It has finally happened, the trout season has come to end once again, yet some late rains spruced up our local streams for one final bash.

It was good to see a little bit of water flowing down our local Strzelecki streams. It didn’t take much rain to do it, and with about 10mm of rain our rivers were running with a nice healthy flow, creating plenty of nice rapids, bubble lines and runs. Mother Nature was right on cue for the closing. After the rain there was about four days of excellent fishing whilst the creeks were slightly discoloured and flowing well.

Traralgon creek fished well up high, as good numbers of brown trout had moved back into their usual runs and holes above Koornalla. The fish were not big, mostly around 25cm yet there was the odd bigger fish of around 30cm sitting in the new numerous stags that have cluttered the river after the fires. There wasn’t quite the numbers of fish up there that I would expect for this time of year, yet I’m not surprised after the fires. Down a bit lower, there was the odd bigger trout lurking around, and I had a couple of reports from anglers catching trout up to 35cm in these lower sections using brown trout Rapala lures.

The Morwell River above Boolarra fished well; it seemed to produce bigger fish on average than Traralgon Creek as many fish were at least 30cm in length. Soft plastics such as small GULP! minnows worked very well, as did the humble size 2 Celta.

Not only were the trout fishermen out in force for the last week of the trout season, but many anglers were chasing blackfish in the southern streams such as Turtons Creek and Berry’s Creek. There seemed to be plenty of these native fish as well, and most anglers fishing worms on either a running sinker rig or a slack line seem to come up the goods. Hopefully next month I will have some more photos and reports from the long weekend closing. Feel free to email me with some photos and reports.

For more information on fishing Central Gippsland and some terrific tackle deals, contact Will at Allways Angling in Traralgon on 5174 8544.