Anglers enjoying some excellent trout fishing

BATLOW

Wayne Dubois

waynedubois@westnet.com.au

This month spells almost perfect conditions for fishing and camping in the greater Batlow area. The nights aren’t too cold just yet, the sun has lost its midday bite, and add to this the lack of water skiers and jet skiers, and you’re in for some great days on or near the water.

BLOWERING DAM

Blowering Dam has been a hive of activity, with anglers travelling from far and frequent the shallows in search of a good feed under the cover of darkness, so once the sun goes down it often pays to head up into the shallows and throw around a few big lures. With big golden perch often doing the same thing as the cod, you just never know what is going to whack your lure whilst scouting around in the shallows.

Golden perch can also be caught in the same areas as the Murray cod at this time of the year, but it pays to downsize your lures if you really want to target them specifically. The best lures to troll and cast for time of the year.

Once that sun starts to go down, if you’re targeting the natives you can’t fish too shallow. In fact, quite often the shallower the better!

You can troll, cast, drift and/or use your sounder to find the schools, then once a school is located drop plastics, ice jigs, blades, vibes or lipless crank baits into them and jig up a storm. Bait fishos can do the same thing with worms or yabbies bobbed on a paternoster rig.

Whether you jig with bait or a lure, it often pays to add a small 1-2” soft plastic or flashy fly about a metre or so above your offering. This will give you a chance of bringing a couple up at a time instead of just one. It is also handy if you’re fishing around weed because the plastic or fly will still be fishable if you happen to foul up your bottom offering.

TUMUT RIVER

Hopefully by the time this article hits your newsagent’s shelves the Tumut River wide to get amongst the big Murray cod action. Although cod numbers have dropped off considerably, they are still certainly worth targeting.

In low light and after dark, big golden perch will be up in the shallows with the cod, and will often take large lures destined for their bigger cousins.

Murray cod at this time of the year are best targeted with large lures, the bigger the better. The 150mm AC Invaders, for example, are ideal for casting and trolling, but any lure over 90mm will put you in with a chance.

The best places to troll lures are the old river bed up around the top end of the dam, and any rocky point or wall would be worth running over a few times. At night time, the big Murray cod will often

Stuckey lures and lipless crank baits. Alternatively, if you’re casting it is hard to beat plastics, rubber vibes and the ever-reliable blades, especially the Ecogear ZX range and Insanity Tackle Yab blade range.

to fish and quite easy to walk to another spot if your favourite hole or section is being fished already, or you think you have exhausted that hole.

Lure and fly selection in the flow doesn’t get much easier. If you’re casting lures, all you will need is a few spinners like Bling Spins, Rooster Tails and Mepps Bugs, and some little hard bodies like the Rapala CD and F range or IMA Sukaris. It also pays to stick to natural-coloured lures in the low flows because the water is almost always crystal clear, and a bright, flashy lure can sometimes spook the fish. Stick with natural rainbow and brown trout colours and you can’t go wrong.

If you’re fly fishing and would like to target fish with dries, you will have to fish the first hour of daylight in the morning or the last hour of rain, the trout fishing in the greater Batlow area is as good as ever.

Over the last few months redfin schools have been spread out all over the lake, from the surface down to around 100ft in depth, which can make it difficult to locate them at times. This month, the majority of those smaller fish in the shallows will work their way out to the deep water with their bigger mates, as they start forming their massive pre spawn schools. Once the fish are in these pre-spawn schools they can be easy to catch, as there are so many in a school and because they are so competitive. When the fish have almost all moved out to deeper water and fairly consistently hold at around the 25-70ft mark, it makes it much easier to locate them at this will be in low flow (fingers crossed) which will make for some spectacular fishing. Whilst it is in low flow, almost the entire river is accessible on foot, which makes it both easy light before dark. Alternatively, if you want to catch fish all day long it is hard to beat a small bead head nymph, suspended about 1-3 ft below an indicator or highly visible dry fly.

Redfin in our impoundments like Blowering Dam will move off the edges and start to form massive pre-spawn schools, making for some great fishing.