Lake Bullen Merri has been consistent for rainbow trout averaging 1.3kg with flat line trolling winged lures in white or pink/white around the lake edge.

Boaters are concentrating their efforts in 4-7m. Bank and bait anglers are not missing out either with local gudgeon fished unweighted on the bottom producing results.

Please note that plenty of new release chinook salmon are also coming on board and for the sake of much larger future captures these fish should be handled accordingly and released to stack on the pounds.

Lake Purrumbete has been up and down of late but this phenomenon seems to coincide with the weather and the amount of boat traffic moving around on the lake. Despite this some leviathan brown trout to 3.7kg have been caught by anglers concentrating their efforts close to the bankside weed. Live minnow or gudgeon, mudeye and Powerbait fished either under a float or unweighted has produced the goods for many.

Casting flies such as BMS, Woolly Buggers and Mrs Simpson right along the weed beds has seen some exceptional catches of late. So too has casting minnow lures to the same structure. As the water is nearly always clear, natural patterns such as the Rapala brown or rainbow minnows nearly always work a treat here. In most cases the strikes are very visible to the angler. Shallow diving lures or floating fly line is all that’s necessary here as the fish maybe hanging deeper but when fired up, nearly always come shooting out of the depths like a great white shark about to obliterate its prey. This makes for some exciting angling at times.

Lake Tooliorook at Lismore has rainbow trout in two release sizes with the first from 1kg and the second topping 2kg. The browns that were released here over a year ago are averaging 1.8kg. Many fish are falling to wide variety of lures either trolled or cast along the lake fringes.

The prolific weed growth that occurred over summer when the water levels significantly dropped and the temperature increased has largely died off. However weed segments can be identified via a sounder and should not be ignored as this lake has very little in the way of structure to attract and hold fish.

The redfin action is still occurring although the bite is a tad slower due to the wintry weather but bags of 6-10 fish are happening per angler per session on average. Bait soakers seem content to anchor up especially along the north shore and fish local minnow, Powerbait and whitebait unweighted on the bottom whilst deep diving lures to 3.5m are also accounting for a few fish.

Hopefully the winter rains will continue to fall and although this may restrict opportunities to get out and wet a line, our lakes and rivers will fill once again and keep the dream alive through spring and into summer.

Now that is a terrific Tooliorook redfin