I am pleased to say that over the past month we have received quite a lot of welcome rain and some heavy dumps of late snow.

Although we are delighted to receive this precipitation onto what was a parched landscape, it has basically put a halt to our trout fishing.

All the major rivers around Omeo and Dargo are running a banker with cold and mostly discoloured water.

It is interesting to me to see the Morass Creek. Back in May I walked across this creek without getting my feet wet; it was bone dry. Now it is full of water and running hard. This is a great little water for the bait angler to try. It is always discoloured, even in the middle of summer, but it holds the biggest trout of any river in the area. Every year trout of 5lb and above are caught here.

Due to its yellow colour it is most successfully fished with bait. Scrub worms are the bait of choice for most anglers. Even though the creek was dry and devoid of trout recently, it will soon re-stock with fish moving up from Dartmouth Dam.

Livingston Creek is running high like most other rivers but it is still yielding a few browns up to 500g, mostly to bait anglers although Dudley Lee caught a nice fish of about 550g on a fly recently.

The best spots to fish the Livingston are at Cassilis and also a few areas in the Hinnomunjie Valley.

Very little fishing is being done in the Mitta, Bundara and Cobungra Rivers. A few rainbows are being caught in the Gibbo River when conditions allow. The Timbarra River is worth a fish at the moment. Spring is the best time to fish this water, as it gets quite hot by Christmas and the fishing declines with the hot weather.

Most of the fish are small brown trout in the Timbarra but there is quite a good population of self sustaining fish present.

It is pleasing to see day light savings start and the days are gradually getting longer and warmer. Once this spate of cold weather passes we can look forward to some life getting back into the rivers. Pretty soon the beetles, other terrestrials, caddis, mayflies etc will start appearing and with them, hopefully, the trout.