Peel River revival to continue as Chaffey Dam hits capacity and breathes life into region's waterways

River advocate Anne Michie is just one of the many locals who have been eagerly awaiting the icing on the cake - a Chaffey Dam spill.

Now at 100 per cent capacity, Tamworth's main water source is ready to breathe life back into local waterways, and help the Peel River continue to thrive.

The OzFish Northwest coordinator said the section between Chaffey Dam and Woolomin will benefit most from the flows.

"It will be really exciting to see it spill and the river start to flow again naturally that's for sure," she said.

"There's still the 15 kilometre stretch of river between the overflow of Chaffey Dam and Woolomin that hasn't been receiving all these wonderful flows, so it will be fantastic to see it finally get a good flush of water down there."

For the past week, Ms Michie has been watching the river in town with "great excitement" as Chaffey inched closer to capacity.

"I haven't seen it sit at top of bank like that continuously for days on end for I don't know how long!" she said.

"It's been such a long time since I've seen it consistently sit at such a high water mark which is important for a lot of our aquatic life."

The local fish advocate said in a few years, wildlife will reap the benefits as the system continues to revive and some big breeding events occur.

"We should see the benefits of that with a lot more fish in the river, particularly cod, hopefully we'll get more yellow belly and catfish and hopefully some of our small bodied fish as well, just to build up their population," she said.

With big flow events and native fish thriving, the rise of invasive species like carp is always an issue, but Ms Michie hopes the work OzFish have been doing to improve habitat for natives along the river will give them the boost they need to repopulate.

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As Keepit Dam also creeps closer to full, she said it was amazing to see the transformation occur after the devastating fish kills during the drought.

"We saw the dam out there go to 0.3 per cent and the fish kills we saw were absolutely devastating and a lot of people said it would never fill," she said.

"Now, they're actually having releases out there to mitigate if they do get another big flow because it's come up 10 per cent in a week which has been amazing.

"To see such a rapid turnaround in such a short space of time really has been heartening and it just proves that it can happen.

"Mother nature is a wonderful thing."

But there is still a fair bit of recharge that needs to happen to fill up the region's underground aquifers, she said.

"Even though our dams are full, there are still a lot of areas that may need more water," she added.

"I know a lot of people see floods as damaging things, but I actually see them as a huge recharge for the environment.

"To get that water out across the floodplains where it needs to go very important."

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