It was a bit of a weird one though, with nowhere near the hype leading up to the opening itself.

I'm putting that down to the fact that we had this split opening, with December 1 falling on a Sunday.

It's just not the same as having an opening weekend! I've asked around the trade and shops all over NSW and Victoria reported the same vibe.

I believe such a huge event should have a designated weekend start, not a midweek or split weekend as we had this year.

It put a lot of fishos in limbo. Many will be having their "opening weekend" this weekend. Next year's opening will fall on a Tuesday.

Dartmouth (53.7 per cent) - has been pretty consistent of late, with 90 per cent of fishos picking up fish (keeping in mind that 87 per cent of statistics are made up on the spot).

Lead lines have been working a treat, particularly when combined with a fender or cowbell and worms.

The same combo with a Tassie behind has also been working well, with a few fish flat lined early and downriggers picking a few up during the day.

Lake Hume (32.7 per cent) - was really picking up in the warmer conditions, but between the cooler weather we've had this week, the wind and also cod opening, I haven't heard much.

I have seen a couple of photos of a great bag of reddies, a couple of nice cod and a few yellas though, so the conditions obviously didn't stop everyone from heading out.

It's certainly shaping up as a reasonable reddie season, which I think everyone's been hanging out for.

There's more warm weather predicted this week, so let's hope we're telling you all about heaps of big ones next week.

Streams - are ticking along pretty well. While the Mitta's a tad high, it's producing a few fish with the odd big fella amongst them. One of our customers landed a 62cm last weekend on a 60mm minnow. There's been some great stories from the creeks and streams all around the place.

But again, I'd urge you to hit them soon as they're pretty low and the dry conditions won't be doing any of them any favours in a month or so.

Mulwala - will be a hive of activity this weekend with the Classic in full swing.

There's always a massive number of fishos down there, so the following week might be the go if you're not entering the comp.

Blowering (45.4) - is well worth a crack despite the recent fish kill. If you haven't heard, there has been somewhere around 40-plus cod reported dead up there and theories of all sorts are being bandied about.

Fisheries have taken fish and water samples and will hopefully come up with a reason in the not too distant future. Things that have already been dismissed are poor fish handling by anglers and sprays and chemicals used be the nearby pine plantations.

Apparently there have been quite a few cod relocated to Blowering from other stressed-out waterways of late, so another theory is these fish might not have acclimatised as well as hoped. Hopefully we'll have an answer shortly.

The Murray - upstream and downstream of Lake Hume was pretty low for the cod season opener.

Some people like it that way and others don't, but the fish didn't seem to care too much as there were plenty caught, depending who you spoke to.

Graeme "Willow" Wilson and I shot down the river around Albury for a quick session on Sunday morning and picked up two little blokes that had to go back. But my cousin, Kevin Poynter managed a 55cm keeper, all on bait. Unfortunately we were off the water by 7.45am so we could get to work, but it sounds as though there were enough caught to keep most fishos happy.

Some nice fish were caught in the Upper Murray on both bait and lure. I saw a photo of a ripper caught near Jingellic, while Josh Read nailed a beautiful, fat 1.120 early Thursday morning off the top.

The Bidgee also fished well both above and below Wagga.