Great Lake is 36.6% full (1,140 GL of 3,116 GL), level with a week ago; a year ago it was 36.1% full.
43 storages reporting to the Bureau of Meteorology, latest reading 2026-09-27 17:45. Refreshed every 30 minutes.
All 43 Tasmanian storages in the Bureau of Meteorology’s list are in the table below, 42 of them Hydro Tasmania lakes from the Central Plateau to the West Coast and the South West plus TasWater’s Risdon Brook Reservoir, each with its latest volume, share of accessible capacity and change over the past week. Underneath are how Hydro Tasmania reports its own lakes, why its energy in storage figure never matches a sum of these rows, what a high or low lake means for anglers on the Central Plateau, and which season each fishing lake follows under the Inland Fisheries Service.
Percentage full is the Bureau’s accessible volume divided by the accessible capacity, as on its storage dashboard, so it can differ by a point or two from the operator’s daily report, which is the official figure. Year ago is the same storage on the same date last year. Dams with a fishing page link to it.
| Storage | Full | Volume (ML) | Capacity (ML) | 7 days | Year ago | Updated | Fishing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lake GordonHydro Tasmania | 65.8% | 7,331,278 | 11,146,600 | +0.4 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Gordon fishing report |
| Great LakeHydro Tasmania | 36.6% | 1,140,452 | 3,116,260 | −0.0 pts | 36.1% | 27 Sept | Great Lake fishing report |
| Lake PedderHydro Tasmania | 92.6% | 2,707,908 | 2,923,620 | +0.5 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Pedder fishing report |
| Lake BurburyHydro Tasmania | 99.4% | 1,075,375 | 1,081,420 | +0.8 pts | — | 27 Sept | Lake Burbury fishing report |
| Lake MackintoshHydro Tasmania | 88.4% | 807,690 | 913,690 | −1.3 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Mackintosh fishing report |
| Lake EchoHydro Tasmania | 68.9% | 460,259 | 667,780 | +0.4 pts | — | 27 Sept | Lake Echo fishing report |
| Lake King WilliamHydro Tasmania | 91.9% | 495,711 | 539,340 | +0.1 pts | — | 27 Sept | Lake King William fishing report |
| Arthurs LakeHydro Tasmania | 59.9% | 257,165 | 429,360 | −0.6 pts | — | 26 Sept | Arthurs Lake fishing report |
| Lake PiemanHydro Tasmania | 85.3% | 256,021 | 300,200 | −3.6 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Pieman fishing report |
| Lake St ClairHydro Tasmania | 78.9% | 162,483 | 205,870 | −0.3 pts | — | 27 Sept | Lake St Clair fishing report |
| Lake RowallanHydro Tasmania | 82.2% | 107,233 | 130,490 | +2.6 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Rowallan fishing report |
| Lake RoseberyHydro Tasmania | 98.8% | 121,982 | 123,470 | +2.6 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Rosebery fishing report |
| Lake MurchisonHydro Tasmania | 56.8% | 54,966 | 96,770 | +0.9 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Murchison fishing report |
| Lake BarringtonHydro Tasmania | 87.3% | 60,618 | 69,460 | −5.4 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Barrington fishing report |
| Meadowbank LakeHydro Tasmania | 96.6% | 57,523 | 59,570 | +1.8 pts | — | 26 Sept | Meadowbank Lake fishing report |
| Lake CethanaHydro Tasmania | 61.9% | 29,893 | 48,320 | +0.3 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Cethana fishing report |
| Tungatinah LagoonHydro Tasmania | 39.9% | 17,690 | 44,390 | +1.3 pts | — | 27 Sept | Tungatinah Lagoon fishing report |
| Woods LakeHydro Tasmania | 56.2% | 24,457 | 43,490 | −1.6 pts | — | 26 Sept | Woods Lake fishing report |
| Dee LagoonHydro Tasmania | 96.0% | 40,223 | 41,900 | 0.0 pts | — | 27 Sept | Dee Lagoon fishing report |
| Lake PlimsollHydro Tasmania | 72.3% | 23,108 | 31,970 | −3.5 pts | — | 27 Sept | Lake Plimsoll fishing report |
| Lake CatagunyaHydro Tasmania | 95.0% | 24,116 | 25,380 | +3.9 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Catagunya fishing report |
| Laughing Jack LagoonHydro Tasmania | 49.4% | 12,243 | 24,780 | +1.3 pts | — | 27 Sept | Laughing Jack Lagoon fishing report |
| Lake AugustaHydro Tasmania | 12.8% | 2,698 | 21,080 | +7.2 pts | — | 27 Sept | Lake Augusta fishing report |
