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SCOTT COGHLAN looks at a rejuvenated trout fishery near Manjimup that offers West Australian anglers the rare chance to tangle with trophy-sized browns and rainbows in a new private lake. Early indications are that it will offer unparalleled freshwater fishing opportunities for South-West fly fishers, especially in light of the low water levels in our rivers and streams over the last 12 months.

Matt Lilly was delighted with this late afternoon rainbow.

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CLOVER Cottage is not exactly a newcomer to the freshwater fishing scene in Western Australia.

For many years, Clover Cottage owner and trout aquaculture expert Paul Thomsett stocked several trophy dams close to his Manjimup property with big rainbow and brown trout, creating superb stillwater fisheries where this writer, and many other anglers, greatly enjoyed casting a fly around for a modest fee.

Although I consider myself predominantly a river and stream angler, the size of some of the fish in Paul’s dams made fishing them a very worthwhile experience and I very much doubt there was finer impoundment trout fishing in this state.

I still have fond memories of a very large brown up around 2.5 kilos that I landed just on dark at one of these waters, after watching a huge bow wave close in on my fly before it struck right at my feet.

It must have taken me a good 15 minutes to subdue that fish as it fought strongly in the shallows, and it remains one of the biggest trout I have caught in WA.

That was my best fish from Paul’s trophy dams, but I also have fond memories of some scintillating sessions on big rainbows and some frenetic evening rises.

Sadly, increasing demand for water for irrigation meant fishing in these dams eventually declined, and Paul himself had other issues that drew his attention away from trout stocking.

The last time I fished my favourite trophy dam, we never even saw a fish.

However, when life settled down again, Paul started looking for opportunities to create another trophy lake in the area.

Eventually, he was able to purchase a property just a short

The Woolly Bugger is clearly visible in the mouth of this big male rainbow.

Solid rainbow from the tail of the trophy lake.

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10-minute drive from his popular holiday retreat that had a 15-acre lake he reckoned would be absolutely perfect for the purpose of creating WA’s ultimate private trout fishery.

With very deep water at the wall, a wide tail, stand of dead trees on one side, and even a small seasonal stream running in, Paul reckoned he had found the perfect body of water to start again.

He started by stocking the lake with rainbows last year, and I was fortunate enough to get an early invite down to the new water to check it out.

The fish hadn’t been in long and were still hanging around the spot they were released, and Mark Halse and I caught some thumping fish in the deep water around the wall, specifically where Paul said there was a small underground spring feeding into it.

You could tell the dam had great potential, but I couldn’t have expected how quickly it would develop as a fishery.

When Matt Lilly, Dan Dragovic and I visited Clover Cottage a couple of months later for a fishing trip, the fishery had already come on in leaps and bounds.

The fish had spread out and there were now good fishing opportunities from the wall right to the tail.

But it was the tail that was the centre of our efforts during our stay, and it produced superb fly fishing.

The first afternoon saw us on the water around 4pm and it wasn’t long before we were into the fish.

I had just started walking towards the tail of the dam from the wall, where Matt had dropped a fish on only about his second or third cast, when a fish rose behind me.

I wheeled around and fired out a quick cast using a black Woolly Bugger; no sooner had the fly touched down than I was connected to an energetic little rainbow of about 30cm.

Not a big fish, but very deep in the body and apparently in great condition.

It was a promising start, but the best was yet to come.Eventually I found myself at the tail of the dam, fishing

from what we dubbed the “Natural Jetty”, a small raised area that was in effect a mini-island.

This offered a great spotting platform across the shallows, which were covered in a healthy weedbed.

No sooner was I on the Natural Jetty than I spotted a cruising fish, which came in for a look at my fly, but didn’t take it.

The next cast was more successful, another small rainbow added to the tally.

Behind the Natural Jetty was a small backwater that I can eventually see as a hot spot for cruising browns, with Paul putting smallish browns in the dam just before our visit.

