Redfin seem to be in plague proportions at Blowering Dam at the moment and with water temps around 30° over the past month or so, it’s not surprising.

Anglers have been catching these tasty little fish all over the dam on bait and lures and quite a few around 2kg. Bait anglers are doing well off points on small yabbies, maggots and worms but bigger yabbies around 8cm to 10cm are my favourites because they keep the pesky little redfin from stealing your bait, which can be a real problem this time of year.

Casting small lures like Rooster Tails, Celtas, small soft plastics and small lipless crankbaits from the bank around points can also be productive.

Or you can look for any sort of snag or tree, not just the big, obvious snags that anyone can see. Even a small singular tree can hold 20 or more fish and it is less likely that this less obvious snag has already received a hammering from other anglers.

Trolling with almost any small hard-bodied lure should mean you stumble across a patch of redfin and once you have located a school, try to position your boat within casting range and keep casting to them until they stop biting. This is the best way to get big numbers of redfin.

Jigging is another popular way of targeting redfin and can be very rewarding when the right tree is located. Best lures include most Berkley Gulp plastics, lipless crankbaits, spoons, redfin jigs and ice jigs.

There have been plenty of jigs made over the years and all have worked to some degree on redfin but I am yet to see one land more fish than the ice jig. These are just the greatest and have caught me thousands of redfin in recent years. I strongly recommend adding at least one to your arsenal.

Some very nice Murray cod have been caught and most have been released, a pleasant change for the magnificently marked Blowering cod which in the past were usually killed on the spot for bragging rights back at the local pub. But it seems the catch-and-release bug is really starting to spread, even up here in the hills.

Almost all of the big cod that I’ve seen and heard caught took either grubs or big yabbies but there have been a few taking trolled lures.

One group of lucky anglers were spending the weekend at Blowering when they noticed a metre-plus cod cruising the margins of a small bay.

After no success trying to lure up the fish up they decided to shift camp to the spot they’d seen the monster cod and lay out some baits overnight. Bait of choice was big juicy wood grubs and one of the anglers hooked, landed and released the 121cm cod through the night.

This time of year most golden perch are in slightly deeper water, making targeting them fairly difficult at times. When there is a lot of boat activity to add to the stresses of high water temps, a lot of goldens hunt in cool, deep water with structure of some type, preferably standing timber which provides shade through the day.

These fish are best targeted jigging with bait or lures. Bait anglers, using mainly yabbies, have been clued onto this for years and are normally the only ones consistently catching goldens during the hottest months of the year.

But more people are discovering that these shade-hugging yellas also hit lures. Slow-rolling soft plastics up standing timber adjacent to a drop off or in 5m to 15m of water will give you an equal chance of landing a yella as bait.

There are all types of yabby-imitation plastics on the market and when rigged and used correctly, all will catch fish. But minnow-style plastics such as the Ecogear Grass Minnow are deadly on stressed golden perch and are my first choice whilst targeting them this way. Slow-rolling spinnerbaits and lipless crankbaits is also worth a shot.

The Murrumbidgee River above Wagga Wagga has fished sensationally. There has been a fairly steady flow in the river most of the season which has kept the natives willing to hit most things cast into their direction.

The usual baits have been working all season but the lure and fly action has been outstanding.

Lure fishos have been getting natives on pretty much everything from trolled hardbodies and lipless crankbaits and everything in between. Casting spinnerbaits and Chatterbaits has also been working really well but hardbodies and plastics have been getting fish as well.

There have also been quite a few caught on the surface, which is no surprise with the numbers of cicadas that have been around. A few boys have even been having quite a bit of luck with large flies such as Dahlbergs but any big, flashy saltwater flies will do the trick.

These are best used on a 8/9-weight full sinking line with a short leader of 18kg to 20kg so you can muscle the big Murray cod and resident trout cod out of the snags.