| Lake MackenzieHydro Tasmania | 44.8% | 8,938 | 19,940 | −12.8 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Mackenzie fishing report |
| Bronte LagoonHydro Tasmania | 78.5% | 12,458 | 15,870 | −0.2 pts | — | 27 Sept | Bronte Lagoon fishing report |
| Lake MargaretHydro Tasmania | 99.4% | 15,289 | 15,374 | −1.2 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Margaret fishing report |
| Lake PaloonaHydro Tasmania | 77.4% | 11,165 | 14,430 | −14.0 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Paloona fishing report |
| Lake TrevallynHydro Tasmania | 87.6% | 10,806 | 12,330 | +1.5 pts | — | 27 Sept | Lake Trevallyn fishing report |
| Lake RepulseHydro Tasmania | 97.9% | 10,461 | 10,690 | +2.1 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Repulse fishing report |
| Wayatinah LagoonHydro Tasmania | 88.2% | 7,806 | 8,850 | +0.0 pts | — | 27 Sept | Wayatinah Lagoon fishing report |
| Lake GairdnerHydro Tasmania | 19.8% | 1,668 | 8,420 | −7.6 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Gairdner fishing report |
| Lake ParanganaHydro Tasmania | 95.8% | 6,716 | 7,010 | +0.3 pts | — | 26 Sept | Lake Parangana fishing report |
| Cluny LagoonHydro Tasmania | 97.8% | 4,751 | 4,860 | +0.1 pts | — | 26 Sept | Cluny Lagoon fishing report |
| Little Pine LagoonHydro Tasmania | 38.8% | 1,125 | 2,900 | −6.8 pts | — | 27 Sept | Little Pine Lagoon fishing report |
| Lake NewtonHydro Tasmania | 30.5% | 748 | 2,450 | −21.9 pts | — | 27 Sept | — |
| Pine Tier LagoonHydro Tasmania | 111.9% above capacity | 2,160 | 1,930 | −1.2 pts | — | 27 Sept | Pine Tier Lagoon fishing report |
| Lake LiapootahHydro Tasmania | 81.5% | 1,532 | 1,880 | −1.0 pts | — | 26 Sept | Open to fishing |
| Shannon LagoonHydro Tasmania | 81.3% | 1,374 | 1,690 | −1.4 pts | — | 26 Sept | Shannon Lagoon fishing report |
| White Spur PondHydro Tasmania | 11.8% | 111 | 940 | −6.5 pts | — | 27 Sept | — |
| Tarraleah No 2 PondHydro Tasmania | 51.6% | 443 | 860 | −12.5 pts | — | 26 Sept | — |
| Penstock LagoonHydro Tasmania | 74.9% | 575 | 767 | −3.6 pts | — | 26 Sept | Penstock Lagoon fishing report |
| Lake HentyHydro Tasmania | 16.5% | 38 | 230 | −9.4 pts | — | 27 Sept | — |
| Risdon Brook ReservoirTasWater | 98.5% | 3,545 | 3,600 | — | — | 20 Sept | Anglers with a disability only |
90% and over60–90%30–60%under 30%no capacity published
Combined accessible volume of the 1 storages with a published capacity, as a percentage of their combined capacity, one value a day.
Hydro Tasmania publishes two measures of its water, and neither is the volume percentage shown in our table. The first is a lake levels table on its water information page, sorted into seven regions: the North, the North West, the Central Plateau, the Upper and Lower Derwent Valley, the West Coast and the South West. Each lake gets a figure for how many metres it sits below full, plus a comment column that marks a storage when it is spilling, and the table carries the date it was last updated. Hydro Tasmania says it gathers this information to manage its hydropower system and shares it to help irrigators, anglers and anyone else heading out on the water, and it describes the page as covering 40 different waterways. Its terms add a caution worth knowing: the readings are telemetered from probes and sensors and go online in raw form, before they have been checked or verified, so a faulty instrument can put a wrong figure on the page for a while. The second measure is energy in storage, a weekly number in gigawatt hours and as a share of full storage capacity, which the water page says is refreshed on the first working day of the week, with the current report as a PDF and the history as a spreadsheet. That report splits the total into head water storages by catchment, from Lake St Clair and Lake King William on the Derwent to Lake Burbury on the King, and says whether each has been rising, falling or static over the past 24 hours. Hydro Tasmania releases its published water information under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence, on condition that it is credited as the source.
