My good friend Shane Lowery from Hamilton visited our Crater Lakes over July accompanied by the ‘YouFish TV’ camera crew and came up trumps on Lake Purrumbete with a large brown trout.

Shane was casting a surface Mega Bass live X-Smolt 55 minnow lure around the lake’s edges when he hooked up to a very sizeable brown. Shane was a tad rattled during the fight as he had scaled down his leader to 4lb in an attempt to attract a bite! However, after a long tussle he managed to safely land the fish. The fish was a very mature buck brown, a tad on the skinny side and no doubt this was his last chance at a futile attempt to spawn. Shane put his catch down simply to ‘patience and perseverance and basically just keep casting until you hook up.’

Shane and the boys did more fishing than that, but that’s all under wraps at the moment until the episode is aired on television in the near future so stay tuned!

Daniel Kent also paid a visit and managed two browns at 60 and 63cm respectively in a morning’s session. Daniel was using Nories Laydown Minnows numbers 6 and 74.

Michael Lane and good friend Mark Sarik ventured down from the big smoke to attempt to fish Lake Elingamite in the same month. Both anglers managed to get their smallish kayaks out on the lake without getting into trouble and over the day between the two they managed nine fish. At least five fish were browns up to two years old with one two-year-old rainbow and a couple of smaller Chinook. The boys were stoked with their bag and are probably tucked into a trout dinner with their families as I wrote this.

Even though the weather was cold and windy the boys put up with the misery as they were both catching solid fish. Both anglers cast lures all over the lake and the one that did the most damage was a shallow diving Eco-Gear gold trout patterned minnow. The trout were cruising just below the surface so deep diving lures were not an option. Whether they were close to the weed beds or well out in the open they caught fish everywhere.

Local angler Travis Beale also managed three yearling browns plus a two-year-old rainbow trout from his kayak all taken in a single session.

Elingamite is still not a viable option for boats and it really is still a battle to get out in a canoe or kayak. More rain is still needed to raise the water level.

Meanwhile, I have been concentrating my efforts over at Lake Bullen Merri where recently the rainbows and Chinooks have begun leaving the depths and opting for the shallows. I have yet to hook a brown but they must be there.

Chinook salmon to over a 1kg and rainbow trout to over 2kg have been caught on the troll using Pontoon 21 Greedy Guts, Damiki Saemi 70s and Black Magic B-Max minnows in depths to 4m.

The rain has finally arrived bringing with it cold weather, the likes of which we have not seen for a few years. Not so good for us but excellent weather for our trout fisheries.