Nepean River Bass
November 2014
This trip was postponed from the previous weekend due to the water skiing, but as it turned out the weather was far better! The forecast was for mid to high 30s on the Saturday and into the 40s on the Sunday, so the plan was to fish late Saturday and early morning Sunday in order to be off the water by 11 before the heat took hold.
Brownie and I headed off about 12ish on Saturday for the run down to Tench Reserve at Penrith to meet up with Shayne, Murray and Col. Richard was to join us later in the afternoon. We got to the ramp about 2 after a stop for some lunch and launched the boat straight away. We met up with Shayne and he launched the small tinnie he was fishing out for the evening and we headed up to the gorge, past all the water ski boats and into some quieter water. We met Murray and Col on our way out of the ramp so all 3 boats headed into the rocky shorelines to target some bass.
We motored up past the narrows and a fair way up into the gorge until we came across a weed barrier and decided we’d start fishing from that back down towards the narrows. I was fishing a gurgler and Brownie opted to go sub-surface so we could see what was the better option. It didn’t take long for me to start getting hits from some small bass and I quickly converted a few into fish. Brownie wasn’t connecting with too many which surprised both of us given the sun was still high in the sky. We both ended up fishing gurglers and landed about 8 – 10 small bass which are always fun on surface flies.
There were plenty of small herring harassing our flies to, but too small to hook on our gurglers. I spotted a few carp too along the edges and some of them were quite large…. You see their lips before you see the rest of the fish. We didn’t bother trying for them and we were both fishing surface flies and couldn’t be bothered changing over.
As the afternoon wore on we moved back through the narrows and down past the ramp towards the rail bridge where we planned on fishing into the dark. There is a lot more cover there for the fish, with sunken trees and a lot of reeds and bush right down to the water. By this time the ski boats had gone and we pretty much had the river to ourselves. A few more fish on surface and plenty of mullet doing their best aerial displays out in the middle. Brownie and I shifted to the other side of the river to fish the shadows and a nice cast into the timber saw me get smashed off the surface and straight back towards the tangled branches of a fallen tree. A few hard strips and some rod movement saw me get the fish clear of the danger zone for a short fight that saw the fish stay deep but at least out towards the middle of the river. It wasn’t long before a 38cm Nepean bass was netted, measured photographed and returned to fight another day. The fish was tagged, but it was so dirty that we couldn’t read the code on it. First time I have caught a tagged fish, but it does show that the fish are pretty hardy!
A couple more small fish and a few lost flies in the timber due to the dark meant it was time to leave and head to Brownie’s brothers’ place to camp for the night. A good BBQ saw us munching down on steak sandwiches and the usual banter. It was midnight before we hit the hay and the plan was to be up again at 4:30 to get out to Windsor as close to sun up as possible.
04:30 rolled around very quickly and we were up, packing up, moving boats and off to the ramp at Windsor. Seems a lot of people had the same idea as there were many boats there already. We got onto the water and started motoring up stream to the terraces. We fished the shadows, but it was relatively quiet. A few surface hits as few fish on surface and sub-surface and a nice fish for Shayne and the heat started to hit by 9.
We tried a few more spots and it was the same story and then all of a sudden it went quiet on the bass front. The herring were starting to jump by this time, which I am told is a sign of the heat. We tied on some small dry flies and started chasing the herring. We caught a lot of them and they are fun to watch as they compete for the dry fly on the surface. By 10:30 we were starting to feel the heat so we meandered back to the ramp. As we got to the road bridge we saw heaps of herring jumping so we tied to the pylon in the shade and picked up a few more herring on the 3 weight. By this time there was a speedboat race going on and we had to wait until that was stopped to allow us to get to the ramp.
Back at the ramp about 11 and it was stifling hot. The ramp was extremely busy with all lanes taken with people putting in their speedboats for a day on the water…. Good luck to them I thought. We got the boat out and headed up to the carpark to get everything packed for the trip home. The carpark was so full that there were trailers parked all the way up the road to the town! Hate to see what the ramp is like later in the day!!
We headed off and were home by 12 and I checked the temp at Windsor…. 44.2 degrees!!
A good trip. A bit quieter by Nepean standards, but we all got fish and had fun as always. Seems the average size of the fish is slowly declining in the Nepean, but on a positive at least there are plenty of smaller fish to grow and become targets in the future.
