Fishing College’s Crossing 2005
Half an hour from Brisbane’s CBD, Mount Crosby Road crosses the Brisbane River. It’s a little bridge just north of Ipswich, called College’s Crossing.
There’s a picnic and recreation ground, plenty of clean water for kids to splash in … and there’s fish.
My intrepid fishing mate and I headed out mid-week during the summer school holidays, as part of our dedicated research effort, on your behalf, dear reader, to find spots within an hour or so of Brisbane’s CBD, where small groups could enjoy a quick and cheap fly fishing experience.
And we found a lovely little spot at College’s Crossing. When you drive across the Brisbane River, pull into the grassy parking area, to the south of both the River and Mt Crosby Road.
In a scene reminiscent of a latter day Tom Sawyer’s adventure, we saw schoolboys who’d bicycled up from Ipswich, with tin cans full of worms, supermarket special spinning rods, pockets full of odd sized sinkers, and a need to explore.
In keeping with this economical nature of our outing, we had ditched the ultra pricey $2000 rods and expensive waders and traveled light and cheap – armed with fly rods and reels ($70 total price from our local supermarket), Dunlop volley sandshoes, some tackle warehouse bread flies, and two bread rolls each. A cheap date.
Walking up the southern side of the river, towards the city, we came across an old pair of concrete pipes which we walked across, to check out the water and the casting potential from the northern side.
And, lo and behold, as thick as sardines in can, we saw schools of fresh water garfish, feasting on the weedy river bottom. The local Huck Finns were having a go, without much luck.
So out came our bread rolls, and we proceeded to burley them up to the surface, then we dropped a couple of el cheapo white, deer haired, bread flies right amongst the floating bread particles.
That afternoon, learning to strike swiftly at those nervous, soft-mouthed little gar, and playing them back to shore with no nets, we had as much fun as we’ve ever had, in far more exotic and expensive locations.
We even impressed the kids, who were pretty pleased to learn that they didn’t need to carry those cans of worms on their bikes, all the way from Ipswich, if they could get on board with this fly fishing caper.
We also found that the bread flies, which began to sink after a little while, were also getting hits from the local bream lower down, around one-metre depth, and we pulled in a number of these little fellows, again, to the great amusement of the locals.
After we’d used up all our burley, the two of us walked further up the north bank of the river and crossed down on a shallow bank, where we cast a variety of flies under natural structures, without much luck.
We figure a light inflatable canoe is the next logical step here, to get over to both sides of the river and drop the fly in the best spots downstream. Next time.
After two hours, we were on our way home, three or four gar each, heading for the wok, accompanied by a little garlic and ginger.
And all within 30 minutes drives of the Brisbane CBD. Give it a try.
Pictures by Warwick Powell. Originally published in Sunday Mail.