This is a real win for land-based fishos.

It gives access to quality trout fishing in one of the most beautiful parts of Australia. 

This has taken a while and has come to fruition through a lot of hard work by many members of the local Dartmouth community, along with Joy Sloan from VR Fish and Victorian Fisheries Authority senior project officer Anthony McGrath, with assistance from Goulburn-Murray Water. 

Vic senior fisheries officer Greg Sharp also helped a little and was in attendance at the opening ceremony, along with Travis Dowling who officially opened the new access. Dowling is CEO of the Victorian Fisheries Authority. 

Anglers have accessed the lake in the past, but public access has now been officially sanctioned.

Access has been approved from about 200m from the Lake Binamboola wall on the northern side, heading up the lake toward town to just short of where Binamboola Creek enters the lake.

A total of 20,000 trout were released, with about 5000 rainbows and 5000 browns let go on the initial release on May 3. Another 10,000 rainbows were released early this week. There were also quite a few brown and rainbow brood stock set free.

Most were fish around the 2kg mark, I’m led to believe, so you don’t have to wait for those smaller fish to grow – get up there, hook in and check it out. 

I’m sure the Dart pub will organise a meal for you if you don’t catch your own and it’s only a kilometre or so up the road. 

Dartmouth – is still fishing well, but you might want to take an extra couple of layers with you if you’re heading up this weekend. 

This chilly weather will certainly bring a few more trout toward the surface though, so the necessity for a downrigger is probably over until things warm up substantially again.

That’s not to say you won’t catch fish on downriggers over the next few months. 

It just means that you’ll definitely start to see lots more being picked up flat lining.

Streams – will definitely benefit from this drop of rain and it should make most trout think long and hard about spawning. 

I reckon that if I only got to spawn once a year, I’d be thinking long and hard about it too. Reports were very good again this week though.

Murray River – below Albury has dropped heaps. Boating is difficult unless you’ve got a canoe or kayak. 

It’s probably OK to drop a punt or very small tinny in the water if you can get someone to pick you up downstream and don’t mind jumping out a bit to drag over the shallow bits. 

Fishing should improve as the water settles at that level.

Murray above Lake Hume – is still fishing well, with reasonable numbers of cod being picked up particularly on bait.

Mulwala – is fishing well, sitting at about 82 per cent at the moment as the drawdown continues.

Not sure of how much it’s expected to fall this week, but there’s still plenty of water and cod coming in. Rowena Wilson showed husband Graham how it was done last Sunday with a 74cm model trolled on a hard body. Have also heard of a couple over a metre picked off the surface on Mega Pompadours. 

Lake Hume – is slowly rising and has jumped nearly half a per cent this week to be at about 31. Ducked out myself with son Sam and his mate Jayden “Snoop” Scammell on Saturday arvo and found plenty of fish which we couldn’t convince to open they’re gobs despite dropping yabbies, worms and vibes on them. Snoop showed us up though with an 18cm monster redfin he trolled. Luckily he’s only got small hands so it made it look much bigger in the photos. 

Snowy Lakes – are all OK without being brilliant, with Tantangara still the pick of them.