On Golden Ponds

GOLDEN

PONDS catching yellowbelly in dams

Starlo explains exactly how, when and where to successfully target trophy golden perch or yellowbelly in ou r dams and lakes u sing baits, lu res and flies. If you fish ou r inland impou ndments, or would like to, this one is absolutely essential reading!

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

GOLDEN

PONDS By Steve ‘Starlo’ Starling

he Australian freshwater fish known to science as Macquaria ambigua has quite a few common names. That fact alone points to its importance and popularity, as well as its extensive geographic distribution.

Some folks know this fish best as the golden perch or simply “golden”. To others, it’s a yellowbelly or “yella”. In South Australia, it’s far more likely to be referred to as a callop (based on a regional Indigenous word), while old-timers everywhere still occasionally call it a Murray perch or white perch.

Starlo with the calibre of trophy golden perch or yellowbelly many anglers still only dream of catching. Truth is, fish like this are readily available in many of our dams.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Jo with an averagesize yellowbelly from one of our stocked, inland impoundments. These fish are widespread and prolific. ABOVE

Golden perch (to give them their officially-accepted common name) have a vast natural range that extends all the way from the lower Murray in South Australia to the remote and arid inland reaches of central Queensland. There are also distinct and separate populations living in the eastern flowing Fitzroy-Dawson catchment of central northern Queensland, as well as the ephemeral outback rivers, creeks and waterholes of the Bulloo, Lake Eyre, Coopers Creek, Diamantina and Georgina drainages in central Australia, potentially extending all the way into the south east corner of the Northern Territory in wetter times. Some of these isolated populations may well be sub-species, or even distinct species. Surprisingly, a reasonable amount of work remains to be done on the taxonomy or scientific classification of the scattered yellowbelly clan. 4

Golden perch have a vast natural range that extends all the way from the lower Murray in South Australia to the remote and arid inland reaches of central Queensland.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Golden perch from cleaner waters often exhibit darker, more vibrant colours and various patterns of spots and blotches. BELOW When encountered in muddier, more turbid waters, these fish tend to be much lighter in overall colour. RIGHT

There’s also debate over the precise mechanisms responsible for the spread of these hardy, adaptable perch into such a diverse and widespread range of waterways beyond the Murray/Darling Basin. While shifting geology and climate have no doubt played their parts over the millennia, there’s an increasing acceptance that the First Australians also actively translocated important food sources from one area to another. Of course, similar translocations have also occurred in more recent times, since the arrival of European settlers.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

OUR ADAPTABLE PERCH Today, the geographic spread of golden perch across Australia is significantly more extensive than it was when James Cook mapped our eastern seaboard in 1770, even if actual numbers of these important fish have declined in some of their original strongholds, such as the lower Murray River. In particular, goldens or yellowbelly have become one of the most popular candidates for stocking into man-made reservoirs, weirs, dams and other impoundments across the country, including many water storages located on our eastern flowing watersheds. Using modern aquaculture methods, golden perch are nowadays relatively easy to breed in hatcheries, both private and government-run. In most instances they thrive when stocked into man-made impoundments — ranging in size from tiny ponds and farm dams to giant lakes — even if they’re unable to regularly reproduce effectively in many of these non-flowing bodies of water.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

The golden perch or yellowbelly can tolerate an incredible range of water temperatures and levels of clarity. BELOW Classic impoundment yellowbelly country. That rocky ridge line extends beneath the surface, providing prime fish habitat. LEFT

With reasonably fast growth rates, a diverse diet and the ability to tolerate an amazing range of waters, it’s hardly surprising that golden perch are such a popular candidate for stocking in dams.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

With reasonably fast growth rates, a diverse diet and the ability to tolerate an amazing range of water temperatures — from single digit lows to mid- or even upper-30s highs — as well as clarity levels from gin clear to molten chocolate, it’s hardly surprising that golden perch are such a popular candidate for stocking in dams.

Smaller goldens from dams display a similar body shape and colouration to river fish. They’re also not bad eating at this size.

BELOW

For the purposes of this publication, I plan to concentrate entirely on those golden perch stocks living in our many man-made impoundments. These fish tend to behave a little differently to their river-dwelling brethren and also grow larger on a more regular basis, making them a keenly-sought angling target. We’ll look (briefly) at both bait and fly-fishing strategies for catching goldens, but the bulk of the content in this e-zine will be dedicated to examining successful lure fishing methods.

With a reflective tapetum membrane in their eyes of the same sort found in barra and mulloway, a well-developed lateral line and sensory pits under their jaws, goldens are well adapted to finding food in muddy water or low light. RIGHT

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Many anglers are choosing to use lighter and lighter tackle when targeting golden perch in dams these days — with good reason.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

HOW BIG DO THEY GROW?

1 0

The author with a genuine football. Heavy-shouldered fish like this 60 cm-plus specimen can easily top 6 kg in weight… This one was likely closer to 7 kg.

BELOW

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Golden perch are often cited as being our second largest inland native fish, behind the mighty Murray cod. However, given half a chance, Murray’s cousin the trout cod can also reach an impressive size, perhaps pushing goldens into third place. But regardless of their exact place on the podium, yellowbelly are without question big fish by freshwater standards, especially for our dry old continent. Exactly how big golden perch or yellowbelly might potentially grow is a matter of considerable conjecture. Any on-line or library search of the relevant literature almost always tosses up vague or passing references to a massive specimen of 23 or 24 kg (over 50 pounds) pulled from Kow Swamp in Victoria during the early 1900s. However, there’s increasing agreement among the boffins that this “mega-belly” was most likely a wrongly-identified Murray cod, as its size exceeds any other recorded golden by an unlikely margin.

Heavyweight yellowbelly from our dams often exhibit an exaggerated shoulder hump and an almost disc-like body shape. ABOVE

Yellowbelly to almost 9 kg have been caught in rivers, while their damdwelling counterparts very occasionally give the 15 kg mark a nudge.

What we do know for certain is that yellowbelly to almost 9 kg (20 pounds) have been caught in rivers, while their dam-dwelling counterparts very occasionally give the 15 kg (33 pound) mark a nudge… That makes them a seriously large freshwater target!

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

That said, any golden perch much over 60 cm in length and 6 kg in weight is very special fish, and many anglers spend a lifetime searching for one in that league. Fortunately, there are now a number of “trophy” yellowbelly waters where the chance of encountering such impressive specimens is reasonably high, especially if you’re willing to put in the time and effort. Those dams include the likes of Copeton, Burrendong, Blowering, Hume and Eildon, to name some of the better-known venues. However, there’s one place that stands out from the rest of the pack as Australia’s premier fishery for football-fat golden perch, and that’s Lake Windamere, located on the Cudgegong River in central western NSW, between the towns of Mudgee and Rylstone.

1 2

I would hazard a guess that Windamere has produced more 60 cm-plus yellas over the past three decades than any other single waterway in the country, and I’ve been fortunate enough to catch quite a few in that league myself from its green-tinged waters, as well as more fish over 55 cm than I could possibly hope to count. I make no apologies for the fact that thousands of hours spent pursuing Windamere’s golden bullion across 30-plus years has shaped my thinking about these fish and honed my techniques for targeting them. That said, I’ve frequently taken those philosophies and methods to other impoundments right across southern Queensland, NSW and Victoria and applied them successfully to the pursuit of these fish.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Certainly, there are minor regional variations that may make a difference on the day, but overall, the lessons I’ve learnt in Windamere waters have served me well wherever golden perch live. Now I’d like to share those lessons with you.

Big yellowbelly are truly impressive beasts. The distinctive extended filaments on their pelvic fins are most likely loaded with sensory receptors for finding and “tasting” potential food.

ABOVE & RIGHT

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

WINDAMERE DREAMING

1 4

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

In a good season, the yellowbelly encountered by anglers at Lake Windamere can average close to 55 cm in length, and this has been the case for at least the past three decades!

I’ll never forget my first visit to Windamere Dam, near Mudgee, at the very end of the 1980s. I’d been hearing great things about the blossoming golden perch fishery in this impoundment for several years, firstly from my old mate, Frank Prokop (who played a pivotal and largely unsung role in the initial stocking of these natives into the lake), and later from Lithgow-based sport fishers like Barrie Gill, Glen ‘Stuie’ Stewart and Alex Hickson. I was dying to give it a go! On that warm November morning I parked my car at the dam viewing area and walked across the wall to the opposite bank, venturing down onto the grassy, wooded slopes to cast my floating/diving plug into a near-full lake. I was brimming with anticipation, but the first hour or so passed uneventfully, apart from my learning how to float the deep diver up over the fringing weed beds without constantly fouling it. I was into the mechanical process now, almost on auto-pilot… which made what happened next all the more exciting. Just as it had 50 times already that morning, my swaying, shimmying plug appeared from the gloom a few metres out from the steep bank, rising through the green-hued water as I briefly paused the retrieve. Suddenly, however, a large, pale form materialized behind and beneath the lure, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. It was a fat, golden-hued yellowbelly, fins flaring, eyes almost crossed in concentration, mouth open scant centimeters behind the lure’s rear trebles!

It would not be stretching the truth to nominate Lake Windamere as Australia’s premier still-water venue for trophy golden perch.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Trembling with excitement, I stabbed the rod tip again and wobbled the diver forward another 30 or 40 cm. The golden’s fins flared and it bustled up even closer behind the slowlyrising plug, until the lure was almost resting in the curve of the fish’s deeply scooped forehead. I held my breath, but as the lure continued to rise, the fish’s fins folded away and its mouth closed. It began to sink from view and turn away… No! I stabbed the rod tip and picked up line, and the fish shot up and flared angrily behind it once more, then slowly began sinking into the gloom. Another stab, another rush, another flare, and then a slow shutting down and sinking away.

What happened next remains etched into the hard drive of my memory 30 years later… 1 6

Roger Apperley is a long-time Lake Windamere stalwart. Check the fish hugging the bottom on the sounder screen!

BELOW

One from the archives: a young Scott Mayberry with a Windamere chunk from the early 1990s.

BELOW CENTRE

This was it. I’d run out of room. There was less than a metre of line left between my rod tip and the lure, which now hovered in just 40 cm of water, literally at my feet, and the fish had almost dropped from sight. I stabbed the rod tip down one last time. What happened next remains etched into the hard drive of my memory 30 years later…

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

The fish shot up into the shallows, its back actually breaking the surface, and cleanly inhaled the lure while simultaneously performing a tumble turn that any Olympic swimmer would’ve envied. The light baitcaster outfit bucked violently in my hands as weed and mud churned up at my feet and a big, spade-like tail slapped the water. They probably heard my whoops of sheer delight 20-odd kilometres way in Rylstone! I’d love a dollar for every time I watched that process or something very similar to it repeated over the following decade or so, as I came to intimately know and love this magnificent freshwater fishery located just three hours’ drive west of Sydney’s outer fringes. As I said earlier, it would not be stretching the truth to nominate Lake Windamere, on the Cudgegong River system, as Australia’s premier still-water venue for trophy golden perch. It’s impossible to say how many tens of thousands of

big yellowbelly this amazingly consistent dam has produced over the past 35 years, but it’s an awful lot! Fish over 50 cm are common there, and specimens in excess of 60 cm are taken almost every day between September and April. The biggest nudge or even top 65 cm and can weigh 8 kg or more. Those are massive yellowbelly in anyone’s language. Despite having fluctuated between full (through the late ’80s and early to mid-90s) to less than 20 per cent of its potential capacity in the worst drought years of the new millennium’s first decade, Windamere has gone right on producing trophy goldens, massive silver perch and the odd cracker of a Murray cod, year in and year out. There aren’t too many dams you can say that about. Today, Windamere continues to attract keen anglers from far and wide and hosts several major tournaments and competitions every season. But the fishing there has definitely changed over the decades…

Starlo would hate to have to guess how many yellas in this class he’s pulled from Windamere’s nutrient-rich waters since his first, way back in 1989.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

THE EARLY DAYS

In those early years, I couldn’t get enough of Windamere’s addictive yellowbelly fishing. Several times each spring and early summer I’d make the relatively long drive from the south coast of NSW to fish its waters, often in the company of fellow Windamere disciples like Paul Kneller, Kevin and Scott Mayberry, Barrie Gill, Alex Hickson, Glen Stewart, Pat Morris, Brett Young and others. A little later came regulars like Chris Stalgis, Simon Rees, Roger Apperley, Rory and Reece Muller and far too many more to list.

