Reel Life | Finding the fish in the flood

By Kevin Tyler

Jun 15, 2023

Not great for fishing: Rivers and creeks were swollen and fast-flowing this week. Photo by Monique Preston

What a week of weather! Good for farmers but not for fishing.

Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content

All the rivers and streams were flooding, some more than others, and some roads were cut. But all in all, a big no for wetting a line except at water storages — Eildon, Dartmouth, the Hume, Waranga Basin, Lake Nillahcootie and the like — and while they will begin to rise, their rise will not be as bad as in the rivers and creeks.

The latest report from the Hume Weir is there are redfin galore. Just search around the tree line and you should come across schools of redfin — most are table size. Unlike at Waranga Basin, where they’re much smaller.

All of the rivers in north-east Victoria were flooded to some extent, which in turn has caused moderate rises in both the Goulburn and the Murray rivers, while the Broken River almost broke its banks.

At Eildon, reports of redfin, trout and cod continue to keep anglers interested. There, most results have been in the river arms, as well as in front of the wall.

Reports from Dartmouth indicate trout on the bite, anglers trolling a Ford Fender trailing a bunch of worms, mudeye or a minnow-style lure or a Tassie Devil are catching plenty of plate-size trout, and at this time of year they are mainly brown trout. Rainbow trout are in their breeding season and are less plentiful, but you will manage a few in the arms.

Try the Mitta arm and the Dart arm; there are some creek inlets too, and these are also worth fishing.

For the next couple of days or more, we will have to let the rivers drop and the banks dry out before it will be suitable for fishing.

Rod Lawn, from Adamas Fishing Charters at Queenscliff, said that once the weather settled down, it should be back to normal fishing for this time of year.

Rod said he was still catching pinky-size snapper, silver trevally, salmon and flathead around the heads and the offshore reefs. Inside the heads near the Point Lonsdale Jetty and the ferry terminal, the southern calamari squid have started their breeding run. Rod said shrimp-style jigs and baited jigs were getting results, with good hauls of big squid, as well as an occasional arrow squid being taken.

Rod also said it would be another couple of months before the big breeding snapper would return to the bay. He said they had moved into NSW waters, as well as towards South Australia.

It was a similar story in Western Port Bay, where just pinky-size snapper remain. Rod said there were gummy shark to be had in the deep water off Phillip Island and into Bass Strait. He said the whiting had also moved out, and fishing for them was hard work.

Trelly's Tackle World: Brand new Bassman spinnerbaits. Scope bait 1oz, six colours. A must-have for catching cod.

Over the border in NSW, John Liddell at Eden said fishing for tuna and kingfish was hard work. On the brighter side, he said the fishing on the inshore reefs was good, with plenty of snapper and morwong being caught. John said there were some bigger snapper among the haul, as well as pinky-size fish.

John said the best fishing was between Green Cape and Boyd’s Lookout, next to Twofold Bay. John said flathead were being caught on the sandy bottom between the reefs, and metre-long flathead were in the deep water off Green Cape.

I had a long chat with Graham Cowley about fishing around Narooma, north of Eden, and Graham said things were a bit different in his neck of the woods.

Graham said it had gone quiet off the shelf, which is a great deal closer to shore at Narooma than at Eden, being just off the shore side of Montague Island, while at Eden it is more than 20km away.

Graham said he was catching good hauls of reef fish, including horse-size snapper, which he said had been scarce in his region, but since the removal of commercial fish traps had started to make a comeback. Graham said it had been one of the best snapper seasons he had seen for a long time.

Meanwhile, plenty of flathead have been caught along the sandy bottom between the reefs, inshore of the Island and the mouth of the lake. He said when it was too rough to go offshore, large flathead and bream were being caught around the oyster leases and other structures.

Meanwhile, I managed to pick up this story from a source in Italy.

The longest and biggest river in Italy is the Po River, and late last month, an angler landed what is considered one of the biggest freshwater fish ever. It is, without a doubt, the biggest catfish of all time. The angler was using a rod and reel, and pulled in a catfish that measured nine feet, four inches, or almost 3m.

That’s all for this week, I hope the weather improves.

Stay safe, stay out of the floodwater, and good fishing.