It’s a very different looking lake from the Bonnie Doon Bridge when the water level is in its low 50s, that's for sure. It’s easy to forget that it wasn't that long ago when you couldn't even see water from the bridge. Let's hope it doesn't happen again too soon.

It seems that the Delatite arm and up near the mouth of the river has been the go-to place up the top end of late. There have been consistent reports of good-sized trout being caught on flat lined Tassie Devils, particularly the clown pattern and the chartreuse lumo colour. The good old Rapala CD 5 in rainbow trout has also been a standout in the hardbody area.

The Ford inlet has been doing well with a couple of nice 4lb browns getting taken on scrub worms in the shallows from the bank under bubble floats – old school fishing at its finest. Sometimes we get carried away with the latest and greatest gear available and forget about the tried-and-true methods that our grandpas used.

Up around the Doon caravan park has also done OK recently. Mick, Jimmy and Rob from Hook ‘Em Fishing came up for a couple of days, but the only person who troubled the score board was young Max, the son of one of their mates who landed a nice little brown. Having said that, I suspect that the boys do a lot more beer sipping than hard core fishing, but they have a great deal of fun anyway and that's what fishing is all about: fun, fun and more fun!

There have been scattered reports of cod, not great numbers but enough to keep us going out chasing them. The best specimen of late was an 88cm fish caught by Alex Power on a size 2 StumpJumper in the frog pattern near the pines. The interesting thing was there was another fish the same size following it up. This tends to happen more in late spring but not so much in winter.

A few yellas have popped up in the top of the lake. Not as many as the southern end but enough to get excited about. Let’s hope this trend keeps on going right into spring. Lately there have been minimal numbers of reddies, and I still can't wait until these lovely tablefish fire again.