1 8

At this time, Paul Kneller — who then lived south west of Sydney in the suburb of Campbelltown — was fast becoming a well-respected Aussie lure crafter. Paul had purchased some original diving plug designs from Ray Whitmore and developed them into highly effective cottage industry production models. Paul’s Deception Shrimps soon became the “go-to” lure at Windamere, and remained so for well over a decade. You simply didn’t think about going to Windy in those days without a tackle box crammed full of Deceptions in a range of colours!

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

During the 1990s you could use any lure you wanted to at Windamere — as long as it was a Deception Shrimp! They still work there (and elsewhere), too.

LEFT

Almost all of our fish were caught from the shoreline in those early years. We used our boats to travel from one part of the lake to another before nosing them up onto the bank, spreading out and casting from the shore. It was an effective technique, with the added bonus of most strikes coming within a few metres of the rod tip, and many of them being highly visual affairs. Fish would often follow a lure multiple times before either taking it or losing interest. I will never forget working on a particularly nice yella for nearly an hour one day, trying almost every lure in the box before finally suckering it into eating one of Ray Broughton’s smaller RTB Legends. That was my first golden over 10 pounds (4.5kg) and I made the mistake of keeping it to eat… the first and last time I ever tried that with a big Windamere golden! (As an aside, smaller specimens from this dam, up to a couple of kilos, make reasonable table fare, but the big ones are fatty, weedy and virtually inedible.)

You simply didn’t think about going to Windy in those days without a tackle box crammed full of Deceptions!

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

I have so many wonderful memories from those times, more than a few of them related to the highly competitive streak that soon emerged amongst a bunch of good mates working a likely stretch of bank together. Shouting excitedly about a fish following your lure was guaranteed to call in a veritable bombardment of casts from your companions, all of them trying their best to “poach” your yellowbelly! We soon learnt to say nothing, but also became very adept at reading each other’s body language and detecting even the most subtle intake of breath, slightest straightening of the back, or widening of the eyes that might accompany the sighting of a golden football behind a wobbling lure. Standard tackle for this style of fishing in those days was a bass-weight baitcaster spooled with 4 to 8 kg braid and connected to a 6 or 8 kg mono leader. On this no-nonsense gear, fights were typically short-lived affairs, with those fish hooked at close range often remaining in sight for the entire 30 or 40 second duration of the encounter. Yellows were known for hitting quite hard but quickly throwing in the towel, and the big, fat females tended to be especially lethargic at times. We didn’t care. It was all about the hunt, the follow and that so-often visible take. It was also during these early days that a few of us got into carrying our fly rods as we tramped the banks, using polarising sunglasses to spot fish sitting amongst the weed beds before casting various fur flies, crayfish patterns and Zonkers at them. Fly fishing for goldens was a demanding and exacting pursuit, but the sense of achievement when it all came together made it easy to forget the long distances walked, snakes narrowly avoided, rejections received and strikes missed! Peak season in those days was regarded as being just six or eight short weeks from early October through into late November, although we’d sometimes visit in September or even late August hoping (usually in vain) to find the water temperature over that magic 16 to 18 degree trigger mark (more on that later). Often, these early trips produced poor results and, more and more, we came to regard late October and November as the magic months. I must admit that they’re still pretty good, but the window has definitely widened over the decades.

2 0

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Paul Kneller lands another yella from one of Windamere’s rock retaining walls during the very early 1990s.

Kneller is one of Australia’s most respected timber lure makers. TOP

A very early “cutlet-bone” Deception Shrimp. These things are collectors’ items today. ABOVE

A much younger Paul Kneller with a typical bank-caught fish from a spot we nick-named “Deception Bay”. The dam is at near-full capacity in this old photo. FAR LEFT

Fly fishing for LEFT The Deception Shrimp must goldens was a have accounted for tens of demanding and thousands of yellowbelly captures exacting pursuit. through the 1990s and beyond.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

A CLASSIC IS BORN 2 2

The boat ramp can become rather busy on a competition weekend! RIGHT

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

I’m not sure what originally gave me the idea, but sometime during those first few seasons at Windamere, I got to thinking that it might be fun to run an informal, invitationonly fishing competition for our close-knit circle of Windamere regulars over a weekend during the peak of the season. So it was that I picked a weekend in November, 1992 for the staging of what I called the “Lake Windamere Invitational Cup”. The entry fee that first year was a very modest $5 per head and, from memory, we had a field of 20-odd anglers competing, although there wasn’t a lot of “competition” going on, and no real prizes or trophies on offer. However, even then, I must have had a vague inkling that this humble event might grow into something much bigger, as I included these prophetic words in the preamble to the original set of rules: “In years to come, you’ll be able to proudly tell your grandchildren that you were there at the first Windamere Cup.” I couldn’t possibly have known how true these words would be!

The Windamere Golden Classic is a very familyoriented event. Jo and Charlotte show off a motherand-daughter double header taken during the tournament.

By the second year, the field had doubled and things had become a little more serious. We even had some prizes: mostly collections of Paul Kneller’s beautiful timber lures (hand-lettered with the inscription Windamere ’93), as well as a cheap, plastic trophy. It was, as the photocopied rules explained, still “a low key affair”, but it had definitely kicked up a notch or two. (By the way, those hand-inscribed Deception lures are now serious collector’s items!)

By the second year, the field had doubled and things had become a little more serious.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Not too surprisingly, Paul Kneller’s Team Deception (made up of Paul, his mate Kevin Mayberry, Kev’s son Scott and former Fishing World editor, Gil Schott) took out that first halfway serious event, although I’m proud to report that my son, Tom (then aged just 11) landed the biggest golden of the weekend, with a whopper of 63 cm taken from a stretch of shoreline many of us old timers still refer to informally as “Tom’s Bank” (down near the line of yellow buoys marking the beginning of the no-boating zone adjacent to the dam wall). By the following year (which Team Deception again won in convincing style), the field had grown significantly. Come the fourth year, we were already knocking would-be competitors back by the dozens in the hope of keeping it a small, friendly and essentially low-key affair. But the cat was well and truly out of the bag and it seemed everyone wanted a piece of the action!

A threeman team competing in one of the Windamere Golden Classics. Established bank-side vegetation indicates that the water level has been relatively stable for a few years at this point. ABOVE

Over the following years, the field has slowly expanded, the structure of the event has altered a little and the prize pool has certainly become much more substantial. By the late 1990s it was already far too much for me to handle on my own and, in 2001, Windamere stalwarts Pat Morris and Ian “Barra” Miller largely took over the running of the annual event, ably assisted by the likes of the Hall brothers (Chris and Andrew) and many others. The Nowra-based

2 4

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

The event appears to be in great hands as it heads for its 30th anniversary.

For many years the Classic’s organisers have produced a new cap design each spring. Here Charlotte Reiter shows off the 2014 version as she releases a lovely golden perch.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

2 6

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Jo with another great scoring fish that helped propel her to the Champion Lady Angler’s podium two years running. Note the gently sloping bank behind. Edges like this produce a lot of fish.

SmooChasers team also chimed in shortly after as invaluable helpers and caterers, cooking BBQs and otherwise pitching in where needed, providing a remarkable level of totally voluntary support for the organisers. Over the decades since I kicked it off, I’ve missed only a handful of Golden Classics (as the event is now called) and I’ve regretted every one I’ve been unable to attend. A few genuine diehards like long-time organiser, Pat Morris, have been to all or most of them and continue to rock up every year. During the early years of the new millennium the tone of the event changed a little with the advent of sponsorship, bigger prizes and the arrival of some serious tournament anglers in their Skeeters and other “go fast” bass boats. A few of the older hands and originals lamented that this would be the beginning of the end, and that the underlying spirit of mateship and friendly competition was being eroded. Thankfully, time has proven them to be wrong. Even the serious tournament types like Mark Mangold, Scott Towner and Dave Welfare treated the weekend as a bit of a break from the intensity of mainstream, ABT-style bream and bass circuits. They let their hair down and had some fun in between fishing hard. As a result, the Classic has never lost its home-grown, not-too-serious feel, despite the fact that some competitors do fish very keenly for the duration of the day-and-a-half comp’, as well as backing up for the popular “Dash for Cash” on Sunday morning. By about 2015/16, Pat and Ian made it publicly known that they were ready to hand the reins over after doing such a tremendous job with the Golden Classic for so many years. In 2018 the new organisers — a team ably led by Jakko Davis, Mark Donnelly and Jack Roberson — were running the show, with valuable help from their family, friends and long-time Classic stalwarts. These keen younger anglers have injected a new energy into the event and it appears to be in great hands as it heads for its 30th anniversary.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

EVOLVING TECHNIQUES

Jo and Charlotte work some standing timber. Vertical “grubbing” produces its fair share of yellowbelly in most of our impoundments. 2 8

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

As already explained, in the early days of the Golden Classic and before it, the vast majority of yellowbelly caught at Windamere were taken by casting floating/diving plugs (especially those deadly Deceptions!) from the bank. Very few of us fished from our boats. Slowly, this pattern began to change as anglers tried casting and trolling from their boats. This was greatly facilitated, of course, by the widespread uptake of bow-mounted electric motors through the latter part of the 1990s, along with the increasing sophistication (and affordability) of decent depth sounders. By the early years of the new millennium, the pace of change had really picked up. The tournament brigade introduced soft plastics, spinnerbaits, metal blades and those revolutionary Jackall lipless crankbaits that had already been turning the impoundment bass world on its head for several years. Later still came soft “hybrid” vibes like the amazingly effective Jackall Masks and skirted or fur-dressed jigs.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Soft and hard vibes have revolutionised impoundment fishing for golden perch. ABOVE

A highly productive mix of sloping shoreline and deep, standing timber.

TOP OPPOSITE

3 0

Sophisticated spinning tackle was by now becoming much more common than baitcasters, and both line and leader sizes were diminishing as the “finesse” approach gradually caught on. I’m quietly proud of having played a small role in the dissemination of these concepts, which dramatically improved most anglers’ catch rates: at Windamere and well beyond its shores. Results improved as these new strategies were adopted. We went from expecting to catch two, three or four fish a session while casting plugs from the bank at the best times of year to regular double-figure tallies while jigging the 3 to 8 m depth band outside the weed beds from our boats with blades and vibes rigged on bream-weight gear. With the aid of these modern approaches, we also expanded the acknowledged “season”, regularly catching Windamere’s goldens right through summer and well into autumn or even beyond by using these modern techniques and tools. In particular, innovative anglers like Glen Stewart and Dean Hamilton helped to stretch the season at both ends with the use of skirted and furdressed jigs fished very slowly on the bottom. (All of these techniques and are covered in more detail further on.)

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Sophisticated spinning tackle was now much more common, and both line and leader sizes were diminishing. It goes without saying (or should) that the old techniques continue to catch fish, and still have their occasional day in the sun, but across the board and over the longer run, if you’re not jigging, shaking or shuffling hard and soft vibes or blades, bouncing plastics, or crawling skirted jigs over the bottom from a boat equipped with a bow-mounted electric motor and a decent depth sounder (ideally one with sidescan imaging), you’re really not in the race any more. There are new twists emerging all the time, and I’ll attempt to cover as many of these as possible in this e-zine. There’s also no denying that angling pressure has increased on Windamere and other popular “golden ponds” and that the fish have responded to this increasing pressure. They’re no longer necessarily as easy to catch in numbers as they were at the height of the “finesse revolution” near the end of the first decade of the new millennium. But by keeping up with changes and staying abreast of new angles, it’s still possible to enjoy excellent golden perch action in our dams.

