The rainbow afterglow

A cold winter’s morning lure fishing on a NSW dam produced my best ever rainbow trout.

Over the last twenty years I’ve been on my fair share of trout fishing trips to the dams around the Blue Mountains region of NSW. I love the scenery as much as the fishing, which is just as well, because I’ve spent far more time looking at hills than catching trout.

So it was with minimal hope that I ventured into the mountains once again this winter, with my fishing buddy Greg. The temperature was half a dozen degrees above zero, but a strong breeze off the water, blowing directly into our faces, made conditions all the more uncomfortable.

Still, the scenery was beautiful.

I had settled into my routine of admiring the view and hardly thinking about the prospect of a trout, when a small flash of silver torpedoed my pink Tassie Devil. The fish was tiny, but for me, after so many failed trips, it was a nothing short freshwater marlin.

I would have been happy with just that one trout. But as the fishing Gods would have it, I would soon cross paths with a far bigger trout.

I was fishing a sinking Rapala lure in trout colours, working it amongst the dead trunks of trees that had been flooded. At first the fish felt like a snag, a dead weight. But then I felt a pull as the trout wrapped my line around a submerged tree.

The sound of line rubbing against structure, under pressure, is something every fisherman dreads. Luckily for me, after a few seconds the fish swam back out into the open, and after a short fight I had the fish on shore.

A decent rainbow, my best so far. And far more rewarding to look at than the scenery, no matter how spectacular it may be.