The recent cold snap brought blizzard conditions to Millbrook on Saturday night.  We woke up to a Winter wonderland on Sunday morning.

Today we headed out to the lakes with Chris from the Calder Fly Fishing club.
Over the past four days we received 100mm of rain and yesterday a good dump of snow.
Today we found the fish in the shallows exploring the new ground, some lovely browns were landed on large rabbit flies and also a few on the midge.
Overall a great day out considering the past few days.
​It looks like we are going to be in for a bumper spring with all this water about. 
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Members of the Sydney Flyrodders have been making a winter trip to Millbrook for several years now,
and we were delighted to host them once again for a long weekend from 19-21 July.
 
The theme for this trip would be 'wind (though the photos don't really show it) and water'.
It blew pretty hard most of the time and most days - and after 16 inches of rain since the start of May, the lakes are either full or nearly so.  The Cabin Lake and Hillys provided decent shelter from the persistent northerlies, although some of the best actual fishing was in gales on the more exposed lakes.
 
Sight fishing was surprisingly good.  There were a few tailers about, particularly in the shallows at Cabin, and plenty of trout polaroided on all lakes fished - though they weren't particularly easy to fool.
For sighted fish, the best flies tended to be stick caddis, various small nymphs, and red buzzers.
​Blind searching was most successful with black Woolly Buggers and Olive Magoos.  
 
Overall, this was one of the tougher trips for this crew, with 5 anglers landing an even 20 trout over three days. But there were plenty more sighted, hooked and lost - and the cabin fireside was the perfect place to recharge and plan the next day.

We're looking forward to seeing the Sydney crew again same time next year.     

​On the back of the wettest May/June the Millbrook area has seen for decades, the 13 anglers of the Forum crew were met with exceptionally high water for this early in the season. At first, this seemed to go hand-in-hand with great fishing: on the Friday evening the crew arrived, 10 trout were landed.

Subsequently though, the fishing was a bit tougher. While the scoreboard kept ticking over, the catch rate was down somewhat on a typical July weekend. Not so the fish quality though: there were six trout landed over 6 pounds, and three of those were over 7 pounds. There were also 'what might have been' moments for Ollie, Cam and Barney. The double-figure fish are out there!

Sight fishing highlights included some amazing edge polaroiding when the light allowed (as Rob and others will attest!), plus some genuine tailers in the flooded margins on Saturday afternoon, and a big midge rise Saturday evening.

Overall we had our chances, many of those were converted, and things are looking just great for the coming weeks and months.    

​Our Kiwi friends returned for their annual trip!! Hosted by local regular, Brett Nixon.
 
Some cracking fish - most of which were caught on Mayfly Duns.
 
Till next spring....

Peter White once again led the Whitey's Warriors group along to Millbrook - that's 19 years in a row now!
 
Plenty of action and plenty of larger class fish in the 5 to 7 pound mark.
 
One of the boys landed 19 for the weekend - 16 on dry fly - 3 on small brown nymph - none under 3 pounds - biggest 7 pounds!!
 
The boys have already booked in for next year's 20th Anniversary trip!

​The good chaps from the Australian Club returned again to Millbrook this week. Difficult sunny, bright and warm conditions greeted them, but still the boys had some success on spinner feeders!
 
The evening brought forth a frustrating midge hatch - fish everywhere!!

​There weren't large numbers caught – the crazy windy weather didn’t help - however the quality of the fish was outstanding. Many of the lakes produced fish between 5 &7 lbs. And some bigger fish were polaroided to be caught another day (hopefully!!).