Starlo presents the coveted Windamere Golden Classic trophy to Jakko, Robbo and Mark of Team DTF at the conclusion of the 2014 event. These three guys would later go on to run the invitational tournament.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Vessels of all shapes and sizes compete in the annual Lake Windamere Golden Classic. ABOVE

GOLDEN CLASSIC WINNERS TO 2019 3 2

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

We went from expecting to catch two, three or four fish a session while casting plugs from the bank at the best times of year to regular double-figure tallies.

Ecogear ZX metal vibes or blades have become a “go-to” lure for yellas over the past decade or so.

Despite all of these significant changes, it warms my heart to see that the Windamere Golden Classic has not only survived and prospered, but managed to maintain its integrity, level of camaraderie and family- friendliness, and that the beautiful trophy (consisting of a mounted golden perch on a driftwood base) that carries my name is more keenly sought after today than it has ever been. Despite pressures from many directions over the years to abandon the invitational structure and open the comp’ to all-comers, the Golden Classic continues to be an invitational tournament and will likely remain so, just like its barramundioriented counterparts in the Top End. That’s not about elitism or snobbery, but rather an effort to maintain the original objectives and stop the thing growing beyond the control of its organisers. But of course, old teams (and individual competitors) depart and new ones are welcomed on board from time to time, so it can never hurt to lodge an expression of interest if you’re genuinely keen to have a crack. The best starting point for this is via the event’s dedicated page on Facebook ( just search for Lake Windamere Golden Classic).

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

WHAT MAKES A GOLDEN POND? Before leaving the subject of Lake Windamere and moving on to examine tackle, techniques and approaches that will catch golden perch in dams wherever they’re found, it’s worth pausing for a moment to ponder exactly why it is that Windamere and a relatively small handful of other impoundments so regularly produce over-sized, super-fat yellas. I suspect there are a number of factors that conspire to make Windamere the famous “football factory” that it is. To begin with, it has been heavily stocked with these fish for a relatively long time. Secondly, there’s arguably less competition with other species here than in some seemingly similar dams (although cod numbers do seem to be slowly increasing, which pleases many anglers — myself included). Interestingly, Windamere has also remained blessedly free of redfin perch and European carp for a lot longer than many other dams, although both pests have reportedly made appearances there in recent times. (There are plenty of goldfish and possibly goldfish/carp hybrids in the dam, but until quite recently few, if any, “common carp”.)

3 4

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

The water conditions and forage base (food supply) at Windamere obviously lend themselves to the sumo-like growth of golden perch.

A released golden perch powers down through Windamere’s green-tinged water, liberally laced with small clumps of suspended algae.

Sitting in water between 4 and 8 m deep while casting lures diagonally at the shoreline is one proven method.

LEFT

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Most importantly, the water conditions and forage base (food supply) at Windamere obviously lend themselves to the sumo-like growth of golden perch. This is especially the case when the lake’s level remains reasonably stable for extended periods, allowing for the growth of luxuriant aquatic weed beds that are home to a veritable smorgasbord of invertebrates: from tiny insect larvae to abundant shrimps and yabbies. There are also very healthy populations of small forage fish in this dam, including various native gudgeons and smelt, and the yellowbelly definitely prey on these, as well. Finally, I think there’s one factor that contributes much more to the trophy size of Windamere’s goldens than many people realise. That ingredient is the sheer fertility and high nutrient load of the lake’s waters, which is almost certainly boosted by agricultural run-off and other man-made sources. Anyone who fishes Windamere — especially with lures or flies — will be only too well aware of the dreaded “snot weed” or slime that coats every hard object located within a few metres of the surface. Bump a lure against the trunk or branch of a standing tree, or bounce it over a rock or gravel bottom in much less than 3 m of water, and its hooks will become totally clogged with this insidious brown “snot”.

This ever-present slime can be a real pain at times, but I suspect that it — along with semi-regular blooms of blue/ green algae experienced in the lake — point towards an abnormally high nutrient load in the water. This is no doubt a double-edged sword, for while it potentially degrades water quality and promotes the growth of all that nasty slime and algae, it no doubt also helps to supercharge the entire engine of aquatic life in the lake. There are many examples of similarly nutrient-rich water unexpectedly leading to the development of “trophy” fisheries in other parts of the world. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Bow River, in the Canadian province of Alberta. This world-class trout fishery only really boomed after nutrientrich run-off water from sewage treatment plants, farms and other examples of development along its increasingly populated shores turned it from a relatively infertile freestone river into a rich spring creek… Food for thought!

Yabby holes are a good indication of the presence of tucker for fish in any dam. 3 6

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

This unusual angle really illustrates the phenomenal thickness and girth of Windamere’s bigger goldens. They don’t call this place the Football Factory for nothing! Note the tiny metal blade with its diminutive assist hooks that this fish was pinned on.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

3 8

GOLDEN PERCH BIOLOGY

Yes, deep divers still work! Interestingly, the golden perch’s physiology has much in common with the coastal-dwelling fish it shares many ancestors with. ABOVE

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Like a lot of Australia’s freshwater fish, golden perch or yellowbelly are thought to be relatively recent arrivals from the ocean… although it’s worth bearing in mind that “recent” in this context means many millions of years! However, looking at their body shape and lifestyle, it’s not hard to see that they could easily share common ancestors with species such as estuary perch and Australian bass.

In those millions of years since their move to freshwater, golden perch have evolved to thrive best in slow-flowing riverine environments, although they’ll also happily live in non-flowing billabongs, swamps, lakes and waterholes. However, given the opportunity, these native freshwater fish almost always move back to the rivers, especially at times of significant stream flow. In fact, they are the most mobile and migratory of all our inland natives.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

In the era before extensive dam and weir construction throughout the Murray/Darling Basin, these fish regularly travelled thousands of kilometres up and down our rivers in search of food, preferred water quality and ideal spawning conditions. Even in the modern age of heavily modified rivers and reduced flows, goldens have been recorded travelling from South Australia all the way to central Queensland and back again… They are real wanderers!

Schools of aggressive male fish in this size class often accompany big, spawn-laden females during springtime.

As touched upon earlier, yellowbelly are also hardy and adaptable creatures. They’ve been shown to survive in water ranging in temperature from lows of a very chilly 4 degrees Celsius to highs of a bath-water-warm 37 degrees! They’re also reasonably tolerant of increased salinity levels, and can supposedly live, at least for short periods, in water containing up to 33 parts per thousand of salt, which is quite brackish. In rivers, male golden perch reach sexual maturity at about three years of age, when they’re typically 32 or 33 cm in length, while females usually spawn for the first time when four years old and around 40 cm long. These fish can live for a long time under ideal conditions, and have been recorded to ages of at least 26 years. Yellowbelly spawning is traditionally though to occur in late spring or early summer, as water temperatures rise beyond 20 degrees and day lengths increases. However, in more recent times, it has been shown that spawning can occur at other times of year and in considerably cooler water, if other conditions are favorable. Regardless of the precise time of year, golden perch spawning is often (but not always) associated with a “fresh” or rise in river levels. It’s also been suggested that the “petrichor” or aromatic oil released by rain hitting dry earth may help to trigger yellowbelly spawning.

Ideal conditions can lead to massive spawning events. With each adult female releasing anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of eggs, a single successful spawning can effectively repopulate vast stretches of river.

The yellowbelly’s fertilized eggs are planktonic, semi-buoyant and drift freely with the current. They take anywhere from 24 to 36 hours to hatch, depending on the temperature of the water. Survival rates of juvenile yellowbelly and the subsequent recruitment of adult fish is much higher if spawning is associated with flood events that inundate floodplains and other areas that are above the normal height of the river. This is probably associated with a resulting boom in aquatic vegetation and populations of micro-organisms that the juvenile perch feed on.

Spawning in man-made dams or impoundments is far more problematic for golden perch, and there’s little evidence of extensive, successful natural recruitment of this species in these waterways. That certainly doesn’t mean that they don’t display classic pre-spawn behavior, nor that they don’t actually spawn in these still waters. It simply means that either the eggs fail to hatch or, if they do, there are important links missing in the food chain of the fry and juveniles that prevent most of them from surviving and growing. For this reason, yellowbelly stocks in most dams must effectively be

4 0

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Starlo with a “wee one” from Lake Boondooma, in Queensland. They grow pretty fast in our dams and don’t remain at this size for long.

BELOW

Golden perch are the most mobile and migratory of all our inland natives. viewed as a “put-and-take” resource. Without regular restocking of hatchery-reared fish, populations will naturally decline over time due to predation, fishing pressure, disease and natural mortality.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

4 2

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

THE SPAWN BITE IS KEY!

Almost without exception, the very best fishing for golden perch in our dams tends to occur during the spring and early summer period, and is closely associated with pre-spawn and spawning behavior on the part of these fish. As already explained, there’s very little chance of yellowbelly actually spawning successfully in these man-made waterways, or at least of them producing numbers of viable juveniles that can potentially grow into sub-adult or adult fish… but of course, they don’t know that! They’re still driven by the same primal urges as their wild, river-dwelling counterparts, and they display similar behaviours. It’s these behaviours make them so much more catch-able at these times, especially on lures and flies.

The peak bite period for yellowbelly in most of our dams occurs when water temperatures rise through the 16 degree Celsius mark and continue climbing. Fat, spawn-laden females like this beauty are what the springtime fishery in our dams is all about. ABOVE

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

These distinctive open pores on the gill covers of mature golden perch are a good indication that the fish are in spawning mode. RIGHT

Click to watch a freeswimming yellowbelly following its hooked school mate to the boat. RIGHT

4 4

The peak bite period for yellowbelly in most of our dams tends to occur when water temperatures rise through the 16 degree Celsius mark and continue climbing towards 18 to 20 degrees. This can occur as early as late August or September in some low altitude Queensland impoundments, and as late as November or even early December in Victorian waterways, especially those at higher elevations. As these conditions begin to occur, yellowbelly form into schools or loose groups that often consist of one or more large, mature females accompanied by many more aggressive, mid-sized males. The physical appearance of the fish also alters slightly. Mature females exhibit distended and reddened vents, and both sexes develop open pores on their gill covers. The males commonly exude milt when handled. These fish are very catch-able at this time. Whether they’re feeding actively or simply have raised levels of aggression and territoriality is unclear, but either way, they’ll certainly hit well-presented flies, lures and baits.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Jo with a super fat female golden perch taken in late spring. This fish would likely be heavily laden with eggs.

4 6

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

One common phenomenon witnessed by anglers at this time of year is the presence of free-swimming goldens accompanying their hooked school-mates all the way to the boat or bank. (Watch the video clip hereabouts for an example of this behavior.) When this happens, it’s a very good indication that you’ve found an active school! Don’t be in a hurry to leave the area, as multiple captures are often possible. All of this frenzied pre-spawn activity tends to build to a crescendo as the surface water temperature finally cracks the 20 degree mark, and it can be especially spectacular if there’s a sudden downpour of rain leading to inflows of runoff water from feeder creeks and gullies. At these times, large concentrations of fish often move towards these inflow areas.

Fish taken through the autumn months are often not as obese as those encountered in springtime, as they’ve either dropped or reabsorbed their roe and milt by then.