His grand plan includes some holding ponds below the

Nice rainbow from the Clover Cottage trophy lake about to be sent on its way.

Redfin perch are common on the upper Warren around Clover Cottage, this one fell to a small Atomic minnow.

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dam wall, where he will grow out huge browns to go into the dam.

As I watched intently through my Maui Jims for more signs of movement in the water beneath me, there was a large splash behind me in the backwater.

I spun around to see the telltale ripples of a rise spreading silently across the shallows.

Instinctively I cast at the centre of the rise with my six-weight and started stripping the fly back towards me in an erratic style.

A couple of metres off the shore I picked up movement behind the fly and sure enough a clearly agitated fish was zeroing in on what it thought was its next feed.

I stopped stripping as the fish charged at the fly and then raised the rod tip when the Woolly Bugger disappeared to come up solid against a heavy weight.

It wasn’t long before a solid rainbow came hurtling out of the water in front of me, showing itself as a much bigger fish than those I had caught previously.

The fish gave a good account of itself in the shallow water, before I slid a buck-jawed male rainbow of around 1.5-2 kilos onto the bank.

I’d only been fishing for a little while and this had been a great start.

Meanwhile, Matt had worked his way from the wall towards the tail and it wasn’t long before he was hooked up in the shallow corner to the right of where I was fishing.

He was wading in knee-deep water and initially called it for a small fish, but when it peeled off two or three good runs in quick succession, it was obvious it was another good trout.

Matt had his hands full and it took him about five minutes to subdue a rainbow almost identical to the one I had just caught – another buck-jawed male that he reckoned was the biggest trout he had caught.

Those two fish were the highlight of a thrilling session as the sun dipped over Manjimup to the west, and we must have hooked 20 fish and landed six or seven.

I was fortunate enough to pick up a nice little brown, which although not a big fish was very solid through the shoulders and looked in great condition, augering well for their future in the dam.

At one stage, I had a small rainbow throw itself out of the water on the strike, more like a rampaging spaniard than a trout, only for it to get off a moment later.

The very next cast saw the fly line ripped out of my hands by a rattling strike that was again more like an ocean pelagic than a freshwater fish.

The fish tore line off the drag effortlessly and soon took to the water in a series of exciting leaps.

For the first time I can remember, I soon found myself staring at my fly line backing as the fish surged away strongly.

Each time I got the fish back towards me, it would tear off again, and the fight was nothing like I’d experienced locally, more reminiscent of a New Zealand brown with both its power and determination.

It provided great entertainment for Dan and Matt, who were standing nearby watching, and there were several broad flashes of silver as the fish tried to rid itself of the hook.

Unfortunately, the fish picked up some weed on the line during one of its runs and try as I did to minimise the pressure, the weight of the weed trailing behind the fish eventually seemed to take its toll, and the hook pulled free.

In an instant, one of the most exciting fights with a trout I have ever had was over.

It certainly didn’t look any bigger than the two male fish we had already caught, but the fight was something different altogether.

Bream guru Mark Halse turns his hand to freshwater with a solid fly-caught rainbow.

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Although it got away, it capped an exciting couple of hours that had convinced Paul was well on the way to achieving his goal of creating a top-class fishery, such was the incredible improvement since my previous visit.

Encouragingly, all the fish appeared to be in absolutely prime condition, as they were clearly well fed, strongly marked and had full tails.

Paul is very sensitive to the need to offer a superior fly angling experience, stocking the dam regularly to ensure there is a wide range of fish sizes available, rather than having trout caught that are clearly just from one or two stockings.

He seems to have plenty to work with in the dam too, as there appears to be an abundance of aquatic and terrestrial food available to the trout.

On this particular trip, we found that the black Woolly Bugger again outfished any other fly comprehensively.

The reason why became pretty obvious when you walked into the water, as there were large numbers of tadpoles hiding in the shallows and these were obviously a significant food source at the time.

