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Winter fishing fires up around the district
  |  First Published: August 2012



Lake Learmonth certainly has bright future.

Lake Learmonth is located to the west of Ballarat. The lake went dry during the drought and has been stocked with yearling rainbow trout in September and a further stocking in December.

The lake was regarded as excellent redfin water pre-drought and has very good access for shore-based anglers with only the western side of the lake on private property. There has been an outbreak of blue green algae like most of the waters around the district and I expect this will disappear in time.

I recently fished for a couple of hours here with my children and managed to catch three magnificent rainbow trout to 1.5kg and missed a couple. Other anglers have had similar results with rainbows dominating bags.

Lake Wendouree

Lake Wendouree is still producing plenty of trout for those anglers that are keen enough to get out and try their luck. Angler numbers have dropped off in the past month with temperatures dropping under 10C.

Lake Wendouree’s trout have been caught on the usual methods and it is my suggestion that as we are in the middle of winter the trout are very aggressive and territorial and really like to hit lures hardbodied lures; bright colours seen to work the best.

Lake Tooliorook

The redfin are still on the bite and seem to be targeting lures in a variety of sizes, colours and patterns. Rob Cook from Stawell cleaned up recently catching 30 redfin on orange Stumpjumper lures. Luke Barby has also been trolling lures and catching some lovely rainbow trout to 1.5kg on pink Tassie Devils.

Lake Tooliorook just seems to keep producing fish, mostly trout and now redfin and I expect fishing action to continue through the winter months.

Lake Bolac

This is another hot spot from last year. It is very quiet at the moment; I spent five hours trolling a variety of hardbodied lures recently for not a touch. Other anglers fishing around Fiery Creek mouth using salted whitebait and Powerbait and managed some small rainbows about the 750g.

I think as we move through winter and we get some good spring rain and the lake fills up the trout get a little bit more active so will see some massive trout caught over the 5kg mark, so Lake Bolac is one to put in the memory bank for later on.

Tullaroop Reservoir

As I mentioned last month, this water is just starting to come good with anglers starting reap the rewards from trout being released back into the reservoir. Lure casting and flyfishing would be my suggestions to target the trout, especially as they are targeting smelt that is a very large part of their diet during the winter months.

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