As with any trip to a new destination, there is always a cocktail of anticipation and excitement that bubbles away inside, and Jindabyne was no different. Its bigger brethren, Eucumbene Dam, roughly 30 minutes down Kosciuszko Road, is a place where I’ve spent more icy mornings than any other trout dam in this country.
While Jindy and Eucumbene do share some similarities they are also poles apart, like Sydney and Melbourne. For instance, when both waterways were dammed back in the 1950s and ’60s the good people at Adaminaby decided to have all 102 of their houses uprooted and moved 10km away, while the industrious and less sentimental folk at Jindabyne opted to have new houses built for them 2km up the road.
A bit like the founding fathers of Adaminaby, we have a rusted-on affinity and sentiment about fishing the Euc. So much so that we have given names to exact trout trolling runs. We have also renamed whole bays in line with the fishing activity they have provided over the years – my personal favourite being big bait brown bay. Euc is like slipping on a pair of well-worn boots.
Having kept a close eye on Jindy over the past few years and its fish-catching prowess, this necessitated the need to shake up our annual trout trip and journey further into NSW’s Snowy Mountains. To get this trip over the line we extended the invite to our kids and better halves, which they accepted, as there is a lot more to see and do in Jindabyne than Old Adaminaby.
That is yet another stark difference between the two dams. Eucumbene feels almost isolated compared with Jindabyne, with its population of about five thousand scattered around the dam’s 30 square kilometre perimeter. The population number also swells during the peak mountain bike and snow seasons, as it’s the tourism jewel in the Snowy crown.
But let’s get back to the trout fishing, that’s why you’ve read this far.
At first sight I was gobsmacked at how picture-perfect the dam looked for trout fishing. I have always said fish-producing dams for certain species all have one thing in common.
They allow, even novices, the ability to effortlessly employe the most popular lure fishing method with ease. Think, Windamere’s sloping banks to hop lipless crankbaits down for yellowbelly, or Copeton’s countless rocky outcrops and drowned timber, seemingly purpose-built for targeting Murray cod on swimbaits and surface paddlers.
For Jindabyne, it had countless kilometres of gently sloping banks dotted with protruding points, with most covered in yabby-hiding boulders. I was figuratively licking my lips at all the possible trolling runs we could take.
As it was the afternoon, and the sun was gradually starting to dip towards the mountains, we decided to try our luck in shallow water. We strapped on a pair of the new 3ft AC Slim Invaders, an Oar-Gee Lil Ripper minnow and the omnipresent 13.5g Tassie Devil winged bait.
Looking down at the depth sounder as we rounded our first point in Hatchery Bay, what first caught my eye was the temperature of the late autumn water. It sat a shade over a tepid 13C. Usually we look for a single-digit figure around this time when targeting the banks, so with that intel we knew the chance of them being up in the shallows seemed slim.
After close to two hours that realisation crystallised, with nothing more than a half-hearted tap on the Tassie being our only action. So, instead of going even shallower, as we traditionally do when the sun fades behind the hills, we moved out from the bank to twenty feet.
With that, we changed our baits, keeping only the winged Tassie as the surviving member of the shallow water squad. On went an 18ft AC Slim Invader and two 20ft Stuckey’s divers. Before the entire spread was even set, the wailing drag of the 2500-sized Shimano Sedona sang its favourite tune.
Leaping into gear with the muscle memory of an Olympian, my brother-in-law, Jethro, patiently nursed aboard our first quality brown of the trip. The perfectly marked 55cm specimen took a liking to the red and black Stuckey’s lure that was set as the deepest rod in the spread.
After a few back slaps and a quick photo, we stealthily navigated the boat in a big wide arc back around to the start of the run. Managing the adrenaline and excitement that a good fish injects into the boat is a skill I have tried to hone over the years.
Rather than letting the excitement dictate our actions and noisily revving up the 60hp Yamaha and potentially scaring the resident trout, we cautiously cruised back to the start and repeated the exact same run. Never leave fish, or scare fish if you want to find fish and catch fish. I’m sure that’s the saying, isn’t it?
After a couple of smaller, feisty rainbows, all out in 20ft, we called it a night and headed back to our accommodation that overlooked Stinky Bay.
Rolling in the Deep
The next morning, and being suckers for punishment, saw us again tie on the shallow diving minnows and head gung ho into the shallows. Yet again, two hours quickly melted away with less rod action than a 40-year-old virgin.
After the morning coffee, courtesy of the Jetboil, we then tied back on the deeper divers and headed for the 20 to 30ft range. Thinking it was just going to happen, you could almost anticipate our dismay when we could only wrestle aboard a brace of barely legal ’bows for the morning.
During the day I decided to tap into my contacts and messaged a bloke who I knew lived up this way. He was quite forthcoming with info and steered us towards Creel Bay, which sat at the mouth of both the Thredbo and Snowy rivers.