There are plenty of small minnows in the dam as well, and Paul has also stocked marron. Above the water, there were plenty of insects not only flitting around the banks of the dam, but also buzzing around on the surface as well.

This inspired me to try dry fly fishing on a four-weight rod on the second day, using one of Stu Tripney’s Bionic Blowflies.Although I had four strikes, and one hookup, I didn’t manage to land a fish on dry, so that’s a challenge for next time.

The vagaries of trout fishing are one of the things that make it so addictive and the second evening on the dam saw

DISCOVERING CLOVERCLOVER Cottage is just east of Manjimup, on Wheatley Coast Road.

There are four self-contained chalets available, each with two bedrooms, wood fire and a private spa.

It’s a great spot for a romantic interlude and also a family holiday, with plenty of farm animals, including donkeys, to keep children entertained.

There is also a grass tennis court and several easy walk trails. There’s nearby wineries, art and craft galleries and the local

truffle farm, with Manjimup just 10 minutes away and Pemberton only a 30-minute drive.

It’s nestled on the banks of the upper Warren River, just metres from good canoe/kayak or shore fishing for redfin perch, and maybe the odd trout.

As Matt Lilly noted, Clover Cottages offers the perfect scenario for many family-oriented anglers, as you build up the brownie points with family activities during the day, and then cash them in by ducking off to the trophy dam for the evening rise!

The dam in front of the cottages also offers a fishing option for beginners, with plenty of small trout in it and some bigger fish lying deeper.

For more information, visit www.clover-cottage.com.au or give Paul a call on 9773 1262.

To maintain the quality of the fishing experience, only people staying at Clover Cottage have access to the trophy lake and can fish it at a cost of $40 per half-day.

There are also special fishing packages available, check the website for details.

Matt Lilly works a quiet corner of the Clover Cottage trophy lake.

Trout aren’t the only types of rainbows you see at Clover Cottage.

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the fishing very slow for the best part, with just the odd rise, although Matt caught another big male rainbow while wading the shallows.

But just on dark, as we were preparing to head home to cook some redfin caught in the Warren River that day, the whole dam came alive with a spectacular evening rise.

It was as if someone had sounded the dinner gong, as the tail of the dam became the centre of a feeding frenzy.

All around us were fish feeding aggressively, often rising almost under our noses and we could not only see but also hear the trout as they crashed through the surface.

They were obviously tuned into a particular food source

and proved frustratingly elusive, but it was just amazing to see so many fish active at once.

In the darkness, Matt again came up trumps, with a fat female rainbow that eclipsed his previous fish and was certainly his biggest WA trout.

In all, the two evening sessions had produced four rainbows of around two kilos, a very nice return indeed, plus many smaller fish.

And if the trout fishing at the trophy dam wasn’t enough to keep us satisfied, we also enjoyed two great sessions on redfin on the Warren, picking up half a dozen fish from kayaks in the first, and about 20 in the second, all on small minnow lures.

They don’t fight much, but I reckon redfin are one of the tastiest fish going around, and had no reason to change my mind after they were marinated in a sweet chilli sauce and fried up for dinner.

With a fresh salad and local white wine, it was a meal fit for a king.

In time, Paul believes his new trophy dam will be capable of supporting trout to around 10 kilos, a truly mouth-watering prospect for South-West freshwater anglers slowly being starved of sweetwater opportunities.

His long-term vision includes introducing new natural food sources for the fish, creating wading banks for fly fishers and even landscaping the stream that

runs into the tail of the dam, and making it run all year round by pumping water back into it from the dam.

Eventually, he would even like to build a trout fishing lodge overlooking the lake.

In the meantime, guests at Clover Cottage have exclusive access to some world-class trout fishing.

While private fisheries have a chequered history in WA, Paul believes if he builds it (the ultimate South-West trout fishing experience) they will come.

And if the fishing continues to be as good, or even better, than I’ve

experienced already, I reckon he’s going to

be dead right.

Hefty female rainbow for Matt Lilly, caught after dark

during a frenetic evening rise.

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