After a relatively cool start to summer, January produced some scorching heat.

That was what we were waiting for, to get the temperature up to 24C to bring the natives right on the chew.

Although there was good numbers of yellas caught early on, post Christmas saw them shut down dramatically.

Hopefully the higher water temperatures will bring them back on in February. The real bonus has been the quality of the cod season. It has been outstanding fishing.

It has been as consistent as I have ever seen Eildon for any species for the last 6 years (except redfin of course). On a recent trip with mate Jim Rogers, I’ve had a blinder 3 ½ hour session, nailing six quality, but small cod. All around the mid 50cm in size, but the quality of the fight not to mention condition of them was spectacular.

Another chap who has been doing well is Daron Proudlock who has been spending a lot of time on Eildon of late and has been really enjoying his time chasing cod picking up good numbers of fish to 4.5kg.

I have found that the fish have been taking numerous colour combos: black/purple, black/red, black/brown, white/orange and white/chartreuse. It’s been quite random from trip to trip.

I have had mixed success with small single willow blade spinnerbaits to huge spinnerbaits with 5” Berkley Jumbo Chigger Crawls soft plastics on them so change it up folks and try different thing the results will come; don’t stick to your old favourite, try something new.

Now the water temperature is right up, the reddies will school up and start to go on the chew quite hard. Should be some stonkers come out of the lake this summer – can’t wait.

I might really start to target big reddies in 2013. I haven’t heard much on the trout side of things with only a few reports of Browns to 1kg so the trout scene is slow at the moment.

The rivers have been fishing very well. The Acheron has been producing good numbers of brown’s to 750g. The Rubicon is still copping a pounding, so give some of the other little streams a crack.

The Goulburn is probably the pick of the bunch though with lots of fish being caught recently.

Local Paul ‘Champs’ Campbell donging them on Rapalas and black and gold T-Tails. Paul has been fishing the Goulburn for years in his tinnie, so if you put your boat on the Goulburn, be careful, it’s very dangerous.

Early morning and late at night are best times to fish. Powerbait has been the bomb thing of late with good numbers of fish up to 3kg being taken.