Hawkesbury-Nepean Chapter

We bring people together to help protect and restore the places you love to fish.

OzFish is dedicated to helping local rec fishers across Australia take control of the health of their rivers, lakes and estuaries. They partner with members and the broader community to invest time and money into the protection and restoration of our waterways.

What we do:

• Work with fishers to make local fishing grounds healthy, vibrant and more productive
• Share ideas on how to improve, restore and protect fish habitat
• Seek grants and support for hands-on habitat restoration.
• Provide events, resources, education and research that support fishing groups to achieve local outcomes.

Each day, Juan would arrive at the river with his students and notice the constant flow of rubbish in the water which he assumed to be coming from upstream. Seeing the changing landscape of rubbish drift past you does not make the idea of fly-fishing in Sydney an overly attractive experience – especially for his students. One day, Juan saw an enormous pile of rubbish just dumped beside the riverbank and he had enough, he went home and made some calls.

Juan’s been a fly-casting instructor for 25 years, he’s worked in fly fishing lodges in Patagonia and Europe and has represented Spain and England as a technical advisor in four Fly Fishing World Championships.

Juan now runs the Advanced Fly-Fishing School in Sydney and uses the Nepean river to teach his students how to cast a fly. He’s also a passionate advocate for fish habitat and wants to continue to giving back to the sport he loves.

Through the hard work of the volunteer OzFish members, they had lined up Anthony Napula, Finnish Champion Angler, Amelia Cajuno, and Gavin Davies, Australia’s long-distance casting Champion, to all come out and offer free fly-fishing tuition in return for 2 hours’ worth of rubbish collection. A cool $5,000 worth of raffle prizes were also arranged to sweeten the deal for participants.

The second year, the Chapter incorporated a community planting day into the clean-up. Again, the event attracted a good crowd with an excellent line up of fluff chucking celebrities including Royce Shanks, Clint Isaac, Cameron McGregor, Rod Harrison, Peter Morse, Jack Marrs and Justin Duggan. The frivolities included talks, demonstrations, fly casting lessons, prizes and raffles.

https://www.facebook.com/162791507684919/videos/329382334643015

The Hawkesbury-Nepean Chapter covers a massive area and has every breed of angler under the sun beach, estuary, rock fishing and offshore.

However, looking at the fishing in the Nepean would be a good place to start to describe this Chapter; the Bass run in good numbers; herring run in the thousands and are fantastic for children to cut their teeth on. Surprisingly, the herring can get as large as a trout.

Yes, you can catch brown trout here too, anglers will encounter escapees from the Warragamba Dam overflows. Fondly enough, the humble mullet can also be caught on the fly and puts up a mighty good fight once hooked.

The traditional owners of the Hawkesbury-Nepean region include the Tharawal, Gundungurra, Dharug, Eora ,Kuring-kai, Awabakal and Darkinung people.