Checking life jackets regularly saves lives | Fishing

With the fish chewing their heads off in Lake Hume and Easter so close, you can guarantee one thing, NSW Waterways and Vic Water Police will be about.

It doesn't take long to find your inflatable jackets and open them up and check if they're due for testing.

The date of purchase should have been written on them when you bought them and that's the date everything is based around.

In most cases, you can self-test at least once but then must have the jacket tested by a certified tester, but that depends on what's printed on the jacket.

You might find you can self-test a couple of times between a professional test.

One thing's for sure, if it's out of date, it will cost you big bickies - but it's not only that though.

If it's not in working order, it could cost you your life.

If you have room in your boat, why not grab an old-fashioned life jacket and keep it onboard. It could save you both.

Dartmouth, at 63.4 per cent, is still a bit scratchy but should become more consistent again as the cooler weather settles in. I believe it'll be just a matter of locking into the depth the fish are feeding at, and at the moment, they seem to be a bit all over the shop. As the weather settles, so should the fish and you would think they'd have made up their minds by the time the Dart Cup takes place from June 11-13 (Queens's birthday weekend).

Why not get in early, sign up, and give yourself a shot at some of the "early bird" prizes!

Streams have been fishing great.

I was lucky enough to get up the hills myself last weekend with a few mates and landed around 45 trout, ranging from little streamies to around 1.5 kg.

There was a bit of a mix of browns and rainbows and they were caught on a variety of fly, spin and drifting unweighted scrubbies or crickets.

As with most of these sorts of weekends, we drank too much, ate too much, solved all the world's problems and generally had a ball.

Oh, that's right, did a bit of fishing too!

We were in the Mitta Valley but I believe most local streams should've fished well and will continue to do so until conditions change dramatically.

Lake Hume, sitting at 47 per cent, is still kicking butt despite dropping over 1.5 per cent again this week.

There's been plenty of great stories again during the week, with all of them revolving around a plastic above something.

Bait, lure, another plastic or a vibe of some description, it doesn't matter, put a plastic above to increase your catch.

A lot of fishos continue to increase their personal size limit as the fish get fractionally bigger, and their lust for a feed of reddies is being satisfied.

Many are also setting themselves a maximum bag limit as well, probably because they're sick of filleting!

The Murray: below Albury is running hard and has improved slightly on what it had been.

Bait fishos are probably having the most success, with "Chickens Hit" or cheese being the pick.

The Murray: upstream of Jingellic has been great, with some very solid fish coming in on lures when you can strike the water reasonably clear, or your normal variety of baits when it's not.

Nine-year-old Declan Faithfull managed a 93cm beast on bait in the Pine Mountain area recently and was rightly very proud of himself.

Well done young man!

Blowering (74.7 per cent): is fishing ok on the redfin front, with most fishos picking up a feed.

The normal techniques of trolling, bait or flicking vibes etc is the go but the cod are a bit slow.

I've spoken to a few fishos who've been up recently and done ok on the reddies but have tried pretty hard for some cod, with very little success.

The Snowy Lakes: have been a bit tough.

Jindabyne (74.35 per cent) seems to be the pick of them, with a few being trolled up top early and late but downriggers needed during the day.

Anyhow, hope you get a chance to get out over the weekend and catch something.

Good luck if you do.

Send your fishing photos, with details of your catch, to 0475 953 605.