The redfin of Albury-Wodonga’s local puddle, Lake Hume, fire big-time each February for reasons unknown to me and it’s the trollers who seem to clean up on the quality fish.

From all early reports I’m very confident that this trend will continue and its fantastic to still have a reasonably high percentage of water still left in the lake.

To date those fishing around the timber with small yabbies and worms have taken plenty on paternoster rigs and will continue to do so but I prefer to troll any day. A sounder, a small deep-diving lure with a small soft plastic rigged on a dropper 30cm in front is what you need. Once you find a school work, it repeatedly.

Lures like the AC 60mm minnows and Slim Invaders, Viking Talisman 50mm and the Deep 60mm UP Merlin work a treat. Soft plastics like the 50mm Atomic Shad or small Squidgy Fish in the drop bear colour work well.

The area from Bowna ramp to the Holbrook Boat Club area around the points and islands are usually reliable haunts, as is the water across from Ludlows and Huom ramps.

While talking up the reddies, another haunt within reach is Lake Nillacootie, near Mansfield, has been producing great bags of up to 60 keepers for a morning’s efforts on the minnow and soft plastic dropper. Mannus Dam, near Tumbarumba, has been firing too but best results have been on bait.

Down Mulwala way, the lake starts to fish well for the deep trollers and that can mean some honker fish. Trolling the drop-offs in open water up near the bridge and the edges of the deep river channels can be very productive as the cod start to move into the deeper water.

I’m a big advocate of trolling with the deepest divers possible. This helps with controlling the lures around snags and because these lures dive at a steep angle, this can actually decrease the number of snag-ups. The UP 80mm Boomerang and UD AC 90mm Invader have been perfect.

These drop-offs, particularly the old river channel edges, can also be cast productively. Spinnerbaits can be cast very efficiently into the shallows, retrieved very slowly close to the bottom and then fluttered down the drop-off face.

Natives love drop-offs and Mulwala cod are no different and you will always find them within this vicinity.

Lipless crankbaits like the brilliant Jackal TN 70 certainly worthy of fishing this sort of situation. I have just seriously started to use these and they are brilliant. They dive quickly with a head-down shimmy and work best twitched. And they make some serious noise.

I used these first at Windermere and to say they worked on the big yellas would be an understatement. I also took a monster upper Murray yella of 56cm from the canoe on one when the fish appeared to be shut-down on everything else.