As the trout hadn’t run up-river yet, and as there was insufficient rain, they should be absolutely stacked in this area. Unfortunately for us, while the fish finder lit up like Christmas, those fish were very hard to tempt, as it seemed they had other things on their minds.
Rolling with the punches, we then turned our attention under a fading sun to the East Jindabyne area. I’d intercepted some information on a Jindabyne fishing Facebook page about this rocky area being productive on the troll. As we arrived, we saw a number of bank-based anglers drowning baits in among the boulders.
Eerily, as we trolled exactly adjacent with the first bait fishos, in 25ft of water, the old man’s Sedona drag burst into song. After a few nervous moments at the boat, courtesy of a well-oiled net man, we scored our second 50cm+ brown for the trip, this time on the gold and red Stuckey’s lure.
Looping back around and the diver got smacked, again, directly in front of the same bait fishos. Reading the room, we opted to continue on our run, under the staunch glare of the somewhat agitated bank anglers, rather than looping back around as we were accustomed to do.
With the deeper diving baits out the back it became even more important to watch the bank structure so you didn’t pile-drive your baits into shallower bottom. The one distinct factor of a Jindabyne bank was the amount of points it possesses.
They will sneak up on you worse than a hangover on a Sunday. So it became more important to anticipate when the points jutted out into the lake and eroded the magic 20 to 30ft bracket. If you didn’t take a wider berth on these points you would be forever reversing back up to free baits caught on the bottom. Painstakingly monitoring the bank’s contours was also a necessary evil, as our 20-year-old fish finder was on the fritz.
It also became just as important to follow the contour of the point back towards the bank as you were coming off its apex. Fail to do this and you would see the boat navigate off the point into water as deep as 60ft.
Flailing in this depth off a point was a missed opportunity as you wanted to maximise the time your bait spent in the 20-25ft range. This is where my father, Denis, really stepped up and his 20-plus years skippering this very tub meant we stayed in the all-important strike zone for longer.
Finishing off the session saw three more solid fish and a handful of smaller rainbows falling to slow-trolled minnows. This included my father-in-law, Colin, nailing the best shallow water brown of the trip, a healthy 50cm specimen that ate his 4cm Oar-Gee Lil Ripper.
Tune a Trout
Rolling out of bed for our final session and we were greeted at the Widows Inlet boat ramp with something none of us expected. At minus one and frost on our beanies, we saw a chirpy Kiwi lad in shorts and thongs.
I couldn’t resist the obligatory comment about why he was wearing shorts in near-freezing conditions. He quickly retorted: “I’m over from NZ and didn’t think we’d be going for a fish, so I didn’t pack pants, but I’d never miss an opportunity to tune a trout.”
Not sure how long he lasted in the arctic conditions, but we did not see him or his skipper again. Guessing the call of the house heater, or frostbite, got him first.
Out on the water and we headed straight to the East Jindabyne area. In almost the identical spot, and I mean identical, where we scored action on back-to-back passes the day before, we again heard the Sedona’s drag sing. This was an eye-opener for all of us, as we had a strong reference point because it was directly in front of the stink-eyed bait fishos.
While it was mostly done by a keen eye rather than electronics, it was amazing how perfect the troll run needed to be to score a strike. As little as five metres either side and you would pass through with no action at all.
We were unsure what was going on under the water, but this small patch of water was clearly a keen feeding zone. In a one-hour period we made upwards of a dozen different passes along a short 100m stretch.
On more than half the occasions our rods buckled over and sent the boat into action. The trick to tempting the trout to strike, it seemed, was to have our baits in the exact right corridor and swimming around a foot from the bottom, just like a fleeing yabby. While I don’t want to get too methodological, it required an exact science, and if you had any elements out of whack, like speed, location or depth, you would kiss your chances goodbye.
This yabby imitation theory was somewhat validated when we took a couple of trout for the smoker and examined their stomach contents and found then chock-full of crustaceans. Nothing too revolutionary in knowing trout eat yabbies in our alpine lakes, but every morsel helps and it did aid our strategy and eventually nudge us in the right direction.
Jumping Jindy
Pulling the tarp over the boat for the final time as I stared back over the dam, I finally recognised why Jindabyne was such a formidable foe to Lake Eucumbene in the alpine trout slugfest. All up, we had fished some magical water and boated more than 30 fish for the trip, keeping only a few for the smoker. Our wives and children had an absolute blast exploring Jindy’s cosmopolitan lifestyle, while also ensuring our credit cards didn’t gather any unwanted dust.
Its glitzy party-like town centre, countless shops and eateries, all only a stone’s throw from some of the country’s best trout fishing, sees Jindy land more than a few superficial blows in its title fight against its bigger alpine brother.
