G’day fishos. So, what’s the best lure to use? It’s a question I hear many times a day at the Compleat Angler.
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And to be honest, it’s a question I ask myself every time I’m sitting in the boat, gazing down and mulling through the trays in my tackle box as I’m rigging up for the day. I’m pretty sure the routine’s the same for everyone.
You automatically pull out at least one of your old favorites for rod no. 1 without you beating yourself up too much at all.
Now, rod no. 2? Do I go with that one I caught a couple on this time last year, or maybe I should try the one I just bought that Fred caught one on a week ago?
As any fisho knows, this is a very important decision and can’t be taken lightly. It could be the difference between heaps in the Esky (chilly bin if you’re a New Zealander) or bugger all.
The way I look at it, there are four major factors involved: size, depth, action and colour – and I believe that’s the order of importance. It’s no good chasing stream trout with a no. 1 Stumpjumper, just as you wouldn’t chase cod at Blowering with a no. 1 Celta.
It’s no good trolling at 2m if you can see all the fish are at 15m on your sounder.
It’s next to useless trolling so slow with a Tassie Devil that it looks like a stick in the water or dragging a hard body lure that wants to swim sideways all the time. Colour? Well that one’s a real can of worms!
You can get into all sorts of arguments there, and that’s probably what we’ll do next week when we go into a bit more depth on all these things, including how to “tune” your lures!
As any fisho knows, this is a very important decision.
At A Glance
Dartmouth (78 per cent) – is still falling steadily, but that doesn’t seem to be worrying the trout at all.
Fenders and cowbells are still the hot favorites, particularly if you’re dragging a mudeye, gudgeon or scrubbie behind.
Mudeyes and gudgeons are also still the pick of the baits if you want to relax with a bubble float in the timber, too. The ladies comp finishes today, so it’ll be interesting to check out the results of that one next week.
Streams – will be really benefiting from the last couple of midweek rain events, and another one’s predicted for this week.
There’s been pretty good reports across the board, really, and we’ve had decent reports from spin, bait and fly fishos. So, no matter which is your favourite style, you shouldn’t have too much trouble bagging a couple.
Also had reports of a few tiny hoppers getting about, which is enough to get any red-blooded stream fisho excited.
Blowering (52 per cent) – has dropped slightly again this week, and the fishing is reasonably slow.
Burrinjuck (41 per cent) – has risen fractionally, and the yellas are going pretty well. Some mates went up last weekend and landed more than 30, mainly on bait, but picked a few up on ZX blades too.
Euc, Jindy and Tantangara – are all still rising slightly and fishing really well using all methods at the moment.
Hume (45.5 per cent) – has been great for yellas, if you’re on the right spot.
The fishing has certainly improved with the weather, but it’s the same old story – you’ve gotta find the fish.
We’ve had numerous reports of fishos landing good numbers in a session – the best being eight in an afternoon and a few reports of four or five – but there’s still fishos missing out, too. That’s fishing, I suppose.
Those catching them are using a variety of lures including McGraths, ACs, Storm Arashis and others.
The big thing is to be as close to the bottom as possible, even if that means bouncing along it at times.
Anywhere between 3-7m should put you in the zone, as long as you have those lures right down there. A couple of really good bags of big reddies showed up through the week too.
But good bags of good reddies are still very rare out there at the moment.
Let’s just hope they’re just a taste of things to come.
The Murray – from the weir wall down, right through to Mulwala has also been pretty good on the yellowbelly front, with quite a few coming in on both bait and lure despite the river running pretty hard.
There’s a few bycatch cod coming in too, so just be aware. The season doesn’t open for another two weeks, so fish should be handled as little as possible and released as fast as you can.
Catch you again next week.