As the lake approaches 65% of capacity, it’s hard not to get excited about the month ahead.

With October seeing some great yellow belly being caught including a fat fish caught by 8-year-old William “Wonka” Rogers, with no help from dad until netting time. He did a superb job with his brown trout pattern Stumpjumper. Some anglers fish forever to catch a fish like this!

I also had some success during October landing my first yellow belly for the season, which was a 6kg fish of just under 60cm on a 2½” black and gold Berkley T Tail with a Berkley 1/8 ball jig #1 hook. If you don’t have some of these super versatile plastics in your bag, you are simply costing yourself fish and lots of them.

My second fish went 4.5kg and was caught on a Cultiva Mira vibe 60 in the perch pattern.

The water temperature played a big factor on when the natives were active. It seemed to be as the water temp got to between 16-17C, they would come on for short sharp bursts. A few cod were caught and released by guy’s chasing yellas and were all in great condition.

On the trout side of things, good fish have been reported on a regular basis between 55g-2kg, with Big River being the most active for trout. Not a great deal yet on the redfin side of things but when the temperature comes up it will fire big time.

After the floods it was expected to take quite some time for the rivers in our area to clean up and fish well. Some people, myself included thought it might take until Christmas to truly start to fire.

Gladly I was wrong, with all the rivers except the Acheron clearing up well and delivering some quality fishing. Many will know how the Acheron River has been dirty as since the fires. The floods may be a blessing in disguise for lovers of this stream, because it is cleaning up nicely and should start to fish well before Santa comes with some new fishing gear.

It is quite amazing how an event like a fire or a flood changes an area like this, for it will never be the same again. Some of my favourite spots are almost unrecognisable and don’t hold as many fish as normal.

The upside is it is almost like fishing a new river (not quite but nearly). It’s like a fresh start to find all the new holes, backwaters and structures. This is why nature is a great challenge for fishing in general; you just don’t know what’s around the corner.

Plenty of quality fish in the Goulburn at the moment, mostly browns, but once the water clears more the roles will reverse when the rainbows come out to play in big numbers.

Also for those who think some of the browns are very silver they may well be escapee salmon that were introduced into the system via the floods.

Trout ranging from 500g-1.5kg are feeding very well, obviously with all reports of fish being in awesome condition. Baden MacDonald caught a cracker on a 2.5” Berkley black and gold T Tail and it went off in the fast current.

We had a fair bit of drama on the Rubicon during the floods with the bridge to Thornton becoming a big victim of rising water when it partially collapsed. It is a single lane only bridge at the moment, so approach with care.

On the fishing side of things, it has delivered great results of late with fish between 250g-1kg being caught and released by most of the guys who fish it regularly, and wow have they been in great nick also.

Fishing on the bottom with Berkley 1” power nymphs in pearl olive shad on 1/12 nitro #4 jigheads has been the best technique.