BELOW

are again possible. The fish (and associated fishing action) might not be quite as concentrated and frenetic during this autumn bite period, but it’s nonetheless quite reliable in many dams. As a bonus, this is also an excellent time of year to target Murray cod in many impoundments, sometimes leading to the potential of Come autumn, as surface temperatures once again drop sessions providing a mix of encounters with both of our through the magic 22 to 16 degree band, there is often a secondary bite window for yellowbelly, and some great catches inland freshwater heavyweights… Happy days indeed! Once the water in our dams exceeds 22 to 24 degrees Celsius, golden perch activity can rapidly decline and the pre-spawn schools tend to break up and disperse, although these fish are still catch-able, albeit that the peak bite times tend to move to the dawn and dusk “change-of-light” periods.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

FINDING GOLD The single most important structural element in the entire impoundment is the shoreline itself.

This stunning Googong gold nugget came off a very nondescript bank. ABOVE RIGHT

Tapering points are always worth a second look. Add rock and timber and they’re even better! FAR RIGHT

4 8

When you stand on the shores of one of our larger dams — especially one that’s close to its full capacity — and look out across that seemingly featureless expanse of water, finding fish such as yellowbelly can seem like an incredibly daunting task… one not too far removed from the notion of finding a needle in a haystack! However, I’m about to give you five vital keys for cutting all that water down to size and dramatically reducing your hunting zone. Those five keys are: structure, water movement, water quality, vegetation and food supply. Let’s look at each one in more detail:

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Great country, but where to start? STRUCTURE Structure is an absolutely critical key to finding concentrations of fish in most scenarios, and yellowbelly dams are certainly no exception. When it comes to native fish species like golden perch, the single most important structural element in the entire impoundment is the shoreline itself… Read that sentence again, because it’s important! You could actually do a lot worse than to draw an imaginary line 30 to 40 m out from the shore right around the entire lake (and any islands within it) and then concentrate ALL your fishing efforts in this relatively narrow corridor, between that imaginary line and the bank. Sure, you’d miss out on some potentially great fishing opportunities out in open water, well away from the edge (especially around standing timber, weed beds and submerged hill tops), but you’d also catch plenty of fish by solely working the shoreline. Truth is, in most dams,

there’s more fish life to be found in that 30 – 40 m wide band than in the rest of the impoundment combined. To take it another step, we can then identify significant structural elements within that shoreline “ribbon of life” and concentrate on those, further reducing the extent of water that needs to be covered to find goldens and other native fish. These elements will include points, isolated rocks or rock piles, standing or fallen trees, weed bed edges and even manmade structures like jetties, launching ramps, rock walls, road culverts, fence lines and boat moorings. Remember that some of the best of these structural elements will be submerged, so you may need to use your depth sounder to identify them. So, we’ve already cut that massive, daunting body of water down to a much more manageable strip, with some potential hot spots identified within it. Now we can begin to overlay the next four key factors and further refine our search pattern.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

WATER MOVEMENT We often refer to dams or impoundments as “still waters”, but in truth, they’re hardly ever completely still. The water in them constantly moves, mixes and flows, often slowly and subtly, but nonetheless measurably. This critical water movement is driven by currents from inflowing streams or outflowing downstream releases, by any prevailing wind, and also by thermal mixing or convection. You can often identify these subtle water movements in lakes by looking at the way aquatic vegetation lays over in one direction or another. There may also be vague swirls or eddies around or behind trees, rocks or points. Study all these clues closely to identify the direction of the flow and pinpoint any areas where it may be a little stronger than elsewhere. These are the lake’s sushi trains! Overlay water movement onto structure and you’re beginning to narrow your hunting zone down significantly. Some feeding fish will almost always choose to locate themselves where current meets structure, especially if the water in that location also suits their biological preferences, which brings us to the next key:

Feeding fish often hold where current meets structure. Starlo calls these “sentinel trees”: large, isolated trunks standing well away from any other obvious structure. They can be fish magnets at times.

RIGHT

The wall and pumping tower at Googong Dam, near Canberra. Boating is often banned close to the spillway (for good reasons), but bank fishing options may still exist. Check the rules. FAR RIGHT

5 0

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

WATER QUALITY

VEGETATION

“Quality” in this instance doesn’t mean the cleanest, sweetest tasting water, but rather the water that’s best suited to the target fish we’re chasing: in this case, golden perch. That means water of a clarity, temperature, dissolved oxygen content and so on that best suits those fish.

Aquatic vegetation is present in one form or another in just about every dam in Australia. It might be as seemingly insignificant as specks of suspended algae, or as dramatic as dense, luxuriant weed beds that reach all the way to the surface. Whatever form it takes, this vegetation is the engine room that drives the lake’s entire food chain, feeding the tiny organisms and invertebrates that form the broad base of the aquatic food pyramid.

Understanding these parameters takes time and a bit of homework, but eventually the pieces of the puzzle will begin to fall into place. Elsewhere in this e-zine, we’ve looked at the temperature bands that tend to result in the best yellowbelly fishing. Finding these preferred temperatures can be a major key to success. Coming out of winter, yellas will seek out areas that are even slightly warmer than the rest of the lake, just as we will huddle around a heater on a cold winter’s morning. That could mean a shallow bay where the prevailing wind has piled up sun-warmed surface water, or over a rock pile that has absorbed the heat of the sun and is now radiating it back into the water. At the end of summer, when the water can be uncomfortably warm, fish will often seek out cooler areas, which could mean that they’ll move out a little deeper (but not so deep that there’s no food and very little dissolved oxygen).

Significantly, aquatic vegetation also pumps oxygen into the water and can cause variations in its temperature. Look for fish in and around aquatic vegetation, but particularly along the inner and outer edges of weed beds and in any defined gaps or channels running through those weed beds… The meat is rarely far from the salad! You also need to be able to recognize “good” weed. This is typically healthy-looking and vibrantly coloured. Brown, dying or dead and “slimy” weed is less attractive habitat for fish and the things they eat. Healthy weed tends to grow in clearly defined depth bands and on softer bottom strata, especially when lake levels have remained reasonably stable for several months.

Pre-spawn golden perch also tend to seek out any slightly discoloured inflows from feeder creeks or rivers. Finding such conditions can potentially result in a “gold rush”! Even when there’s no obvious inflow, bands of discoloured water along an edge where a prevailing wind has created wave action are well worth checking out.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

That pelican knows all too well that terrain like this holds fish.

ABOVE

Early mornings can be a great time to chase goldens. RIGHT

The good stuff! Lush aquatic vegetation like this is an engine of life. FAR RIGHT

FOOD SUPPLY There’s an old saying that goes along the lines of “find the bait and you’ll find the fish”. This axiom is as true in our freshwater yellowbelly dams as it is when trolling for billfish or tuna out along the edge of the continental shelf, as well as just about everywhere in between. Concentrations of small bait fish such as bony bream, smelt and gudgeons, as well as invertebrates like shrimps and yabbies, are a major key to locating freshwater predators such as golden perch and Murray cod.

A brilliantly-coloured Googong golden pulled from its weedy home. 5 2

Some very good dam fishers I know will happily spend half a day or more simply looking for the best bait (food) concentrations in a lake (using their sounder and their eyes) before even rigging a rod and beginning to fish. This approach makes sense.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER By combining the five key elements I’ve just described and looking for those very special hot spots where they’re all present in close proximity to each other, you can dramatically narrow down the sections of an impoundment you will need to search with your baits, lures or flies in the hope of finding active, feeding yellowbelly and other fish. In fact, you may end up refining your quest to less than one or two percent of the surface area of that seemingly enormous and daunting body of water you found yourself confronted with at the start of the day… How good is that? Don’t expect to get everything right the first time you try this dam busting strategy, and don’t always assume you’ll find all five keys in exactly the same spot. But by putting at least three or four of them together every single time you wet a line in a dam, I can practically guarantee that your strike rate will improve dramatically… And you can’t ask for much more than that!

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

TO CATCH A PERCH

BELOW & BOTTOM RIGHT

Traditional floating/ diving plugs and minnows still account for plenty of yellowbelly when cast-andretrieved or slow trolled.

There are many and varied ways to catch golden perch in our dams.

5 4

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

There are many effective ways to target golden perch or yellowbelly in our man-made dams. You can fish for them with baits, lures or flies, and within those broader fishing styles, there are also lots of variations and nuances. Baits can be fished on the bottom or suspended in mid-water, left to sit quietly or actively jigged and “bobbed”. Flies of many patterns can be cast on floating, intermediate or sinking lines to work different layers of the water column. Finally, when it comes to lure fishing, the sky is the limit in terms of the variations possible! It’s also possible to cast-and-retrieve, jig or troll your lures. There really is something to suit everyone in this game. After a brief examination of both bait fishing and fly fishing for dam-dwelling yellowbelly in the following pages, we’ll move on

to look in much more detail at some of the most effective lure fishing strategies for these fish. I won’t attempt to cover every possibility, choosing instead to focus only on the methods and lure styles that have emerged as being consistently reliable in more recent years: the true stand-out techniques. I’ll also apologise in advance for not talking much about trolling for golden perch in this e-zine. Trolling can be a highly effective method for catching these fish, and it’s also a good way to cover lots of water and potentially locate scattered groups of fish or individual perch. However, it’s not something I’ve spent very much time doing and I’ll happily put my hand up and admit that I don’t particularly enjoy trolling. For me, chasing yellas in dams is all about actively casting and retrieving or jigging lures, and that’s what I intend to focus on here. That said, if you’d like to give trolling a go, I would suggest the following basic approach: Firstly, use a decent depth sounder to find some fish and identify the depth they’re holding at. Choose a diving lure that you know runs at approximately that depth and troll it at a slow pace (walking speed or less) while using your sounder to follow the chosen depth contour. Rather than simply trolling in one direction around the lake, “pattern troll” specific zones or areas where you’ve identified reasonable numbers of likely targets on the depth sounder screen. Hand-hold your outfits and add extra action to the lures by jigging the rod tip. Experiment with different lure sizes, colours and distances behind the boat and, when you begin to experience success, repeat the most productive patterns and troll runs.

It’s possible to cast-andretrieve, jig or troll your lures… There really is something to suit everyone in this game!

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

BAIT FISHING FOR YELLAS Bait fishing for golden perch in dams can be highly effective and is also lots of fun. In particular, it’s a great way to introduce kids or casual fishers to the sport, as well as providing a sometimes welcome break from the constant activity of casting, jigging or trolling. Tying up to a tree for lunch and soaking a couple of baits can sometimes turn your entire day around! While yellas fall for some outlandish offerings at times — including lollies, bread, chunks of boiled egg, strips of steak and cheese — the most consistent results tend to be associated with the use of natural, locally-sourced baits. The best of these include earthworms, scrub worms, bardi grubs, shrimps and yabbies. Interestingly, more than a few decent perch have also fallen to frozen saltwater prawns over the year, but if you’re intending to go down that path, please only use Australian caught or farmed prawns, as imported varieties present a very real risk of introducing exotic diseases into our waterways. Sometimes you can buy these baits from tackle shops or campground kiosks in inland areas, but most keen freshwater anglers prefer to catch or gather their own. This not only saves money, but also tends to produce a better and more effective end product.

5 6

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Worms can be dug up with a spade or collected from compost heaps and piles of damp leaf litter. Bardi grubs are extracted from their burrows using special wire snares, while shrimps and yabbies are normally caught in baited traps. As a bonus, larger yabbies, red claw and even shrimps can be cooked up and eaten back at camp while the smaller ones are set aside for bait. Be sure to check the current, local rules and regulations regarding the number, size and style of bait traps you’re allowed to use, and clearly mark each trap or its associated float with your name and phone number. Also, avoid transporting or translocating bait species from one body of water to another, as this can easily spread diseases and pests through our inland waterways, with dire consequences.

