The late winter rains are finally subsiding and the warmer, more stable weather is allowing anglers to easily access all of our lakes which have been topped up with all the recent rain.

Lakes such as Elingamite that have been inaccessible to anglers for many months now are open to boat traffic and hopefully Fisheries Victoria will consider a late stocking of browns and rainbows to keep this small but viable trophy lake ticking along as usual.

There’s plenty of last years stock of both species about and these fish are all weighing over 1kg. Some fish that were stocked two seasons ago have also been caught and these fish are well over 2.5kg. The Elingamite fish respond well to all angling methods but more than a dozen boats moving around the lake can shut down a previously active bite. It’s then that a boater should sneak into the shallows and search out the various channel and gutters amongst the thick weed beds and cast shallow diving minnow lures or plastics into these hot spots because that’s where the trout and huge redfin will be hiding.

Besides the rainbow and redfin action happening out at Lake Tooliorook, the big attraction is the feisty browns to 2kg. I as well as others have been very impressed with the fighting abilities of these fish. So much so that expect to lose more during the fight than land. I personally have noticed that these fish prefer to roll during a fight rather than jump and this often results in tangled line and pulled hooks.

The browns are responding to shallow diving lures and lightly weighted plastics either cast and retrieved or trolled. Tooliorook still has a weed problem that certainly favours the fish over the angler. Basically there’s not a lot of top water available in which to present a lure or bait so keep all offerings in the top most section of the water column.

Deep Lake at Derrinallum has similar sized fish to Tooliorook but due to its extreme shallowness most fish are caught by bank anglers presenting bait under a float or by casting flies. Boats can be launched here but avoid moving about to much as this will certainly spook fish.

Drifting and casting offerings rather than trolling is the key here.

Lake Purrumbete and Bullen Merri have both received several stockings of Chinook salmon which will bode well for the future however currently ‘chooks’ to 300g have become an annoying by-catch. It’s good to hear that most anglers are carefully releasing these fish back to stack on the pounds.

Purrumbete has some solid browns taking winged lures flat line trolled in depths up to 30m off Hoses Rocks.

All in all it’s shaping up to be a very fishy spring and as we approach summer this scenario will only improve to the benefit of all anglers.

Jarrod Biles with a 2kg+ brown from Lake Tooliorook.