Trout fishing here in northeast Victoria’s rivers and streams will be closed in a few days. Precisely at midnight on the Monday of the Queen’s Birthday Weekend it will all be over for another season.
And it a very good one thanks to a bumper spawning season last year that looks like repeating this winter. Lakes, however, are still in action and some are producing numbers of fair-sized brown trout and rainbows, with the latter in the majority.
Both Rocky Valley and Pretty Valley Lakes on the Bogong High Plains are in excellent condition and producing both rainbow trout and browns on lures fished around the shoreline.
The best time to fish either lake is towards dusk when the water is as still as a mill pond.
Of course, anglers need to rug up on most afternoons/evenings as the cold weather up there in June can be intense at times, almost freezing the very marrow in one’s bones, it seems.
Lake Guy at Bogong Village is full and fishing moderately well, according to recent reports.
The best place to fish is from the western shoreline with Tassie Devil lures, according to those who know.
Be careful not to move up too far into the running water area (the flow-in stream) as you will be fishing illegally if you do, and don’t fall in (like some); the water is absolutely freezing cold!
This water is often overlooked by anglers but it holds mostly rainbow trout to 950g on average with a few reaching more impressive weights at times.
Most are taken on live bait or lures from around the edges, with the eastern side getting most of the action.
The Ovens River around Porepunkah and Bright is running nicely and stocked with native species that can be fished for into winter.
Unfortunately, I have no recent fishing reports to hand on what’s happening there.
The Kiewa River at Mt Beauty, through Tawonga to Mongans Bridge as been producing both brown trout and rainbows but that will cease at the end of the Queens Birthday Weekend and won’t restart for fishing until the first Saturday in September.
In fact, all other alpine region rivers will close to trout fishing at the end of the Queens Birthday Weekend and not reopen until September when they will be swollen with the annual spring snow-thaw.
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