Bait fishing for golden perch in dams can be highly effective and is also lots of fun! A simple rig consisting of a sinker running freely down to a hook is ideal when “bobbing” baits for yellowbelly. BELOW A couple of live shrimp pinned like this make an attractive bait. The sounds made as they click and flick against each other increases the appeal. LEFT

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

There’s an old saying that fresh bait is good and live bait is even better, and this is usually the case when chasing yellas or any other species. A wriggling, twisting bunch of worms or a flicking, kicking shrimp or yabby generally has far more appeal to a hungry fish than one sitting dead and inert on the hook. That said, there can be exceptions to the rule, and on some days, you’ll actually do better by presenting a small, dead yabby or large shrimp with its shell and claws crushed or cracked, allowing those appealing aromas to seep out.

If you intend to release fish, you’ll need to stay on the ball to prevent deep hooking, or use a wide-gape hook.

The deadliest strategy of all when bait fishing for perch is a method called “bobbing”. This involves using a simple rig with a smallish (thumbnail-sized) ball or bean sinker running freely on the line or leader down to a sharp No. 1 to 2/0 hook. This hook is baited with a small yabby, a couple of shrimp or a bunch of lively worms before being lowered to the lake bed, ideally close to some likely structure such as a standing tree, snag pile or submerged boulder. Allow the baited rig to sit on the bottom for a good 30 seconds or so, then lift it half a metre and gently jiggle or bounce the rod tip before lowering the bait to the mud or gravel again. Repeat this process until you register a bite, and if nothing happens after five or 10 minutes, move to another spot.

5 8

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Starlo “comfort lifts” a bait-caught golden at Cania Gorge Dam, QLD. BELOW

The deadliest strategy of all when bait fishing for perch is a method called “bobbing”.

A jig head makes a perfect vehicle for presenting a natural bait like this large shrimp. If you’re fishing alongside vertical structure such as a drowned tree or rock pile, try this bobbing action at various levels in the water column, all the way back to within a metre or two of the surface. Try to make contact with the structure from time to time by actually banging your sinker and baited hook against the timber or rock. This can attract and excite fish. Yellowbelly will sometimes peck and nibble quite tentatively at baits, while on other occasions they snatch and grab far more aggressively. Either way, you’ll need a sharp hook point and a timely lift of the rod tip to successfully set the hook. The use of wide gape, kahle or circle-style hooks is popular and highly recommended. Not only are these patterns particularly good at pinning and holding goldens, they also tend to hook them in the mouth rather than deep in the throat or gullet, facilitating the quick release of any unwanted fish. If you’ve never tried bait fishing for yellowbelly, you really should give it a go. It’s not only fun, but also teaches you a great deal about how these fish feed and where they hang out.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

GOLDENS ON FLY

6 0

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Catching golden perch or yellowbelly on fly gear in our dams can be both challenging and immensely rewarding, so it’s hardly surprising that it’s becoming more and more popular each year. There are two productive approaches. One is to “sight-cast” to fish that have been spotted first, and the other is to “blindcast”, covering water much as you would with lures. Sight fishing calls for water clear enough to see cruising or stationary yellowbelly, and obviously relies on these fish being at depths shallow enough to be spotted in the first place. Generally speaking, you’ll need to be able to see at least 2 m into the water to sight fish effectively, and 3 m-plus visibility is much better. This almost never happens in some dams (especially those with large carp populations) and is rare in others, while in a few (such as Blowering, near Tumut), it’s a common occurrence. Goldens aren’t always easy to see, especially when you first go looking for them. However, over time you’ll become much more adept at identifying their distinctive colour and shape. In particular, you need to watch closely for the blueish hue that’s often evident in their tails, when viewed through the water. Movement will sometimes telegraph the presence of these fish, as well. Wearing quality polarised sunglasses really helps, of course, as does having the sun at your back, and the optimum time frame for this caper is usually between about 10 AM and 3PM on fairly cloudless days.

Brett Clarke of BWC Flies shows off a lovely fish taken on one of his deadly Donny Brasco fly patterns.

Make no mistake: sight-casting a fly to a visible yella and actually catching it is no pushover! Expect many rejections and non-reactive fish. And when one finally does amble over to your fly and sucks it in, be prepared to be amazed at just how quickly it can also spit it out! The “suck-and-spit” is one of the few things golden perch are genuinely fast at doing.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Keep your eyes peeled for the distinctive blueish tones of yellowbelly when sight-fishing.

6 2

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

A selection of Donny Brasco flies from BWC.

LEFT

Make no mistake: sight-casting a fly to a visible yella and actually catching it is no pushover!

Cherie Forbes with another great fly rod capture.

BELOW

Whether you’re in a boat or walking the bank, dress in naturally coloured or camouflaged clothing and move slowly when stalking yellowbelly. Many times, they’ll see you before you see them and, once they do, they’re virtually impossible to catch, even if they don’t immediately vacate the area. Blind casting is a little less exciting than sight casting, but can be more effective in the long run, especially where clarity isn’t great. As already mentioned, it’s really just a form of lure fishing with a fly rod. A wide range of fly patterns appeal to goldens. The best tend to incorporate some weight, to get them down, and soft fur and fibre dressings that pulse or “breathe” seductively in the water. Realistic insect, baitfish and crustacean imitations all work, as do general “searching” patterns. Larger trout nymphs and streamers such as Matukas, Zonkers and Woolly Buggers will all catch yellas at times, but one of the stand-out choices is a Donny Brasco from BWC Flies. These things can be deadly at times! Darker colours are preferred by most fly fishers who’ve spent some time chasing these fish, but it can pay to experiment. Fly tackle and line choice depends on exactly where and how you intend targeting goldens with fur ’n’ feathers. You could handle most of the fish encountered on a 4-weight rod, but it’s much easier to cast the relatively heavy and bulky flies that work best on a 6- to 8-weight. You might get by with a floating or slow-sinking intermediate line and a reasonably long leader (3 – 4 m) when sight-casting in the shallows, but a full sinking or sink-tip line is much better for blind prospecting, and with such a line it’s best to shorten your leader to about 2 m. Start out with a 3 or 4 kg tippet. You’ll earn every yella you score on fly, but in some ways, that simply serves to make the whole process even more rewarding. It’s definitely worth a try!

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

PRIME LURING STRATEGIES

6 4

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

The best modern lure casting strategies for targeting golden perch in dams can be distilled to four major styles, each one based around a particular category or class of lure. Those four approaches are: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Vertical grubbing Working jigs (hair/fur, skirted and soft plastic) Casting and jigging metal blades Casting and jigging hard and soft vibes

Certainly, there are many, many other lures and techniques that will catch goldens in dams, including casting and retrieving or trolling floating/diving plugs and minnows, slow rolling spinnerbaits, chatterbaits and in-line spinners, vertical jigging with ice jigs and even, on rare occasions, working surface lures. But the four strategies described here are like money in the bank when it comes to catching yellowbelly in impoundments, and between them they account for most of the winning catches in golden perch tournaments. Let’s look at each one in turn:

The varied topography of this shoreline behind Jo lends itself to a range of lure styles and presentations.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

V E RT I C A L G R U B B I N G Vertical grubbing or grubbing the trees is also sometimes referred to as “black grubbing”, a reference to the most popular lure colour used. Basically, this technique involved dropping soft plastic grubs or worms rigged on jig heads alongside vertically oriented structure such as drowned trees, defined weed bed edges or rocky drop-offs before working them back to the boat or kayak. (There are relatively few places where this strategy can effectively be employed from the shore.) While it was developed initially to target yellowbelly in dams, this style of grubbing has also become popular on our bass impoundments.

6 6

Vertical grubbing can be a highly effective method for targeting goldens in dams. It has been popularized and perfected over several years by competitors on some of the tournament circuits, particularly the AYC (Australian Yellowbelly Championships). These guys and girls are extremely good at vertical grubbing, and typically combine this strategy with the clever use of high tech’ depth sounders to pinpoint groups of fish or even individual yellas. This has also allowed them to move away from obvious structure and target fish out in the open at times, especially in water deeper than about 5 or 6 m. Darker coloured (often black) curly-tailed grubs in the 60 to 90 mm length range are the preferred lures, typically rigged on 5 to 10 g (roughly 1/4 to 3/8 ounce) jig heads fitted with sharp No. 2 to 2/0 hooks. Most often, this lure is dropped all the way to the bottom alongside a likely tree, keeping a close watch on the line as it falls in case it’s picked up by a fish during its descent.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Once the lure reaches the lake bed, it’s jigged up and down a few times, then worked vertically back to the surface. This can be done in a number of ways, ranging from a steady “slow roll” to a series of stops, starts and jiggles. It’s worth working the lure all the way back to the rod tip and watching carefully to see if any fish might be following. Particular attention should also be paid to any level in the water column where fish are marking on the sounder. At times this may be well up the tree, in many cases around protruding branches. The best submerged trees often have branches sticking out from the trunk, and these pose a real snagging risk. Adept vertical jiggers develop a highly sensitive feel and “soft hands”, so that they can sense the leader dragging across a branch or feel the jig bumping timber and slow down the retrieve to crawl or drop back and then ease the lure past the obstacle without hanging up. The worst thing you can

Jo and Amy vertically grubbing some prime standing timber.

The best submerged trees often have branches sticking out from the trunk, and these pose a real snagging risk. A brush gripper like this can be handy for tethering your boat or kayak to a tree.

BELOW RIGHT

do is mistake the bump of a branch for the soft pluck of a fish and strike, thus burying the hook in the timber. Takes from fish often register as a soft tap or pluck, or even a series of these light nudges. It’s best to continue working or slowly retrieving the lure until the rod tip begins to load up, then lift smoothly into the fish. Other times, takes are much more positive. As you can imagine, larger fish can be a real handful when hooked in a maze of drowned timber and you certainly shouldn’t expect to land them all! Interestingly, the average size of goldens taken while vertical grubbing tends to be slightly smaller than is the case when using the other techniques described here, although that’s certainly not always true.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

WO R K I N G D R E S S E D J I G S The same jig-rigged curly tails employed in vertical grubbing can also be cast-and-retrieved in a more traditional manner, as can a bunch of other styles of soft plastic, along with jigs dressed with shredded rubber, silicone or fur and hair skirts. All of these dressed jigs are typically cast to areas where fish are suspected to be holding, allowed to sink to the lake bed and then worked in various ways to attract strikes. This can be done from the shore or out of a boat, canoe or kayak. Exactly where it’s best to cast your dressed jigs and how you should work them will vary enormously from one location to another, as well as from day to day and week to week. During the colder months of the year — when goldens are relatively inactive and often hugging the bottom — it’s best to keep your jigs in almost constant contact with the mud or gravel and work them very slowly. This can involve literally dragging or shuffling the jigs across the bottom, as well as giving them occasional small hops. This slow, deep presentation provides a passable impression of a yabby or small fish foraging in the sediment. Bites or pick-ups from fish can be quite subtle and are often indicated by a little “tick” in the line. If you register such a signal, strike immediately. As the water warms up through spring and into summer, retrieve speeds can be increased and more energetic lifts, hops or shakes incorporated into the presentation, although

6 8

it still pays to make regular contact with the bottom, unless that leads to constant fouling of the jig with “snot weed”. If you feel your jig pick up weed, it’s sometimes possible to clear it by rapidly whipping the rod tip, causing the lure to dash forward and upwards. Be especially tuned in for strikes or takes immediately after performing this maneuver, as it often attracts the attention of a nearby fish.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Glen “Stewie” Stewart has turned crawling skirted jigs into an art form. It’s especially effective early in the season. ABOVE

This slow, deep presentation provides a passable impression of a yabby.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Metal blades or vibes have become one of the most important “go-to” lures in yellowbelly fishing. J I G G I N G M E TA L B L A D E S Metal- and acrylic-bodied blades or vibes have become one of the most important “go-to” lures in yellowbelly fishing across the past decade or so, and few keen lure fishers head out to chase this species today without a swag of these in their kit. (I describe some of the most effective metal blades in detail in a later chapter.) Metal and acrylic vibes come in all manner of shapes and sizes. The ones preferred for yellowbelly tend to range from about 30 to 60 mm in length and weigh anywhere from a couple of grams up to about 10 g (3/8 ounce). There’s a great deal of crossover in the more effective presentations used with these lures and the final category we’ll look at: the hard and soft vibes. Both styles are most often fished with a series of lifts or hops off the bottom, followed by pauses that allow them to sink again. However,

7 0

there’s a significant amount of variation possible within that general description, as well as some newer twists such as dragging, shuffling, shaking and “slapping the slack” with these lures, all of which can be highly productive at times. We’ll look at all of these nuances further on. Another area of variation and modification involves the hook set-ups on these lures. Many are sold with trebles or doubles fitted, but at least one range (the Ecogear ZXs) come with a pair of small, wickedly sharp “assist” hooks attached to short lengths of Kevlar cord. This hooking arrangement has proven to be deadly on yellowbelly (as well as many other species), and lots of switched-on anglers now retrofit assist hooks to all or most of their blades and vibes. As a bonus, these smaller single hooks tend to pick up less slime and weed. We’ll examine the subtleties of working blades in much more detail further on in this publication.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Ecogear’s ZX blades are deadly!

