The June long weekend proved to be one of the most productive weeks all year, and here at the shop we’ve been inundated with some truly great stories.

As predicted, Traralgon Creek continued to fish superbly over late May and early June, partially because of the consistent rain we received in central Gippsland that kept the small Strezlecki streams running beautifully.

I managed to keep fishing the creek fairly consistently after work and in between study, and was rewarded with my best Traralgon Creek trout of the season. I’ve continued to fish the lower sections more frequently because I’ve been catching way bigger fish than up higher above Traralgon South.

I had been looking forward to fishing June with nothing but plastics to see if the quality of fish improves. Yep, they did! I was lucky enough to end up with one big one over the closing weekend – a lovely female brown of 53cm that was fully loaded with eggs. The fish was released.

We also had an unconfirmed report of a 3kg+ trout caught from the creek. It wouldn’t surprise me at all for that time of year.

The Morwell River really fired over the last two weeks of trout season with some very large fish to 2kg taken by persistent anglers braving the wet and cold.

There were good fish taken all the way up the river to the old prison farm. Most had success with Celta and Mapso bladed spinners, and even small Tassie Devils.

Moving north, the Thomson River was a real surprise in early June, producing some pretty large fish for this river. Plenty of trout to 1kg were landed, which is fantastic for this often-disappointing piece of water. It was the old favourite locations, such as Bruntons Bridge, that produced the goods!

Apparently, unweighted worms floated downstream were all the go. Some anglers seriously cleaned up with this method although Tassie Devils and Celtas worked well for others too.

For all those young anglers out there, some of our local lakes have been stocked by Fisheries recently. These include Kurnai Lake in Morwell, Lake Hyland in Churchill and Lake Guthridge in Sale.

Large waters have also been stocked. Blue Rock Reservoir received 5,000 brown trout and the Macalister River/Lake Glenmaggie got 5,000 rainbows. This should give all you super keen trout anglers plenty of destinations to fish throughout the closed season, so don’t give up yet.

For more information about fishing in central Gippsland contact Will at Allways Angling in Traralgon on (03) 5174 8544.