Fishing Reports for Victoria, Westernport and Port Phillip Bay

The local stocked lakes have been fishing well for trout over the last week of the school holidays. While the weather was reasonable anglers were out making the most of the feisty trout. The standouts have been Karkarook Park Lake and also Eildon pondage for some bigger fish.

Customer Gordon has been catching some really nice specimens from the pondage, with fish over 2.5kg not uncommon. Gordon has been fishing a coarse method with both 'trout dough' and powerbait in a variety of colours. Gordon has found many anglers giving up easily on his last few sessions, with many people only staying for half an hour or so with no berley - which is one of the keys to getting these fish going.

Staff member Don took his nephews Zac and Aaron out to Karkarook Park for a spot of trout fishing and they weren't disappointed. Don showed the boys how to set up their lines correctly for this style of fishing, and after a little while they started getting into some fish. Fine mix berley got the fish going after about 20 minutes and the small fine gauge hooks did their job in pinning the trout in the jaw. The trout dough caught more on this occasion, but 'lime twist' coloured powerbait also caught a couple of fish.

Another young angler catching trout at Karkarook Park is Breanna. Breanna was fishing with her dad Darren at the lake where she hooked and landed 3 rainbow trout by herself. The feeder cage rig worked wonders is keeping the fish active in the area that they were fishing, and gave a burst of scent around the bait when it hit the water.

The many trout lakes around the state and outer suburbs have been getting some attention over the Easter school holidays, and for anglers fishing the correct methods most have been producing. Many of the lakes get stocked before every school holidays so that the kids can have some fun.

The lure fishing been good for many anglers but the coarse method involving powerbait and formulated trout dough has been almost guaranteed success when fished correctly. 

Staff member Don has been away with family over the week along the banks of the Goulburn river, where he has been catching fish with his kids. Don and his boys have been catching most of their trout on a variety of lures to suit the conditions, with tassie devils and Yakamito spoons producing a lot of fish and the most foolproof lures were rigged with assist or single hooks.

The stocked trout spoon bite has been excellent a bit closer to home among the suburb systems at Lakeside Pakenham and also Karkarook Park in Moorabbin. With an abundance of recently stocked fish in these lakes, now is the perfect time to trial any lures you want some fish catching confidence in. Customer Morgan had a blast catching over a dozen rainbows just this morning on a variety of small spoons including the Yakamito 'Pink Mudeye' and Strike Tiger 'Perch' patterns. Single hooks ensured all but one came unhooked.

A bit further afield, customer Steve has had some success up at Lake Jindabyne. Steve has found the lake to be fishing as well as it has in recent times, with a nice bag of 5 trout to 5lb caught in one evening among some mates. All fish were caught in a 2 hour session and all on spider mudeyes.

The bream and flathead fishing around the local and out of town estuaries has been excellent, even with heavy holiday crowds. The cooler water temperatures have got the bream at a comfortable level where they can feed in the shallows without the water being too hot, and the flathead can also ambush these shallow areas too.

Customer Morgan was down in Gippsland with mate Jinsu where they caught some nice bream on lures. Overcast and slightly breezy conditions made for some good fishing, with the fish eager to eat the lures. The most effective lures on the day were the Jackall 'spytail' jointed stickbaits. When these lures were fished with sharp twitches and a pause the fish would hit them ferociously.

Customer Shane has been out near Lakes Entrance over the break chasing the big flathead about. Shane ordered in some 'live prawn' soft plastics to give a good run on the big flatties and he has put them straight to good use. Shane has been catching good numbers of table flathead on these lures but also fish to nearly 70cm.

Working these live prawns with a sharp-hop-and-fall retrieve has been the best way to get the attention of the larger flathead, and being tear-resistant they seem to last well against the sharp teeth.

Customer Tony has been back to his old tricks, catching some nice bream in the Patto.Tony fished after some light rain using freshwater yabbies and landed 6 nice fish up to 42cm. Among these, 3 fish busted Tony off against the pylons and mussel encrusted poles, and that was on 10lb leader. The Patto will continue to fish well as we get some more rain during Autumn.

While there haven't been too many reports posted on the kingfish front, there are still some numbers of good fish around. The rip is still holding fish, with some larger fish making their presence felt to anglers still out chasing them. The offshore fishing around Eden has been very good for the kingfish, and if conditions are similar to last year the fish could still hang around for another 6 weeks or so.

