Getting out of bed is hard at 4am when the temperature is -2°C and everything has frost on it. Aaron Graham and I loaded the boat and headed over to Windamere with high hopes to land some big fat footballs (golden perch). We pulled up to the boat ramp and started to set the boat up, pulled the rods out of the lockers and tied on the lures that we thought would work for the day. We put the sounders on and rugged up.

The first hour was slow with no hits or touches, but as the sun peeked over the hills and onto our backs Aaron cast his line and his reel screamed off.

“I’m on!” he said, as I pulled the net out of the locker. We saw colour, looked at each other and said, “Good fish.”

After two good runs, the first fish was in the net at a decent 58.5cm. The second came not long after. I watched as my line sank, and ticked as a golden hit it on the drop. Aaron wound his lure in to get the net for my fish, when suddenly he yelled out – it was a double hook-up!

A pattern had started to form. We knew the right colour lures and at what depth the fish were sitting at. We started to look around the dam for new spots as fish appeared on the sounder and began to bite. It was shaping up to be a good day.

In the end we boated twelve fish with an average size of 55.5cm and our biggest went 59cm. We caught two fish on the Jackall Red Belly Black mask vibe, three fish came from the Jackall Squirrel 61SP in red black SC colour. The black ZX40 got four fish, and the Gulp Banana Prawn caught three fish.

We found most of the fish sitting on drop-offs in 25-30ft. However, the fish that were hard up on the bank in the sun were caught on Jackall Squirrel. The deeper fish we caught were on ZX40s and mask vibes. We convinced the fish to bite with little slow lifts, using about 30cm of the rod tip coupled with a very slow roll. The fish hit the lure on the drop, and the lures we used certainly fired the fish up. So if you’re game to brave the cold weather, you should be able to hook-up to some good fish.