The government's Target One Million plan promises to give all eligible angling clubs up to $2000 to promote membership, which is open until March.

Mount Beauty-based Kiewa Valley Fishing Club secretary Peter Panozzo seized the opportunity and successfully secured funding.

“We applied for a grant of $1250 and we’re going to put on a family fishing day, some time in October, on the pondage at Mt Beauty,” he said.

“Part of the criteria for the grant is it has to be to promote fishing and get more members to the club.

“We’re going to try to get a few more members but we also want to teach the kids to fish. 

“The pondage at Mt Beauty has been stocked, we’ve just had a stocking of 2700 rainbow trout put in there just after Easter.

“So we’d like to take advantage of it – we’ve got some good fish in there, it’s been stocked since 2000.”

The North East Catchment Management Authority has been on the front-foot, having restored native habitat, built fishways and allocated environmental flows this summer.

It called on landholders along Mitta River to donate tree logs for a rehabilitation program which aimed to attract native fish back into the waterway.

In response, recreational fishing group Cods of Anarchy assisted North East CMA with members’ knowledge of fish movement on where to best place logs.​

Popular angling species in the region include brown and rainbow trout, Murray cod, golden perch, Murray spiny crayfish and redfin.

Plans are also under way to build two fishways on the Ovens River at Bright and Porepunkah in an effort to help endangered species migrate upstream.

The nationally-threatened Macquarie Perch would benefit from the fishway, which is on the brink of extinction.

Murray cod and trout cod could also breed once again in the upper Ovens as they did prior to European settlement.