water. Melbourne is bulging with millions of people and the surrounding easy-to-reach water can get very busy, a particular problem if you want a side dish of solitude with your main course of flyfishing.

As the crow flies it’s around 100km to the little hamlet of Woods Point, but due to the terrain the journey by car takes the good part of 3 ½ hours! Logging trucks work the road hard and ensure a constant supply of corrugations and potholes to test your driving style. For most part the road snakes along the ridgeline that forms a tiny section of Australia’s great dividing range. Rain falls on the south side of the road making it a short 100km journey to the strait isolating the island state of Tasmania from mainland Australia, while rain falling on the north side of the road has you settling in for a long journey of a few thousand km’s via the Murray-Darling drainage system to exit into the ocean not too far from Adelaide in South Australia. The ridgeline concertinas the road into so many bends and twists that one hardly ever seem to point in the direction of your destination.

The scenery is breathtaking, the stands of mountain ash trees are arguably some of the tallest trees on planet earth and are densely packed as each of them fight for their place in the sunlight. The wall of tree giants and massive ferns dwarfs the car as we speed past.

The Goulburn river as it flows through Woods point is tiny and gin clear. Even the recent heavy rains and late-season snowfall only lifted and chilled the water, leaving it still flowing astonishingly clear. The source is only a handful of kilometres upstream from the town centre but the flows are always good, possibly due to ground water off the higher mountains in the area.

From the town the Goulburn makes a big loop through truly trackless country before meeting up with the gravel road again at Knockwood camp ground, where it is now as a much larger river. In this trackless country

one can just imagine the countless pools and runs that almost never see a fishing rod. One day I will get a helicopter to drop me down in there, but that dream fits in next to the dream about winning the lotto!

From Knockwood, and for all of the around 80km downstream to Lake Eildon, the gravel road never leaves the river by too far and in some cases the river squashes the road tight in against some towering mountainside. The deep green pools move in to almost under the car’s side mirror it’s so close. There are plenty free camping spots next to the river along here between stretches of private property. The river continues to grow considerably, receiving water from rivers that hold their own in terms of noteworthy fly fishing destinations and each deserving their own in-depth review. The are names that make most fly fishermen “in the know” sit up in anticipation; Big River, Jamieson River, Howqua River and Delatite River, not to mention the countless hidden small creeks

and tributaries with healthy heads of, sometimes rarely fished for, trout.

The skies are still grey in remembrance of the preceding days of rain and a few clouds wring out the last drop or two. We exit the forest onto the only piece of sealed road for about 75km in all directions. This is the main street of Woods Point, its barely 200 meter long grandeur slightly spoiled by the traffic - a couple of chickens, us and two parked travelworn elderly farm bakkies (or ‘utes’, short for utilities, as they are called in Australia).

Surrounded by a hand full of colourful cottages, a tiny general store and vintage hotel complete with local watering hole the main street just about gives the extent of the little village. It is hard to believe that in the mid-1800’s gold rush days this used to be a raging metropolis of a few thousand people, four hotels, three banks, a post office and some establishments of ‘questionable entertainment’. Nature is slowly but surely claiming back what was its own to start with.

We half expected the river to be high and dirty, as most would after a good soaking, but to our delight our view from the main road confirmed it was running clear and only slightly up.

After a quick photo of the iconic , although sadly now closed, timber shack petrol station we selected 4wd as we followed the track down the river valley a n d p a s t s o m e spectacular freecamping sites. The track crosses through the river in a few p l a c e s a n d t h e muddy, slippery exits make the 4x4 work for its money and the exhaust make bubbly noises as it drops below water level in the deeper crossings. A couple of kilometres downstream we settle on a pretty, vacant camp site complete with a picnic table to help us into our waders and clean long-drop toilets to help us in times of other need. With hardly anyone around we basically had the stream to ourselves. Daryl bea t me to kitting-u p and I graciously, through slightly clenched teeth, offer him the first cast which promptly brought the first trout to hand; a tiny little colourful parr-marked rainbow that’s so small it almost had to dislocate its jaw to fit the fly into it. The trout is lively in the frigid water that is so chilly that the release process, after a few quick photos, leaves fingers numb with cold. The water clearly hadn’t forgotten that some of it was still snow the day before! Daryl’s 00wt Sage loved the small stream size and its tip danced briskly, even with the stream’ s smaller residents. In quick succession he had three trout in as many casts - another, better sized, rainbow and an even nicer size brown that all swam away health and strong, if not a bit wiser.

It was my first outing with a Fenwick Aetos 3wt that I acquired second-hand for a song a while ago now, but have been too busy with other rods on bigger rivers to give it a try. What an awesome rod it turned out to be and it might become my go-to trout rod for smaller streams. It is as light as a feather with a crisp, sharp, accurate feel that places the fly on a dime at small stream trout distance, time and again. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I was initially the weak link in the casting process, not finding the rhythm for the first pool or two and missing takeafter-take while Daryl brought in fish-afterfish. Then it suddenly clicked and it was game-on. Both of us still missed a few fish because there were so many fish around that some were sitting where no sane trout should normally be and this left us ill-prepared and found us sleeping on the job.

Our cameras were working almost harder than the fly rods as we took turns to work the perfect water and stunning surroundings. One could say that the fish came easy but, then again, every time one of us stuffed the cast, didn’t mend correctly or didn’t stay 100% on the ball our catch rate quickly went down to none. I was secretly convinced that the planets had aligned and that we were both enjoying, in my case probably briefly, fly fishing nirvana where our speckled friends were rewarding us.

Even though most of the fish caught were on the smaller size, in keeping with the size of the water, some were not half-bad at all, spattered with spots and with fat bodies filling both hands as we held them, semisubmerged, ready for the release. Browns outnumbered the rainbows, both in size and in quantity, but only when our drifts were perfectly dead. One memorable brown must have followed my fly’s trajectory though the air as both Daryl and myself saw it race across half the pool to intercept it as it landed, eaving me ample opportunity to lift into it neatly. Our screams of joy and amazement echoed down the valley.