CASTING HARD & SOFT VIBES

BELOW

Hard plastic vibes work well, too.

Vibes or lipless crankbaits (LCBs) are another broad family of lures that have helped to change the face of golden perch fishing in our dams.

Yellowbelly tend to react best to vibes when they’re worked reasonably gently and subtly.

I’ll never forget the first time I used hard vibes to target these fish. It was during a Lake Windamere Golden Classic and the results were nothing short of spectacular. There was nothing particularly special about what we were doing with these lures. It was a technique based very much on the way the same lures were being used (with great success) on impoundment bass.

LEFT

We simply cast our lures (mostly Jackall TNs) towards the bank, let them sink, cranked our reels five to 10 times, paused for a few seconds, cranked again, paused, cranked and continued that process back to the boat. Most hits came in the first half of the retrieve. This very basic presentation strategy still works, with both the traditional hard-bodied and the newer soft vibes. However, there are also a couple of other ways to work these highly productive lures. The most popular way to target goldens on vibes (hard and soft) these days is to cast them, let them sink to the bottom, then work them back to the boat or bank using a series of lifts or hops and drops. Within that broad definition, there are many possible nuances: how high the lure is lifted on each hop, how fast that lift is, whether the vibe is allowed to sink on a tight, semi-tight or slack line, and how long it’s left to sit on the bottom between lifts. Generally speaking, yellowbelly tend to react best to these lures when they’re worked reasonably gently and subtly, with subdued hops and a distinct pause between lifts to allow the lure to sit briefly on the bottom, however there can be exceptions. Sometimes ripping, shaking or “shuffling” these lures also works well. Once again, we’ll look at these variations in more detail later in the e-zine.

Click to watch a video detailing one deadly technique for working blades and vibes. LEFT

Just like the metal and acrylic blades described earlier in this chapter, soft and hard vibes can also be retrofitted with assist hooks to improve their ability to pin tentatively biting fish, as well as reducing the likelihood of fouling with weed and slime. Other modifications include removing one set of hooks, swapping out trebles for singles, or removing one tine (hook bend and point) from the belly treble to reduce snagging and fouling with weed.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Starlo spiced up this Squidgy Yabby with legs and eyes. THIS IMAGE And it worked! LEFT

SOFT PLASTICS & SKIRTED JIGS 7 2

There’s nothing especially new about targeting golden perch or yellowbelly on soft plastics, although it took longer than might have been expected for many anglers to twig to the effectiveness of these lures in this role. Soft grubs, worms, shad, fish, swimbaits and various “creatures” or “critters” all account for their share of goldens when presented in the right place and at the right time. As discussed earlier, vertical grubbing is one role in which soft plastics really shine. This involves dropping a jig head dressed with a soft plastic tail (usually a dark coloured grub) down through the water column alongside a drowned tree or similar structural element before working it back to the surface. This can be done with a steady “slow roll” (a slow, constant turning of the reel’s handle), a stop/start retrieve, a jigging motion, or any combination of these strategies.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Plastics can be an especially good choice early and late in the day when yellas are often tight in on the edges. Casting and retrieving jig-rigged plastics is also a great technique on goldens, particularly in clearer water where fish are less reliant on vibration or “sonic signature” to detect and track down a lure. Plastics can be an especially good choice early and late in the day when yellas are often tight in on the edges, sometimes hunting in just a metre or two of water. Where weed beds are well established, these edge hunters often work the weed: either swimming through and over it, or lurking along the inner and outer edges of the bed. These are all prime places to chase them on softies, and if your jig hook picks up a strand of weed, it’s often possibly to “snap” it clear with a short, sharp stab or sweep of the rod. Occasionally, this action itself will trigger a strike. A newer development on the yellowbelly scene has been the increasing use of jigs dressed with something other than a soft plastic tail. This “something” most often takes the form of natural or synthetic fur and fibres, or a skirt made of fine rubber or silicon strands.

Standing timber off a point in 5 to 8 m of water provides a happy hunting ground.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Skirted jigs have been big movers and shakers (pun intended!) on the American bass scene for decades, and it’s a natural progression for them to take off here in Australia: for our bass, Murray cod and yellowbelly, as well as other species such as sooty grunter up north. A few switched on anglers like Dean “Hammo” Hamilton have been making their own Donny Brasco-style fur jigs for years and doing well on the goldens by dragging and hopping them across the bottom. This was taken a step further by innovators such as Glen “Stewie” Stewart, who turned to American-style skirted bass jigs specifically to target very shut-down and inactive goldens during the cooler months, but who have now also gone on to use these lures successfully throughout the year. Plenty more work remains to be done in this area and further breakthroughs seem likely.

Glen Stewart loves his skirted jigs… with good reason!

LEFT & BELOW

7 4

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

METAL VIBES OR BLADES

Jo with yet another Ecogear ZX victim… and you don’t always have to use the black ones!

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Metal blades or vibes have been around in one form or another for a very long time. One of the earliest mass-produced models was the Cotton Cordell Gay Blade: a name that no doubt produced fewer raised eyebrows and quizzical glances in 1954, when the lure was first launched, than it does today! For a long time, metal vibes didn’t feature prominently on Australian anglers’ hit lists of favourite lures. However, all that began to change midway through the first decade of the new millennium, when a wave of modern, highly sophisticated blades (mostly from Japan) began to hit our shores. Bream hunters were amongst the first to embrace these little wonder weapons, and today there are very few keen bream luring specialists who don’t own a decent collection of metal vibes. On their day, and in the right place, these cunning little creations can be amongst the deadliest tools yet devised for

7 6

fooling fickle bream. Those who doubt this claim need look no further than the list of winning strategies used by podium finishers in the various bream tournaments staged around the nation. Blades are typically right up there. Naturally enough, these lures catch many other species apart from bream. They originated in the United States amongst anglers targeting largemouth and smallmouth bass, and it’s no surprise that they also catch their fair share of Aussie bass, not to mention estuary perch, trout, redfin, sooty grunter, flathead, whiting, trevally, mangrove jacks and many, many others… and of course, they’re deadly on golden perch! As you’d expect, it’s the smaller metal vibes that appeal most strongly to bream, and also to the anglers who chase them. As a result, the greatest volume of Australian blade sales these days are in the 25 to 50 mm length range and weigh

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Those tiny, stickysharp assist hooks pin these fish beautifully.

OPPOSITE

Ecogear’s ZX blades have totally rewritten the playbook on yellowbelly.

LEFT

Some switched-on fishers are nowadays retro-fitting ZX assist hooks to many of their other lures. somewhere between about 2.5 and 7g. These very small vibes or blades work well on yellowbelly, too, especially those models in the 35 to 55 mm range. One company tends to dominate the market when it comes to these smaller “finesse blades”, and it was also at the forefront of the new wave of metals that kicked off the current boom more than a decade ago. That company is the well-known Japanese tackle brand, Ecogear. Ecogear offer a range of metal vibes, with perhaps their best-known models on Australian tackle shop shelves being the more traditional VX series. However, a somewhat less conventional blade design from Ecogear has also forged itself a permanent place in many Aussie fishers’ lure collections. That vibe is the Ecogear ZX, and it has become an absolute staple amongst anglers pursuing golden perch in impoundments. Designed by Japanese lure wizard, Takayoshi Orimoto, with considerable input from Ecogear’s Australian pro staff, ZX vibes are currently offered in three sizes: 30mm/3.5g, 35mm/5.0g and 40mm/6.4g. They are officially described as being shrimpor prawn-shaped sinking vibration baits, and are characterized by their elongated teardrop shape, rubber legs and a pair of trailing assist hooks rigged on short lengths of red Kevlar cord. These ZX hooks are seen by many astute anglers as a big part of the ZX’s “magic”, as they are ridiculously sharp, often pinning fish that short-strike or “peck” at the lure. In fact, some switched-on fishers are nowadays retro-fitting ZX assist hooks to many of their other lures, including vibes, diving hard-bodies, surface poppers and stick baits.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

As with all metal blades or vibes, Ecogear ZXs are best fished with a lift-drop-lift jigging action, although they can also be ripped more violently, presented with a constant, steady retrieve (horizontally or vertically), “shuffled’, “shaken” and even trolled. In common with the rest of the current generation of more sophisticated, Japanese-made or inspired vibes, Ecogear ZXs begin to vibrate very early in the “lift” process, and don’t require a particularly fast action to do their job. This is often absolutely critical when targeting bream, especially spooky or shut-down southern black bream, but it’s also a big part of the secret to their success on yellowbelly. Being able to produce a fish-attracting vibration while using just a short, relatively gentle lift can spell the difference between repeated strikes and a blank day. The ZX series of blades excel in this area, making them not only a “go-to” choice for bream specialists in the salt, but also a firm favourite on yellowbelly. Ecogear salso offer an Australian-inspired variation on the ZX theme simply called the Breamer Vibe 35. As its name

I make no secret of the fact that the Ecogear ZX is my personal favourite metal vibe. Starlo loves the Ecogear ZX range! The dark colours work extra well.

BELOW

implies, this lure is 35mm long. It weighs 5.5g and, instead of a metal plate body above the heavy keel weight, features a polycarbonate sheet. This slightly alters the action of the lure, making it a little less “crisp” and reducing feedback to the angler up the line. The polycarbonate body also offers a level of translucency that not only looks extremely life-like, but reduces the perceived bulk of the offering. This finessing and downsizing is taken a step further by leaving off the short, rubber legs attached to the lower rear edge of the standard ZXs. I make no secret of the fact that the Ecogear ZX is my personal favourite metal vibe. I simply wouldn’t head out to target bream, bass, estuary perch or yellowbelly without a dozen of these lures in their various sizes and colours stashed away in my tackle box… I have a hunch that many other anglers feel the same way!

7 8

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

SOFT VIBES

This yella completely inhaled a soft vibe head-first as it sunk again after a “hop”. ABOVE

Most modern lures can be easily sorted into the two major categories of “soft” or “hard”. However, there’s an interesting area of overlap between those broad classifications. Offerings from this overlap zone are often referred to as “hybrids”. It might surprise some readers to learn that hybrid hard/soft lures have actually been around for a very long time. The original French-made Flopy (a renowned bass lure when I was growing up), along with its less famous cousin the Sosy, were early examples of this genre, as was the Burke’s Little

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Big Dig, out of America. However, following the golden era of these early hybrids, the concept languished for many years before finally being re-kindled over the past decade or so, thanks to a bunch of exciting new contenders coming out of Asia, Europe and North America. Today, there are once again some excellent and increasingly popular hybrid lures on our market. Few have evoked as much excitement amongst switched-on Aussie anglers as the soft vibes: a family of lures epitomised by the likes of the Jackall Mask Vibes and FLT Transams. These classy (and expensive) Japanese lures kick-started a resurgence of interest in hybrid vibes, and also spawned a rash of look-alikes from other makers, both international and domestic.

