NOTES: NB; DON’T USE PIC 3, IT’S A DUPLICATE OF PIC 1. IF NECESSARY THERE’S MACKENZIE0512_5 READY IN PTBC

Anglers are more than happy with the great run of golden perch in local waters over the past few months.

Fish to 2kg and more have been biting well in many locations on bait and lures.

Jim Credlin from JC’s Bait and Tackle at Swan Hill says that the lakes are fishing well with Boga the pick for mixed bags of golden perch and redfin. Most fish are being caught on bait but the bigger perch are taking spinnerbaits and blades.

Lake Charm is also fishing well, Credlin says, but the real hot spot has been the section of river downstream of the weir in the Little Murray. Perch from 2kg-3kg are biting on shrimp, small yabbies and scrub worms.

Most anglers are finding it easy to procure their bag limit and take home a feed.

Robinvale on the Murray River has been another great location to bag a few good perch with several reports of fish to a couple of kilos coming back on the chew.

Catfish, too, are about in good numbers and the carp are thick enough to eat you out of house and home.

Below the lock at Euston is also producing good numbers of perch on bait and lures, making the area well worth a fish.

Just downstream at the Boyanda boat ramp anglers are catching a few cod to 8kg on trolled lures, mostly near the big red bank. Perhaps this is a sign that many of the fish that survived the 2011 blackwater by moving downstream are slowly starting to find their way back up river – one can only hope.

Wentworth has had a few cod and perch on lures, caught mostly on the troll.

Allan from Got One Mildura says the perch have been biting well below the lock at Mildura with one angler catching and releasing a dozen large fish in less than an hour on small lures.

Allan also says that anglers drifting and bobbing baits have been catching good numbers of perch and some sizable catfish.

Soft plastics might be worth a try for this style of fishing as they take on all the characteristics of live bait when lifted and dropped through the water column. Cheap and effective on most fish species, I see no reason that they would be any different on perch.

We have been lucky enough to put in a couple of sessions in the Mildura area in the past month and while we were targeting cod, we found plenty of golden perch more than keen to attack our lures.

All up we would have easily landed more than 30 golden perch of varying sizes over just a few days. Most were returned, with a few kept for the table.

Some very good cod have also been caught in this area with several metre-plus models falling to trolled lures.

It’s good to see the river fishing so well and with any luck it will continue for some time yet.

With a fresh flush coming through the system the good run of perch should only get better and who knows, if the flows get big enough we might just see another great run of yabbies – fingers crossed on this one.