G'day fishos and a Happy New Year.
Blue green algae is certainly getting a mention around the traps a fair bit of late.
YES, you can still go fishing in Hume Dam.
YES, there's a fair bit of algae in Hume Dam in places.
YES, there are recommendations not to swim in it.
YES, it's also recommended that your pets don't swim in it
YES, you can eat fish caught from Hume Dam, just don't wash filleted or cleaned fish in the dam - take them home to clean them up.
NO, there's no reason not to go fishing - it's fine.
With the amount of rain we've had, and the resulting amount of nutrients that have been washed into all waterways, I'm sure there'll be a lot of algae alerts across the country as the weather warms up.
Dartmouth (88.47 per cent): is going okay from the limited reports we've received over the past couple of weeks, but you definitely have to have a way to get down to the fish at the moment, and probably for the next few months now.
Warm weather equals warm water temps, particularly on the surface, so 10 to 20 metres is not an uncommon depth to find feeding trout at this time of year and paravanes and downriggers now come into their own.
All the same, lures and baits will catch fish, it's just a matter of getting them down to where the fish are.
The other big event at Dartmouth on Saturday is the opening of the Macquarie perch season.
Not too many fishos get excited at the idea of travelling to Dartmouth to chase a fish that has a bag limit of only one, but if you're up there already they are fun to catch and it just gives you another option if you aren't having any joy chasing a trout.
Scrubbies among the trees fished early and late in the day in around three to eight metres of water has proven to be the most successful method to catch a "Macca" over the years, but they will take small spinners, hardbodies or blades as well.
On another front, early reports sadly indicate the yabbies have been slow up there so far.
Streams: all seem to be fishing well.
Just about everyone I've spoken to has spun, bait fished or picked up a few on fly and there's no reason to believe the season shouldn't continue to fire right through.
Hoppers are still patchy in some areas I'm led to believe, a sign of the season I suppose, but there seems to be a few crickets about and scrubbies are also smashing them.
The Murray: below Albury has been pretty good, with cod and yellas cooperating.
Both are being picked up by lure and bait fishos and there's been some quality fish among them. I've heard of three meterys in the past week.
The trout seem to be lingering below the wall a little too, with a couple of decent ones picked up this week.
Eucumbene (46.9 per cent): is firing now too.
Trollers are doing well, with a first-hand report of one fisho picking up 28 trout for the day on a couple of lead line/Tassie combos on Monday.
Jindabyne (98.5 per cent) and Tantangara (25.1 per cent): are both producing some good fishing for trollers, fly and bait fishos also.
Could be well worth a tour of those three soon.
Hope you have a great New Year's Day and an even better 2022.
Hume Dam (98 per cent): has been scratchy for a small number of fishos, but on the whole most have been killing it.
Everything was all about the plastics last year, and there are still plenty being caught on them, but bait fishos are also having a ball this year too.
Yabbies and worms have been producing some great bags of reddies.
My brother Peter went for a bit of a test run in his new tinnie early in the week for a couple of hours.
He boated an impressive 44 good fish, mainly on yabbies and interestingly, in not a lot of water.
There's been a lot of reports lately of fishos doing well in the shallows, with three to four metres producing good numbers of quality fish.
We've also been hearing of a lot of activity in very shallow water, with small reddies, presumably those that have just been bred in the past couple of months, getting chased up into a metre or two and getting smashed by solid fish.
With that in mind it might be worth trying a couple of shallower hardbodies than normal and getting a little closer to the bank.
Lures like the Halco "Poltergeist" in the three-metre version, the McGrath standard deep diver or the Arashi 10' diver are good choices.
This time last year land-based fishos flicking plastics were catching heaps, so if you're a land-based angler, now's the perfect time to head out.
There's also been a few cod caught this week.
Matt Mighalls landed a beauty that looked around 800mm, while we've heard of around six others as well.
On the subject of cod it was fantastic to see another 200,000 released into Hume on Thursday.
Thanks to Vic Fisheries, VR Fish and all those volunteers who helped make it happen.