Both soft and hard vibes are super effective on goldens... as is the flat-handed “comfort lift”.

8 0

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Of course, the Jackall brand from Lake Police is best known for its hard-bodied rattling and non-rattling lipless crank baits, which are amongst the finest representatives of that particular lure family. The TN Jackalls launched a lipless crank bait (LCB) phenomenon here in Australia during the first decade of the new millennium — one that’s far from finished.

to stand briefly on their chins or noses on the bottom when finessed to a stop. This style of hybrid lure can be fished using a wide variety of presentation strategies, from a fast, steady burn to a slow roll or a subtle hop-and-drop along the bottom, as well as being quite effective when jigged in mid-water to target suspended fish. They can even be trolled.

Mask Vibes are the hard-bodied Jackalls’ lesser-known stable-mates, and while they might not have created quite as much fuss in Aussie fishing circles as their hard siblings, Masks quickly won the hearts and minds of many keener fishers. Later the larger, fish-shaped FLT Transams joined the Masks on our tackle store shelves, soon becoming a major hit, especially amongst barra specialists, as well as anglers chasing threadfin salmon and mulloway ( jewfish).

Smart anglers soon realised that these versatile traits stamped modern soft vibes as an ideal choice when hunting barra and bass in man-made impoundments, but many have also used them to great effect in natural river, estuary and billabong environments. In fact, anywhere that these fish (and many other species) are found in the lower half of the water column in depths of a couple of metres or more are happy hunting grounds for soft vibes. Later still, those anglers chasing yellowbelly also came to realise just how effective these lures can be on that species, despite the fact that they’re a little larger than many of the other “go-to” choices for goldens.

With their tough-but-soft and stretchy “elastomer” bodies and internal wire frames, Masks and Transams are basically soft, chewy lipless crank baits. They have a reasonably tight but fairly subtle vibrating action when cranked, jigged or ripped and a seductive flutter on the drop, combined with a tendency

Following the success of the Masks and Transams, it’s hardly surprising that there are now many other competing brands

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

of soft vibe on the market, nor that most of them seem to work quite well at times.

Soft vibes can spell the difference between a blank session and a red-hot bite. Finding healthy aquatic vegetation like this is a great sign when chasing golden perch. ABOVE

The Jackall Mask Vibe is another “go-to” lure for impoundment yellowbelly.

FAR RIGHT

8 2

Experienced anglers often reach for a hybrid soft vibe when the going gets tough or the bite slows down, but they are also highly effective searching lures, especially in water deeper than a couple of metres and up to 10, 15 or even 20 m in depth. Anglers will typically identify suspended or bottomhugging concentrations or scatterings of fish in these depths using their sounders, before standing off a short distance to cast soft vibes beyond the location of the fish, allowing them to sink to the desired depth before working them back to the boat using a mix of stop/start, lift/drop and steady cranking retrieves. It pays to experiment in order to discover exactly what presentation strategy is working best on the day. Modern soft vibes such as Masks, Transams, Atomic Semi Hardz, Spanyid Snipers (now discontinued), Threadybusters, Storm SFXs, Zerek Fish Traps, Fuze Pulses, Fish Candy Paddlevibes and others offer a very neat mix of the attributes of both hard-bodied lipless crankbaits (LCBs) and soft plastics, and for this reason they’re finding themselves a place in the tackle collections of many successful fishers. While the more subtle vibrating action of all these soft lures isn’t generally as crisp and sharp as that of a hard-bodied plastic or metal vibe (and therefore doesn’t offer as much feedback through the line and rod to the angler), it’s still reasonably well-defined, and you’ll certainly feel it if you’re

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

using low stretch gel-spun polyethylene line. Sometimes, it seems that this quieter, less well-defined vibration is actually a turn-on to inactive or pressured fish, and the fact that those fish also get a mouthful of soft, chewy material when they finally have a crack simply serves to seal the deal. As a bonus, most commercial scents and attractants tend to stick very well to the bodies of these hybrids. The downside is that the soft material most of these lures are moulded from doesn’t “play well with others”. Elastomer compounds can react very badly with PVC-based soft plastics, hard-bodied plastic lures, painted surfaces and even slightly

different elastomer formulas. For that reason, these lures should always be stores separately in the compartments of a quality tackle box or, better still, kept in their original packaging when not in use. Soft vibes certainly don’t fit every fishing situation, but on their day and in the right place they can spell the difference between a blank session and a red-hot bite. For that reason alone, few experienced barra or bass anglers hit the water these days without at least a few of these sneaky offerings tucked away in their kits… They’re simply too deadly to ignore! The same is true on yellowbelly.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

The author with a handsome golden taken on bass-weight baitcaster gear.

GOLDEN TACKLE

8 4

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Jo puts the wood on a solid fish hooked close to cover. ABOVE

As already explained, tackle selection for targeting golden perch in our inland dams — especially on lures — has evolved significantly over the past 30 years or so, with many successful anglers these days opting for much lighter gear than was common in the past.

You certainly don’t need to spend a fortune on tackle for this pursuit.

Spinning or threadline tackle also tends to dominate on the dams these days, although a smaller proportion of anglers still prefer to use their baitcaster outfits for goldens, especially when casting slightly heavier lures, such as hard and soft vibes or some of the chunkier skirted jigs (right). You certainly don’t need to spend a fortune on tackle for this pursuit. Golden perch and our other dam dwellers don’t really demand super smooth drag systems or reels with a ridiculous number of ball bearings. That said, it’s always a pleasure to use a reel that cranks as smoothly as possible. Apart from anything else, this allows you to focus entirely on manipulating your lure, rather than fighting a rough, stiff or lumpy reel. The same goes for rods. You can spend a small fortune on a customized, ultra-high modulus graphite stick complete with the latest high tech’ guides and all the other bells and whistles, or get by with a budget, off-the-rack composite “cheapie”. Most anglers tend to opt somewhere in the middle of that spread.

The most popular set-ups these days are based around a 1000 to 3000 size spinning reel matched up with a 1.9 to 2.3 m (6 ½ to 7 ½ foot) ultra-light to medium-light spin rod. This class of rod is typically rated for line strengths between about 2 and 5 kg and casting weights from a few grams to perhaps 15 or even 20 g. A little extra length in the rod is

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

really useful when it comes to casting further and having better control of your lure, and this is especially true if you plan to spend any time casting from the shoreline. As a bonus, this same light to medium-light outfit is also perfect when it comes to bait fishing for golden perch and many other freshwater species, with the possible exception of heavyweight Murray cod. Line choice is another area where personal preferences come into play. These days, most keen freshwater lure fishers prefer to use braided or fused gel-spun polyethylene (GSP) main lines, although there’s no reason why you can’t get away with monofilament: either nylon or fluorocarbon. However, the thinner diameter and near-zero stretch of braid definitely enhances your “feel’ of what’s going on, as well as your ability to manipulate and work a lure accurately and set the hook when you register a take. Lines with rated breaking strains between about 2 and 5 kg are best suited to the fishing styles described in this e-zine, with more and more anglers opting towards the lighter end of that scale these days. If you choose to use a braided main line, you should always add a leader of at least a metre of clear or naturally-coloured nylon or fluorocarbon to the business end, and a rod length or so of leader is generally better. In really clear water, or on particularly finnicky fish, it can pay to go even longer with your leaders: up to 4 or 5 m in extreme cases. Leader strength should be varied to match conditions and the willingness of the fish to bite. Four or 5 kg leader material makes a good starting point. You can go up from there in snaggy, rugged terrain, or down in open water and on finnicky fish. Personally, I try not to use leaders any lighter than about 3 kg on these fish, but there are certainly days when 2 kg will get you more bites. Of course, hooking them and landing them can be two different things!

Starlo works a lure using light, wellbalanced spinning gear and fine braid. ABOVE

8 6

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Watching a big one swim away is a great feeling. Note the light gear.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

GOING LIGHT

It had been a long, slow morning on the lake, with only one half-hearted tap on my gently jigged metal vibe, despite the sporadic presence of some very “fishy” looking targets on the sounder screen. Those sonar returns certainly looked like the big golden perch or yellowbelly I was hunting, but they were hugging the bottom in 6 m or more of water, their bellies seemingly brushing the mud. I knew from experience that these hunkered-down goldens are tough nuts to crack, but I also believed they were far from impossible, especially if I was brave enough to embrace the lighter side.

8 8

I’d already downsized my vibe from 40 to 35 mm and swapped out my standard rod length of 4 kg leader for two-and-a-bit rod lengths of 3 kg fluorocarbon. But was this enough? Did I need to drop even further: to a 30 mm lure and a 2 kg leader? Surely not… While I was juggling these questions in my mind, another very likely target appeared on the sounder. It marked as a short, fat boomerang with a red centre on the 83-megahertz sonar side of the split screen readout, while producing a bright, pea-sized blob in the narrow, intense spotlight beam

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

The author looking pleased as punch after coming up trumps on the big golden described in the opening of this chapter.

LEFT

of the 800 megahertz StructureScan picture. With a slight but obvious separation from the bottom in both images, this was definitely a fish, and a good one at that. The image disappeared from the screen and was replaced by a couple of shapes that could only be drowned tree branches angling up from the lake bed. As the boat continued to drift slowly with the light westerly breeze, I used my eyes to draw an imaginary line upwind from the transom before firing the blade back along this invisible track; hopefully just beyond the fish I’d marked.

Yellowbelly aren’t renowned fighting fish, but they have plenty of lowend torque!

RIGHT

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Goldens aren’t usually deliberately “dirty” fighters. but if they run through submerged timber they’ll often win their freedom.

Watching for a relaxation of tension in the coloured strand of 1.5 kg (3 pound) braid, I detected the moment the sinking lure touched the bottom. After first picking up the slight belly of slack with the reel, I then used the rod to gently pump or lift the vibe 50 to 60 cm off the mud, before lowering the tip and allowing it to settle again. The braid once more relaxed as the lure reached the bottom, where I let it sit for a full second, before picking up a turn or two of line with the reel and pumping the vibe up into the water column again. The fourth or fifth time I repeated this process, I met solid, dead resistance just as I began my next lift. Damn it. Snagged! Annoyed, I jerked the rod sideways to see if I could rip the small hooks free of the clutching timber below… only to have the tip promptly hauled back in the opposite direction as my “snag” suddenly turned into a fish! From the opening bell, I knew I was in trouble. Line grated, slipped and vibrated as the fish powered away, indicating that it was dragging across a deep snag. I lowered the rod tip to

9 0

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Line grated, slipped and vibrated as the fish powered away, indicating that it was dragging across a deep snag. Extracting a big fish from snagstudded water on light gear is immensely satisfying.

RIGHT

reduce strain on the wispy filament and quickly eased the drag back half a turn. Braid ripped off the spool for a couple of seconds against this reduced drag setting before the fish propped and angrily shook its head, but I could still feel the ominous grating that indicated the presence of timber between me and the yellowbelly.

They’re not yours until safely in the net!

