The normal Ballarat winter weather hasn’t that stopped the action in and around the region.

The fish are still biting for those keen enough to get out of the warmth of home and hit our waterways. Hopefully the rain continues to fall as our western district waters certainly need plenty of water as fisheries action their annual trout stocking programs.

Deep Lake has been low and very discoloured. After talking to a couple of locals the water was just starting to clear up they had had an algal bloom there for nearly 3 months. A recent week of frosts had killed off the algae so now it’s just a matter of time before the water clears up to its normal clarity level. There has been the odd fish getting caught but the algae had put most anglers off.

Only 10 minutes from Deep Lake, Tooliorook is a different story. The water level is down but the water is crystal clear. I recently launched the boat and headed off down the eastern shoreline trolling winged and hardbodied lures around areas where we caught plenty of trout and redfin the previous year. The water is a lot shallower and very weedy; every 20-30m we had to wind our lures in to clear the weed. This is excellent for the aquatic insects and baitfish but no good for lures.

We moved out into about 3m and the weed seemed to be less. Trolling along some rocky shorelines and points brought excellent results with two brown trout of around 2kg and just under 3kg on pink and orange lures.

Tooliorook is well worth a look and going on last year the water has excellent population of trout. The lake is a sleeping giant; the water clarity is amazing. I have fished this water for over 25 years and never seen it so clear I would recommend that boat angling along the southern shoreline is a must but the northern end of the lake is still fishable from the shore. Flyfishing, bait fishing, casting lures and trolling will all produce some excellent trout in the coming months.

This has quietened down due to the weather. Trout and redfin have still been caught flyfishing and trolling lures while shore based anglers have been catching them on fly, Powerbait and lures, with trout to 2.2kg being caught.

These are all in close proximity. Each has seen some lovely trout caught and released. The best methods have been flyfishing with smelt patterns. If you don’t get a fish at one water then try another, as they are all within ten minutes of each other. These waters are all experiencing low water levels at the moment but if we continue to receive good rainfalls they will fill up quickly and the trout will be mooching around in the shallows eating all the flooded out grubs and so on.

Tullaroop continues to fish well. Keith Riddsdale and Ian Penberthy both fished Tullaroop recently with Ian fly fishing and Keith bait fishing. Both anglers landed a couple of fish around 1kg. Tullaroop is an excellent winter and spring fishery and I believe over the coming months as the waters rises over new ground the fishing will be sensational up there.

This is another very under rated fishery around the district. This has started to produce the odd fish to 2kg, with fly fishers doing well with the ever-reliable Woolly Buggers.