Weather patterns are all over the place right across the country with wide spread flooding and lakes spilling over their walls. Its almost bittersweet – great to see our lakes filling, heartbreaking for our farmers when it all hits at once.

These adverse weather conditions have done nothing to slow down the action for us anglers. For whatever reason, yellowbelly fired in early September and are going gang busters, even though the water temperature is still around 14°C. Generally, they start to fire at 16°C+, so I’m not sure what’s going on. I’m not going to complain, that’s for sure.

What’s interesting in my opinion is a good number of reports coming in of loads of small fish around the 30cm mark are on chew. We haven’t seen good numbers of fish this size for 5-6 years. A vast majority over the journey have been a bigger, more robust class of fish in the 40-60cm range. Don’t get me wrong, we’ll still see plenty of big models as well, but it’s apparent that this fishery is in amazing condition, going from strength to strength. I’m predicting we’ll see multiple yellas over 20lb this season.

Cod are just on fire, but the biggest key is time on the water for the bite windows, which are still quite short in duration and random. There have been good reports of green fish between 45-85cm and one cracker at 98cm. There’s been a lot of discussion around what’s happened to the reddies – it’s a popular opinion that the massive influx of Murray cod and golden perch over the past 5 years could be responsible for the shortage of reddies.

If juvenile redfin have been their main diet, it makes sense. The carp numbers have taken a beating as well, which is a good thing. I’m also convinced the trout have copped a bit of a battering too. So stay safe on the water. Look out for floating debris as it’s still flowing in big time and I would hate to see anyone damage their craft or get hurt.

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Wayne Harris with a chunky cod caught on a Stump Jumper.