Gawaine Blake took a trip up to Eden over the Easter break in search of a few kingies, and he wasn't disappointed. Gawaine purchased a new Shimano Tranx 301 reel to try on these fish, and knocked them over with it easily. The Tranx is a 'low profile' style baitcaster but with serious grunt! Gawaine found most of the fish out along Mowarry Point and jigging was by far the most effective method on these fish, with some nice fish also caught on 2oz weighted soft plastics fished around the reef. Most of the fish that were caught were in the 10 - 13kg mark, which are excellent sized fish.

It seems that many people have been fishing the inland rivers and lakes over the Easter break, with a few reports from various locations around the state coming through. The Autumn months can fish very well for both Murray cod and yellowbelly, though many people only associate these fish with the warm Summer months. Customer Jacques was up along the Goulburn River just recently where he did a spot of casual bait fishing. Jacques normally fishes the salt out in the bays and offshore, but managed to catch a few small Murray cod and trout cod in the river. Jacques released all of his fish safely back into the river for someone else to catch.

Customer Emilio has also been catching a few cod. Emilio has been fishing the Murray itself, around Cohuna. Emilio has been getting out on the water early, and suggests to start your fishing around 6am as these cod are most active around then. Emilio has been switching between bardi grubs and also freshwater yabbies to catch his fish, with a small amount of berley helping to get the activity started.

Not too far down the river, customer Long and mates have been catching Murray cod also. Long has been fishing the river around Echuca in a small tinny to land cod up to 65cm. Long has been fishing the dense snag piles using bardi grubs as bait for most of his fish.

Back towards Mulwala the lake has been fishing well. While the Easter ski and wake crowds have been tough to get around during the heat of the day, the fishing around low light has been good. There have been numerous cod over 1m caught by anglers casting swimbaits and surface lures around, although this fishing isn't for the easily bored. It can take 500 casts in a session to strike gold on these fish, and sometimes after all this casting you may not land a fish.

Staff member Dylan tangled with monster cod over the Easter weekend at Mulwala, only to have it earn it's freedom early as it broke 80lb leader on the snags. The big fish ate a big lure (25cm long) so it pays to go big when looking for a big cod! 

Customer Long also managed a fish in around the Bundalong section of the lake to land some nice yellowbelly to around 2kg on medium sized freshwater yabbies.

Staff member Dylan and mate Daniel took a long drive over the Easter weekend up to northern NSW in search of big cod at Copeton dam. While the Easter crowds were crazy with jetskiis, wakeboats and family cruisers all over the place, the guys worked a lot of the lake in search of a fish. Daniel managed a nice yellowbelly on a swimbait slow rolled around a pile of submerged rocks which at least got them off the board.

Westernport has been perfect for squid fishing over the last week especially with the calm and clear weather from the weekend. Water clarity has been pretty good while the weather has been calmer, and this creates perfect visual hunting windows for the squid. While the weather stays calm and the water stays clear the squid fishing will continue to provide excellent results.

Customer James has been catching some quality models to over 1kg out from Tyabb. James has been fishing a few different Yamashita jigs, with the tidal flow dictating whether to use a standard or deep sinking jig. The deep sinking jigs have been claiming some big squid in deeper water out to 9m in depth. As usual along the area green 'grass whiting' patterns and also red foil colours have been effective.

Customer Colin has also been fishing around the Tyabb bank in search of some calamari with a nice bag of solid squid coming aboard. Size 3.0 Clicks jigs worked well with the black killer doing most of the damage. The red 'blood' line of this jigs stands out in sunlight while the 2 different cloth scale colours really help to attract the squid from a distance away.

Steve has been fishing the top of the port also, with a few nice squid coming from around the Yaringa area and also towards Hastings. Steve has been alternating between natural gold and green base jigs that imitate local baitfish species along with strong contrasting colours like UV whites and solid blacks. Steve also managed a solid cuttlefish during the same trip, which took one of the jigs as it was slow dragged just off the bottom.

Eildon pondage has been fishing well for trout again, with plenty of fish to keep anglers of all skill levels happy. With some nice weather forecast it is a good option to take the kids and get them hooked on fishing over the Easter break. Bank fishing is easy at the pondage with many spots an easy few metres from the car, which helps everyone. The hot baits at the moment are the 'trout dough and various coloured powerbait formulas. Don't forget the trout pellet berley though or else your pretty much serving up a pie without sauce!

