The Columbia Club was made up of a small number of fly fishermen whom got to enjoy the private fishery at DunnWarren Lakes after I stopped using these waters for guiding clients. The fishery was made up of 3 distinctly different little dams.

'Granite Springs' is the largest of the dams at about 5 acres when full and with a spring flowing into the dam at the shallow end, which saw many cruising fish, and extensive weedbeds through the body down to the deep wall end. This dam provided some reasonable orange spinner fishing, extensive caddis hatches, midge hatches and the very occasional but extremely heavy caenis hatch. The caddis hatches occured almost throughout the year each evening and during winter the midge and caddis hatches often masked each other with quick fly changes required as different fish came to the surface selecting their menu items.

'Britts Lagoon' is the richest of the 3 dams at about 4 acres when full and produced the largest fish, but numbers of fish caught were low. Most fish seen here were on the dragons or damsels and out of casting range. The best time to make a capture was during a dun hatch.

'Dwyers Spring' is the smallest of the dams and boasts an internal spring. The midge hatches on this dam were extensive and made up most of the fishing with a few blue winged olive hatches early and late in the season. During the warmer weather the water turned to pea soup with all the daphne and aquatic life. There is a deep edge lined with a weed bed and a client actually hooked a brown trout that took his #18 midge sitting on the weed at the waters edge. Yes it stuck its head out to take the fly after the fly was purposefully placed on the weed as the fish had been observed feeding in this manner.

As with any fishery there were competing priorities for water usage and the ongoing drought in Victoria eventually made it uneconomical to continue to maintain this resource as a trout fishery.

My thanks to those whom supported the club.

Below are some schematics and images of the DunnWarren Lakes

Granite Springs -->
Britts Lagoon -->
Dwyers Spring -->

Click Image To Enlarge

Back