Each row in the table is the Bureau of Meteorology’s calculation: current volume divided by current accessible capacity, as the Bureau’s dashboard FAQ sets out. Hydro Tasmania’s headline is something else. In its explanation of how its energy system works, it calls the Total Energy in Storage figure the percentage of water it has across all its storages and says that figure hardly ever goes above 50 per cent or below about 25 per cent; its water page adds that storages usually peak in the 40 per cent range in the wettest months and fall to 20 to 30 per cent in the driest. The energy report counts head storages only, and its footnote leaves Lake Gairdner, Lake Margaret and Lake Plimsoll out of the total. Hydro Tasmania explains that water from Great Lake passes through Poatina and is then used again at Trevallyn, and it describes the lower Derwent and the Mersey–Forth as run-of-river chains in which the same water generates electricity several times. A table of volumes by lake has no way to weight for that, so a Tasmanian total added up from these rows will not match Hydro Tasmania’s figure and says little about the state’s energy position. The size of the lakes skews any total as well: by our arithmetic Lake Gordon accounts for about half of the accessible capacity listed here, and Lake Gordon with Lake Pedder close to two-thirds. For some lakes only a slice counts as accessible. The Bureau treats 205,870 of Lake St Clair’s 2,000,020 megalitres as accessible, and 69,460 of Lake Barrington’s 179,940, so those rows describe the top band of each lake. Levels part company too, for a reason given in the Bureau’s supplier notes: Hydro Tasmania reports how far a lake is from full supply level, while the Bureau reports the water level against the Australian Height Datum.
Just one TasWater storage appears in the Bureau’s Tasmanian list: Risdon Brook Reservoir, which the Bureau places in the Hobart supply system with an accessible capacity of 3,600 megalitres. TasWater’s public reporting is organised by supply area rather than by reservoir. Its water supply status page shows each area on an interactive map with its restriction level, and says the map is typically updated weekly. The utility explains that it judges water security by comparing catchment conditions, such as streamflow and dam levels, against trigger levels, and that in drier periods it checks flows and dam levels every week. Restrictions follow from those checks. In February 2026 it moved Orford and Triabunna to Stage 2 as dry weather kept drawing down Prosser Dam, and in May it did the same at Oatlands as levels fell at the Blackman River dams, with Stage 2 aimed at halving non-essential water use. Neither of those dams is in the Bureau’s list, so for a town’s supply the TasWater page, not this table, is the one to check. Risdon Brook is a special case for anglers. The Inland Fisheries Service says the impoundment was built for domestic water supply and that fishing there is limited to licensed anglers with a disability who belong to the Tasmanian Transport Access Scheme, from two platforms designed for them, and that the service stocks it with rainbow trout from time to time. For lakes outside Hydro Tasmania’s system, the service points anglers to NRE Tasmania’s Water Information portal, Tasmanian Irrigation’s dam dashboard and the Bureau, depending on who manages the water.
On the Central Plateau the level decides where you can launch, wade and fish. For Great Lake, the Inland Fisheries Service records that Hydro Tasmania’s optimum operating level, rainfall permitting, is between 30 and 60 per cent of full supply level. The service lists concrete ramps at Swan Bay, Cramps Bay, Brandum Bay and Tods Corner and a gravel ramp at Haddens Bay, all usable from full supply down to roughly 17 metres below it, and a gravel low-level launching area at Boundary Bay on the western shore south of Liawenee. When Great Lake is low it can be extremely shallow with many submerged hazards, and the service asks drivers to stay off exposed weed beds; those Charophyte beds are monitored alongside water quality, and its trolling advice is to run lures just above them. Arthurs Lake carries the same warning about shallow water and hidden obstacles at low levels. At Woods Lake the service rates the early and late season as the most rewarding, because low water and emerging weed restrict fishing over summer. Penstock Lagoon averages about a metre deep, is highest in spring and changes little overall, and the service says that early in the season, while the water is high, sight fishing for brown trout along the shallow weedy margins of the western shore is productive. At Little Pine Lagoon, when the water is moderately high between September and November, trout can be seen tailing within centimetres of the edge. Elsewhere the service describes a large draw-down at Lake Echo that exposes long stretches of rocky shore, regular swings of up to 10 metres at Lake Mackintosh, and a ramp at Lake Rowallan that becomes hard to use when the lake is low. Whatever the level, the Inland Fishing Code asks waders to avoid soft sediments, weed beds and fragile plants.
