Fishing days are finally here again

All lakes in NSW have been opened too, so it's great news all round.

On the Vic front, they are allowing day trips only - no overnighters at the moment. This is obviously a way of keeping people within a reasonable distance of their homes and is a sensible way of doing it.

If you've got a favourite destination you want to fish and can realistically travel there and back in the day, you can do so.

For fishos close to Albury-Wodonga, that opens up a myriad of streams/rivers as well as popular lakes such as Hume, Dartmouth, Buffalo and Eildon - which all fit into that day trip category.

The freeing up of the restrictions has come fairly late for stream fishos as the trout season closes at midnight on June 8, leaving us with only four weeks left to have a crack.

I wouldn't be wasting any time heading out as more rain is predicted for late this week, and that might mess at least one weekend up a bit.

The lakes being opened in NSW is fantastic, but at time of writing I still haven't been able to clarify how far fishos are able to travel.

We're obviously in the same boat as Vic as far as not being able to stay overnight to camp, but I'm still unsure if the old "you can only fish your closest water" still applies - whether it's like the family travel thing where 100km applies or whether we're able to do the day trip thing, which would open up a place like Blowering ... a destination lots of fishos want to hit.

I've had fishos tell me they've rung police in different areas and getting different answers. The original wording was "traveling beyond your closest place to fish is not recommended". Still confused? Me too!

Dartmouth (50 per cent) - fished really well from when it opened up on Wednesday. About eight boats hit the water, and all caught fish. Just about all were using fenders or cowbells of differing colours with either King Cobras or Tassies behind.

The lake is still rising and should fish well for a while yet you'd think. Don't forget to drop in and spend a dollar or two with the locals on the way up or back.

Streams - are looking spectacular, and with those last couple of decent rains it's sent a lot of reasonable fish upstream looking to spawn.

I couldn't help myself when those fishing restrictions were opened up and somehow found myself in the Mitta Valley at daylight Wednesday morning. I started with a little brown on a Yakamito Slim Minnow and had a couple of decent fish follow the same lure in the next hole, but no takers. I wandered up to secret spot #37 and spotted a monster in close to the edge so changed to a scrub worm, managed to spook him a little and he wandered out to mid-stream.

After about half an hour, I finally drifted that scrubbie onto his nose and he just couldn't resist. It wasn't a huge fight, so I was able to slip him into the net after a few anxious minutes. He ended up being 67cm and about 6lb and was the biggest I've caught in that stream.

I've had quite a few reports from the Kiewa and Ovens and both are going well, with a few decent fish sighted in those too. The Mitta's at a reasonable height and should produce some good fish over the next few weeks.

Hume (21 per cent) - has only risen 2 per cent this week, but a massive 7 per cent over the past two weeks.

Haven't heard much since it opened, apart from a rumour that a trout was trolled on Thursday. I spoke to another fisho that said he'd been out and it was dirty and pretty quiet.

The Murray - upstream and downstream of Hume is also pretty dirty at the moment. Not sure how long it's going to take to clear. Despite that, bait fishos are still picking up the odd good fish.

Mulwala - is fishing OK if you ask Mark Larsen, who caught a few and lost a few on Wednesday. Mark picked all his fish up while casting his McGrath spinnerbaits further down the lake after he'd relocated from the Bundalong area, where he found the water high and very dirty.

Eildon (43 per cent) - has risen about 5 per cent in the past couple of weeks and there's been a couple of great cod caught since Wednesday, along with a few trout. Could be worth a look for local cod fishos that might not want to risk driving in NSW to Blowering.