If the wind had been calmer, we would have experienced perfect conditions to fish, especially at Dartmouth — chilly mornings and just a ripple on the surface, perfect to fish for trout.
Trolling a Ford Fender with either bait, worms or mudeye trailing behind, or a lure, Tassie devil-style or a hard-body minnow style, is the most productive way to fish at Dartmouth.
You can cover a lot of territory and go to where the fish are. Of course, you can also sit on the bank and angle a bait, use a float to keep your offering in the strike zone or just unweighted and let it drift in the current.
At this time of year, brown and rainbow trout have both finished their breeding season, so they will be hungry and on the bite.
While fishing the dam is the most productive way to fish, you can also fish the local rivers and streams.
This will mainly be bank fishing; it is not the time of year to wade the rivers, it’s too cold.
This is no big problem, as we are coming to the close of the trout season in most rivers and streams — there is no closed season in dams.
Closer to home, Eildon is also fishing well for trout, as well as redfin, cod and yellowbelly, but as the cold weather moves in, the trout are becoming more active for the same reason as at Dartmouth, which is to breed.
That means the river arms will be the place to fish, trolling lures as you do at the Dart, a bait or lure behind a fender, and also angling a bait under a float or just unweighted.
Even closer to home is the Goulburn River, where cod are still on the bite, all the way from Eildon Pondage to Shepparton and then to the Murray.
At present, the river has recovered from the floods; while most cod are juveniles, there are some keepers and an occasional metre-plus fish.
Between the pondage and Nagambie you can also find an occasional trout. These can be breeding stock from Snobs Creek that have fulfilled their breeding duties and have been released into that section of the Goulburn.
The Murray River is also worth wetting a line in, as well as Lake Mulwala. In Shepparton, you can fish the river; in fact, both rivers: the Goulburn and the Broken.
There are other spots worth trying, such as Victoria Park Lake in Shepparton, the Kialla Lake and Craigmuir Lake in Mooroopna, which are all close, handy and capable of producing good fishing.
Waranga Basin is also a good spot for dropping a line; large schools of redfin can be found — most fish are small, but bigger fish are among them.
Trelly’s products: Get prepared for cray season, it starts on June 1. Lots more stock is on its way.
There are irrigation channels, as well as Lake Nillahcootie, which is a place that used to be a mecca for redfin but now is a haven for yellowbelly.
To saltwater fishing, and from Adamas Fishing Charters at Queenscliff, Rod Lawn said he was getting mixed results.
Of course, he stayed home last Sunday to give his wife a special Mother’s Day treat and no, she did not have to clean any fish, that is Rob’s job, and I must say he is quite good at it. They say practice makes perfect.
Rod said he had a mixed bag fishing this week: kingfish around Point Lonsdale both inside the heads and offshore, and he spent time chasing tuna at Barwon Heads.
He was also bagging salmon on the run-out tide in the rip, as well as whiting and squid along the grass beds between the ferry terminal and the Point Lonsdale Jetty, and at the mouth of Swan Bay down past the white lady markers and St Leonards.
Rod said there were also a few resident snapper on the reefs both inside their heads and off coast.
Rod also said he was getting reports from Portland saying there was plenty of tuna in the region, some up to 20kg.
A boat trip of up to 50km offshore was required — a trip of up to three or more hours — but to hook a really big fish, it was well worth the effort.
Rob said fishing Western Port Bay was patchy, with some pinky-sized snapper biting.
They were along the shipping lane at Hastings, as well as all the way to the steelworks.
There are few natural reefs in Western Port Bay, but the rubble from dredging the channel has become a home for snapper, leatherjacket and other reef fish; meanwhile, there are also reefs around Phillip Island and San Remo.
You may want to head over to the border to Eden. There you can look up John Liddell, a former resident of the Goulburn Valley, and get firsthand information on where to fish and what is biting.
John said Freedom Charters was reporting good hauls of reef fish along the inshore reefs from Twofold Bay to Boyd’s Lookout and down south to Green Cape.
John said the action off the shelf was patchy, with a few yellowfin and southern bluefin tuna being caught, as well as close encounters with kingfish.
Further north at Narooma, Graham Cowley (also a former Goulburn Valley resident) said the fishing around Montague Island was the same as at Eden.
He added that when it was too rough to go offshore there were bream and flathead around the oyster leases and other structures.
We are almost halfway through the year, and so far so good. Stay safe from COVID-19 — it is still around, so take all precautions.
Most importantly, good fishing!