Customer/semi local fishing identity Zoran with just a few of his recent fish from Eildon pondage. Zoran has been fishing both trout dough and powerbait, with bites swining towards the dough one day and then powerbait the next. Zoran has also been fishing longer, super soft tipped rods and light mono to detect any of the subtle bites that the bigger fish are generally known for.

Customer Greg also fished the pondage recently with mate Mark, where they had some success on powerbait. This nice brown was 1 of 20 fish caught on the day, with the most success had on pink coloured powerbait.

The local estuaries are running quite clear at the moment and the bream fishing has been a little bit quiet, but as always the rewards are there for the anglers with a bait or lure in the water. Speaking of lures, customer Ange has really nutted out some of the local creek fish, with chunky bream to 42cm taking small shrimp imitation soft plastics. Ange has found that for these lures to work effectively they must be rigged almost unweighted and left to sink as natural as possible along any likely looking structure. 

Over the next few weeks we should find the bream activity to increase if we get some decent rain, as the influx of freshwater will flush more food into the systems and give the fish some cover from predators. The Patterson and Yarra rivers will fire up if this event occurs, and it may even bring some school mulloway into these systems.

If you're planning a trip out towards Gippsland for the coming long weekend or maybe Easter you will be pleased to know that all of the estuaries along the coast are still producing some good fishing. The water temperature is hovering around perfect at moment and will remain good until about Easter when we normally get a couple of cold snaps. The bream will still be active in the cooler weather but fish like flathead will slowly start to shut down and reside into Winter mode.

Customer Peter just returned from a successful trip away to Mallacoota where he caught some nice bream and flathead. Peter persisted with some soft plastics under staff recommendation and caught flathead to 48cm using them. Fresh shrimp fished on fine gauge hooks worked well on the bream, with fish to 1.2kg coming aboard.

Customer Ange was down at Lakes Entrance recently. Ange spent a bit of time in locating the bream and working out the best way to target them, and after a bit of playing around he started getting fish. Ange found that live baits were the best way to go, with prawn and bass yabbies best - and fishing them unweighted was a must. Fishing tight to structure the fish were most active around the top of the tide early in the morning, with plenty of white knuckle battles around pier posts and pylons on 4lb line.

There were also plenty of other species active around Lakes for Ange. Loads of small salmon and tailor happy to eat a soft plastics like the Zman motor oil grubs, with some bigger fish in the gutters out on the beaches. Prawn numbers have been slower than around Christmas but there still have been enough for the keen anglers to net a good feed's worth. Tambo bay and around Metung have been good around the new moon.

Ange also noticed reasonable numbers of King George whiting around Lakes Entrance with many school fish in the high 30cm bracket. Late afternoon was the best bite window on the whiting with mussel, pipi and prawn all producing fish when fished on a paternoster rig. The jetties around the Cunninghame and North arm have been good areas to try for whiting, along with the deeper edges further up towards Kalimna.

The natives have been fishing well over recent weeks, with many holidaying anglers getting amongst the Murray cod and yellowbelly, from Nagambie on the Goulburn right up to the Murray around Barmah. Young guns Jayden and Lester fished with their dad up at Bonnie Doon recently where they landed 5 nice chunky yellowbelly. The most productive method was fishing a small freshwater yabby on a paternoster rig, with 2/0 'shiner' style hook the best choice.

Customer Steve was fishing up around Eildon just recently where he landed this ripper Murray cod on an Icon spinnerbait. The cod measured 84cm and was in excellent condition.

Customer Andy has been up on Lake Mulwala again recently where he loves to target the cod. Andy has found the fishing a bit slower of late, with water traffic probably a bit factor. Andy has still been getting a few smaller cod like this one later during the day and into the evening on surface lures, with this purple 'cod cracker' one of his favourites.

Customer Steve has been fishing further along the Murray near Barmah, where the fishing has been patchy. Steve recently caught a few nice silver perch like this by bobbing live shrimp around the snags. Steve has been catching the shrimp in bait traps along the edges of the river, with gum leaves or aniseed scent attracting the shrimp in.

Customer Chris has recently come back from holidaying along the Goulburn River at Nagambie. Chris sent us these photos of his sons Flynn and Atticus both with their first ever Murray cod caught just downstream of Nagambie. Both the boys are well and truly hooked on fishing and are well aware of catch and 'live to fight another day' fishing.