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Diversity needed for success
  |  First Published: April 2013



What a difference a month can make in fishing.

A month of very hot summer weather has certainly quietened the fishing reports down.

The Ballarat and district lakes certainly can suffer from hot weather with most of our waters less than 2m deep. The water levels heat up over continuous periods of hot weather and the trout in our waters suffer from the increase in temperature and drop in oxygen levels in the water and certainly go off the bite.

The only time they feed is just on evening though the night and early morning this is when anglers need to diversify from their normal angling routine.

I personally believe autumn is the best time of the year: cool nights, frosty mornings and beautiful sunny windless days that are just about perfect conditions for fishing around our district.

Lake Wendouree

This is probably the best water in the district to fish at the moment. Our lake is currently going through the annual harvesting of lake weed and now the lake is open for business for all anglers.

Steve Taylor, a regular on Lake Wendouree has been trolling hardbodied lures in and around the weed beds using his electric motor with excellent results, catching rainbow and brown trout as well as tasty redfin. His best trout is a 1.8kg brown on a rainbow trout pattern lure. Steve suggested a very overcast day is the best time to fish the lake this is obviously due to the shallow nature of the lake.

In other reports, fly fishers are catching trout after dark using floating mudeye patterns and cricket imitations.

Hepburn Lagoon and Newlyn Reservoir

These neighbouring waters generally fish well during the autumn for mayfly feeders. Both waters suffer from low levels during this period due to irrigation requirements. This can affect how the fishing is but generally the mayfly still hatch. Hepburn has the biggest fish in the district but the low water and weed can restrict the fishing but well worth trying.

Lake Tooliorook and Deep Lake

These two western districts waters during autumn will produce excellent fishing for rainbow and brown trout over 3kg. All forms of angling produce results particularly bright coloured lures or flies at Tooliorook trolled or cast around the lake margins.

I certainly will be visiting both lakes as I believe they hold very good populations of fish and also that elusive trophy trout as well.

Tullaroop and Cairn Curran

To the north of Ballarat, these lakes generally can fish well with the smelt or small bait fish moving in around the lake margins to feed and spawn. Obviously trout follow them into the shallows as they are staple part of their diet. Casting hardbodied lures or minnow patterns produce excellent results and the smelt patterns for the fly fishers over cast days with a gentle breeze produce the best results.

Lake Bolac

Lake Bolac has been relatively quiet over the past few months but I have received some reports of rainbow trout being caught on local minnows fished on a running sinker rig up to 1.5kg: a far cry from two years ago when the average size was 3kg. When the water cools down we will see some quality trout caught from Lake Bolac. I will certainly be down there giving the lake a go as I’m sure there is some remaining trophy trout to be caught.

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