Thirty-seven of the 43 storages appear in the Inland Fisheries Service’s Waters A–Z, and 37 have a page on this site, linked from their rows, though the two sets are not identical. Lake Liapootah and Risdon Brook Reservoir are in the A–Z without a page here. Lake Margaret and Lake Murchison have pages here, but we found neither in the A–Z nor in the 2026-27 Inland Fishing Code. Lake Henty, Lake Newton, White Spur Pond and Tarraleah No 2 Pond are in neither, so ask the service before fishing any of those six. Most of the listed lakes are brown trout waters, whose season starts on the first Saturday in August and ends on the Sunday closest to 30 April; for 2026-27 that is 1 August to 2 May. Dee Lagoon and Lake Rowallan are designated rainbow trout waters, which open on the Saturday closest to 1 October and shut on the Sunday closest to 31 May. Lakes Mackintosh and Rosebery open with the brown trout waters and stay open until the rainbow waters close. Seven are open all year: Great Lake other than Canal Bay, Lake Barrington, Lake Burbury, Lake King William, Meadowbank Lake, Lake Pedder and Tungatinah Lagoon. Canal Bay runs a shorter season, from late November to late March, which the service says protects spawning fish. Some water is closed at all times, including the streams flowing into Great Lake, Arthurs Lake and Dee Lagoon and a 50-metre radius below where they enter, and McPartlans Canal between Lake Pedder and Lake Gordon. Methods differ as well: Penstock and Little Pine lagoons are fly fishing only, and the A–Z restricts Bronte Lagoon, Dee Lagoon, Lake Gordon, Lake Pedder and Lake St Clair to artificial lures and flies.
Hydro Tasmania’s visitor information warns that its lakes and rivers can be dangerous even when the surface looks calm. Water levels and flows can change suddenly and without warning, strong currents can draw people towards intakes and spillways, and the water below power stations can move fast. Some areas are exclusion zones for swimming, boating, paddling or walking, signed on site, and visitors are asked to read the signs at boat ramps and around the lakes for updates, wear a life vest on the water, keep to speed limits and not swim within 20 metres of a ramp. Marine and Safety Tasmania regulates motor boating on these waters, and water-skiing is permitted on four lakes only: Trevallyn, Meadowbank, Rosebery and Barrington. The service’s lake pages add no-go areas around structures, such as Miena Dam, Tods Corner power station and the Poatina intake on Great Lake, and within 30 metres of the Arthurs Lake dam and pump house and 50 metres of its spillway. Planned changes are posted as alerts: Hydro Tasmania has warned of variable water levels on the River Forth while Paloona Power Station is maintained from 5 October 2026 through to April 2027, and anyone can register for its water alerts and pick sites on a map. The Inland Fisheries Service’s safety advice notes that changing levels uncover hazards through the year, from submerged trees and snags to shallow sand bars, that inland water can be very cold, and that hypothermia is a risk in any month. Under the Inland Fishing Code, everyone in a vessel under six metres must wear a life jacket while it is underway.
On the water information page of its website, which lists each lake by region with the number of metres it sits below full and the date of the last update. Many of the Inland Fisheries Service’s Waters A–Z pages repeat that metres-from-full figure beside the rules for the water. Hydro Tasmania’s weekly energy in storage figure is on its main water page.
Our row is the Bureau of Meteorology’s: Great Lake’s volume over its accessible capacity of 3,116,260 megalitres. Hydro Tasmania describes Great Lake in metres below full, and its weekly energy report groups it with Lake Augusta as one head storage measured in gigawatt hours. The two percentages measure different things, so they seldom agree.
Hydro Tasmania dates each update of its lake levels table, and it refreshes the energy in storage figure on the first working day of each week. In the Bureau’s data some Hydro Tasmania lakes report every 15 minutes and others once a day, and the Bureau says its latest readings are usually from yesterday or the day before. TasWater says its supply status map is typically updated weekly.
Only some of them. Great Lake (outside Canal Bay), Lake Barrington, Lake Burbury, Lake King William, Meadowbank Lake, Lake Pedder and Tungatinah Lagoon have no closed season. Dee Lagoon and Lake Rowallan follow the rainbow trout season, Lakes Mackintosh and Rosebery have an extended season, and most other listed lakes close on the Sunday nearest 30 April and reopen on the first Saturday in August.
Check the metres below full on Hydro Tasmania’s lake levels table, then the ramp. At Great Lake the Inland Fisheries Service says the main ramps work down to roughly 17 metres below full supply, with a low-level launching area at Boundary Bay for lower water. Expect shallows and submerged obstacles at Great Lake, Arthurs Lake and Woods Lake when levels are down, and read the signs at the ramp before you go out.
Data: Bureau of Meteorology, Water Data Online and the Australian Water Storages dataset, © Commonwealth of Australia, CC BY; volumes supplied by © Hydro Tasmania, © TasWater. Where the Bureau lists no capacity, or its capacity and volume are on different bases, a row shows the volume only. Text by Pablo Ruiz Quintero.
The facts on this page were checked against these pages, from the agencies, park services and operators that manage the water on 28 September 2026; anything we could not verify was taken out. Written by Pablo Ruiz Quintero. Errors are published in the verification log.