cooler weather

Yesterday I headed to Kyneton for a redfin session and it seems the cool weather this week has had a positive effect on the fishing with the smaller models shutting down completely and the larger fish going into attack mode to fatten up for the winter. I spent just on an hour and a half fishing the river and caught about 14 fish with another 6 or so nice fish lost near the bank. The first fish was hooked on a squidgy but the water was a little dirty and I thought some brighter lures might do better so I tried a small darting minnow I have had for a while and never had success with, and boy it worked. I worked several sections of the pool for 45 minutes and caught maybe 10 fish on it mostly near the edge as the lure was only shallow running to 3 foot, most fish were over 30cm. When the bite slowed I tried some deeper running models and changed to a brighter colour and managed a few more fish but not as consistently.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

hazelwood pondage again

I started this week in Morwell with my family staying at Hazelwood pondage in the camper with the intention of trying again for a barra. The Sunday night when I got there I was not too concerned with fishing as we had just drove a fair way and spent a while setting up so I had a few casts and called it a night . In the morning it was still and cool so I grabbed the yak and spent a couple of hours fishing along the bottom wall casting vibes and diving minnow lures but no luck, I did however get some promising bounces back on the sounder showing some great arches in a couple of meters of water. Later that arvo after I spent some time kayaking with the kids and watching them swim, we spent an hour catching cichlids then had some lunch. After midday the wind started to blow and the weather forecast changed to damaging wind and storms so we hurriedly packed up the camper and headed home a day early without my barra yet again. The powerplant was shut down this week so not long left to try again.

 sunrise through the steam at the pondage

 drifting along the wall in the kayak this looked like a barra chasing some small fish

limeburners boatramp

Last Friday I went over to Geelong and ended up at limeburners point as the wind was a bit to strong onshore from the other side of Corio bay. Using bluebait I was getting heaps of bites and getting baited quickly but not hooking any fish. I repeatedly changed hooks to smaller sizes until I finally hooked what was out there. After several dropped fish I finally landed a good size King George Whiting that was over 30cm long. Unfortunately the bite dropped off within about 10 minutes of getting that one and I had wasted an hour changing tackle and trying each hook size and losing bites so missed most of the action at sunset. The other rod had whole whitebait on and didn't get any action for three hours, but one good whiting is worth the trip, yum.

Seymour

I worked in Kilmore today and headed to Seymour when I was done for a session, and I was determined to bring home a fish worth the trip. it took three hours before I even got a bite and I landed a 25cm redfin, then missed another strike on the next cast. About an hour and a half later I caught a 40cm yellowbelly under a fallen tree and got a nibble the next cast but no take. 5 hours fishing in total and 1 good keeper. I also took my girls out last weekend and we caught about 20 small redfin between us in daylesford while out on the inflatable boat.