Despite the fact that we have had some rainfall about the northern high country, most of the rivers remain very low.

On the western side of the range, many watercourses are as low as anyone can remember and unless we get some more substantial rain it will become a real issue of survival, even for the resilient native species.

Lakes Copeton and Split Rock have continued to perform well and at this time they should be top on your agenda if you are heading this way over Summer. As I suggested last month, even though the water level has been dropping drastically at both places, people have been turning up reasonable numbers of fish and some substantial cod.

I have run a couple of river tours to see how they would go and, surprisingly, we did find a lot of hungry cod and bass. The fish were mostly small but very keen to take a lure and on the best day a party of four of us managed over 40 fish.

The big cod were making themselves scarce but that is not uncommon at this time of year and they may have also just been doing it tough, with the water short on oxygen and steadily warming. The fish are there – it is just a matter of finding some water where you can get a lure through weed-free

The interesting thing is that spinnerbaits have often been working a lot better than all other lures. I don’t know what it is exactly but even the bass we found would hardly touch a typical small diving lure but would crawl all over the spinnerbaits. I have seen this before but not to the extent where the spinnerbait would worked while the others could not lift a scale. I suspect that apart from the natural attractiveness of the ‘coat-hangers’ they also worked better around the weed beds, as they don’t hang up as easily as lures with trebles attached.

I recently went out and bought a bunch of AusSpin 1/4oz spinnerbaits and they really do work a treat. The bass seemed to really get off on the purple and black sparkle skirts and we have even brought some small cod on board with them. I’m happy to say that I will continue to report on whatever fishing tackle and techniques I find work well for me.

Caption:

Gary Wilkinson found the new season highland cod to his liking, even with the tough conditions