BELOW

Pointing the rod down the line to further reduce pressure, I grabbed the remote control for the electric motor and swung the boat’s bow back up into the breeze, tracking along that taut, vibrating line. In a few seconds I was straight up and down over the snag in 6.5 m of water. The fact that there was still a good 20 m of line out told me that the braid was wrapped around a branch somewhere below, while the fish bucked and lunged further out into the lake. Tentatively, I tightened up, lifted the rod and gave a couple of gentle, exploratory tugs. Miraculously, on the third pull, I felt something give and the line came free of the deep obstruction below, momentarily generating several metres of slack. Cranking this loose line back onto the reel, I once again came tight to the fish and could now feel its reactions much more directly. A few seconds later there was a dull flash of yellow before a fat golden perch topping the 60 cm length mark rolled tiredly to the surface. With a delighted whoop, I slipped the landing net under its 6 kg-plus bulk, noticing as I did that my hands were shaking a little from the encounter.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

SCALING DOWN

Jo vertically grubbing a drowned tree with relatively light spinning tackle. 9 2

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

The sort of heart-in-mouth encounter described on the previous pages is very much par for the course when chasing heavyweight golden perch on light and ultra-light tackle, although the outcome isn’t always so positive. Sometimes the end result is a broken line, a lost lure and another “one that got away” story. Those defeats hurt, and naturally make us question our gear selection. Did we go too light? As explained earlier, when I first began chasing XOS golden perch in stocked dams more than a quarter of a century ago, my tackle of choice was a no-nonsense baitcaster outfit of the sort commonly used to target big bass, Murray cod or billabong barra. This typically consisted of a 1.8 m pistol-grip rod matched to a plug reel loaded with 8 or 10 kg braid. At the business end of this set-up, I’d usually attach just under a rod length of 10 kg nylon monofilament leader. I’d hate to think how many goldens I caught on that rather agricultural style of gear, and I know it would still account for its fair share of these fish today. However, over the intervening decades, lure fishing for impoundment yellowbelly has undergone a significant degree of evolution, becoming considerably more sophisticated and refined in the process. Back “in the day”, I most often threw floating/diving timber or plastic plugs for yellas, only occasionally dabbling with other offerings such as spinnerbaits and lipless crankbaits (vibes).

Baitcasters still have a role in yellowbelly fishing.

Today, switched-on golden perch specialists have a far more diverse quiver of strategies at their disposal. All worked well when teamed with the baitcaster outfit just described. Today, switched-on golden perch specialists have a far more diverse quiver of strategies at their disposal when it comes to luring these big perch. They can jig and vertically roll soft plastics alongside standing timber, work small suspending divers over and alongside weed beds, burn compact spinnerbaits through the sticks, or bounce metal blades and hard or soft plastic vibes along the bottom in water up to 10 or even 15 m deep… And they may do all of these things in a single session on the water. Clearly, this diversity of luring options calls for a wider range of tackle combinations, and light “bream-weight” spinning outfits have become commonplace in the arsenals of these keen anglers. Obviously, this style of finesse tackle is much better suited to casting and working the smaller, lighter lures so often used for goldens today. As a bonus, many of us have discovered that our strike rates increase significantly on these fish (and most others) when we downsize our lures, lines and leader strengths. This is especially noticeable when goldens are playing hard to get due to adverse conditions or sheer fishing pressure.

Another chunk subdued on bream gear.

BELOW

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

One of the challenges of going light can come in the form of encounters with “by-catch” like this chunky cod!

HOW LIGHT IS LIGHT?

So, when it comes to impoundment goldens, exactly how light is light? Well, these days I mostly run 3 to 6 pound (1.5 to 3 kg) braid as my main line (remembering that most braids will actually test well over the manufacturer’s stated breaking strain). I vary my leaders between 2 and 6 kg fluorocarbon or nylon, depending on the terrain and the mood of the fish. Within this broad range, my “default setting” is usually 2 kg braid and a rod length or so of 4 kg leader. However, my first reaction to a tough bite or obviously shut-down fish is to lengthen and lighten that leader. In extremely trying conditions, I’ve even been known to switch to a spare spool filled with 1 kg fluorocarbon and run this spider web strand straight through to the lure, without any additional leader whatsoever… But as I said, that’s pretty extreme! While yellowbelly aren’t especially renowned as fierce fighting fish, believe me when I tell you that 4 or 5 kg of angry perch can keep you on your toes for a couple of very tense minutes on the calibre of tackle just described. Throw in some

9 4

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Four or five kilos of angry perch can keep you on your toes for a couple of very tense minutes! Roger thought he’d hooked a cracker of a golden when this Burrinjuck carp sucked up his metal blade.

BELOW

structure in the form of submerged timber, rocks, drowned fence lines or weed beds and the outcome of any such encounter is far from being a certainty. Losses are inevitable. It’s tempting to reach for the heavier gear again after being dusted, but doing so can quickly become a negative sum game. Not only will you find it harder to cast and manipulate lighter lures with beefier tackle, you’ll also hook less fish. And when you do hook up and “go for the doctor” with sturdier lines and leaders, there’s an increased likelihood of pulling or straightening the small, fine gauge hooks that are fitted (by necessity) to many of the more diminutive lures now being thrown at goldens. It’s a conundrum, to be sure, but thankfully there are some steps you can take to stack the odds back in your favour when going light on goldens (and other species), as I’m about to explain:

Country like this can be hard on ultra-light gear.

BELOW

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

FIGHT STRATEGIES

It’s the old story: the harder you pull, the harder they go! Jo puts it to a solid fish in open water on a QLD dam. ABOVE

9 6

There’s one piece of good news for anglers who choose to go light or even ultra-light with their yellowbelly tackle: Like many other fish, big goldens are often slightly more placid when hooked on lighter tackle. It’s the old story: the harder you pull, the harder they go! On featherweight tackle, even bulky yellowbelly often spend the opening seconds of any encounter simply hanging in the water column on splayed fins, shaking their heads in bewildered annoyance, apparently trying to spit out the spiky thing stuck to their jaw. Whack them hard with heavier gear and they’ll tend to react immediately, while there’s usually a period of grace on the flimsy stuff before the fish wakes up to the fact that something is wrong and takes off. It’s vitally important to use this short breathing space to your advantage. Try to gauge the bulk of the fish…

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Hooked fish often dive into weed, but braid will sometimes cut the finer strands.

LEFT

BELOW

Hard, unyielding timber is another story! does it feel like an average 40-something, or is it a 60 cm hog? Assess the terrain, too. Are there sticks and snags everywhere, or is it relatively open country? All of these factors will dictate how you react to what happens next. Eventually, the fish will twig to the fact that it’s in trouble and attempt to exit the scene — usually towards deeper water or the cover of weed and timber. This is when things start to get interesting! Trust me: you won’t be able to lock up and hold or skull drag a 50 cm-plus yellowbelly on the sort of gear we’re talking about here. If you try to do so, something will break… It’s really as simple as that. In more open country, I tend to run a reasonably light drag and let the fish have its head, within reason. However, remember that there are often isolated sticks, stumps, fence posts or tough strands of aquatic vegetation down deep in even the most open of lake stretches. It’s not a good idea to let a fish run around at will, nor to allow it to pull too much line off the spool. If you have one on your boat, use your electric motor to stay with the fish and keep the line as up and down (and short) as practical. Whenever the fish stops, go to work on it by smoothly pumping and winding line back onto the reel. Remember, every metre of string you put back onto that spool is a metre the fish needs to pull back off you against drag, tiring itself in the process. Try your best to avoid stalemate situations where neither you nor the fish is gaining or losing. In bad country, think in terms of “steering” a rampaging fish away from trouble rather than bullying it. In other words, use rod angles and arm extension to lead or point a hooked fish away from any obvious traps. Rather than physically tightening the drag knob, try pinning the spool or line with

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

your fingers at any sudden death moments. This way, you can quickly release tension if the line sings, the rod flattens and you feel like something is about to pop. It’s all about thinking on your feet, using your wits, having soft hands and trying to stay one step ahead of your opponent. Once you get it sussed, it’s actually a real blast! If the worst happens and you feel the line dragging around a submerged object, you have a crucial split second decision to make: either hang on and try to pull the fish back around or through the structure, or instantly back off and attempt to follow or change the line angle. Which choice you make will depend very much on the level of pressure already on the line and what you think that submerged object is — something smooth or soft like a rounded branch or a weed strand, or something hard and sharp like a rock or an old star picket in a drowned fence line. At the one extreme, fine braid under tension can act like a buzz saw, cutting cleanly through even quite thick weed strands. On the other hand, the same line will part almost instantly if dragged across coarse rock or jagged metal under strain. Timber falls somewhere in between. The worst case scenario is that your braid will cut into waterlogged bark or soft wood and jam, giving the fish a direct pull against a fixed length of line, with almost inevitable results. Hooked fish don’t deliberately half hitch anglers’ lines around branches or run them through boulders and weed beds. They’re simply heading for cover and unconsciously drag the line behind them. But the outcome is effectively the same. Also, once “tethered” by a solid obstacle, if the fish can’t immediately break the line it will continue to swim, now being forced into a circular path and effectively wrapping the line repeatedly around the stick or post. Anyone who’s ever walked a recalcitrant dog on a lead and had the pooch wrap itself around a telephone pole will understand this principle only too well! If you keep your cool and minimise damaging tension on the line and leader, it’s sometimes possible to follow the fish and unpick the line, as I described at the beginning of this piece. But don’t expect to always come up trumps. After all, if we landed everything we hooked, the game would be called “catching” rather than “fishing”… and I don’t think it’d be half as rewarding and satisfying when you get everything just right in the face of adversity and land a whopper on spider web!

9 8

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Goldens have a strong affinity for drowned fence lines… Braided lines less so!

LEFT

Jo uses arm extension and rod work to “steer” a hooked fish away from trouble.

BELOW

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

“SMART FISH” & NEW TWISTS Weather shifts and approaching storms can trigger a bite… or shut one down! ABOVE

Smart anglers are constantly coming up with new ways to fool fish. FAR RIGHT

Aussie fishers are a highly inventive mob. Many of us enjoy coming up with new angles and subtle but often important tweaks on time-proven methods. Sometimes, these little twists can put us ahead of the pack… at least for a while. This has very much been the case with the ongoing quest for big yellowbelly in our man-made dams. The simple fact is that angling pressure on stocks of these fish is ramping up significantly every year. Bays, arms and points in big dams like Eildon, Burrinjuck, Wyangala, Burrendong, Windamere or Boondooma that may have barely seen a boat or two in any given week 20 years ago are now fished regularly… and hard. Goldens and other fish that live in these waters get to see lots of baits, lures and flies and some of them are caught (and often released) in the process. The net effect of all this pressure is an increasingly cagey and cautious fish population. While I’m leery of using anthropomorphic terms like “educated” or

1 00 ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

“smart” when referring to fish, there’s simply no denying the self-evident truth that they are capable of wising-up to popular techniques and becoming much better at basic “hook avoidance behavior”. Put simply, they become harder to catch. Anglers do their best to overcome the diminishing returns associated with heavily pressured fisheries by employing better

Subtle nuances in the way lures are manipulated can make a big difference to our catch rates.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

101

The “Shakeand-Bake” produces an excellent imitation of a yabby shuffling through the sediment of the lake bed.

Working the shoreline is a classic approach. ABOVE

and better electronics, finer lines and leaders and more life-like lures and flies. Subtle nuances in the way those lures are manipulated can also make a big difference to our catch rates. The techniques and tackle I’ve covered in great depth in this publication will definitely catch yellowbelly for you in our dams. I can guarantee that. But I’m also the first to acknowledge that there are folks out there adding subtle twists to these basic approaches that can and do make a noticeable difference to their catch rates. These are often the same people who end up on the winners’ podium at tournaments and competitions. Running an eye over the list of champion teams and their members for a quarter century of the Lake Windamere Golden Classic (see the pull-down fact box on page 32 of this e-zine) quickly reveals a series of patterns. Certain names tend to pop up several times in quick succession, often across runs of a few years. This generally indicates the work of savvy anglers who’ve cracked new patterns that are capable of putting them ahead of the pack for a time. We had Kneller and Mayberry in the early days, then Hall and Morris, then Stewart, Burbidge and Cooke, and later Clancy, Bunting and Tutton. In more recent years, Collison, McLure and Miles have dominated, while consistently successful guys like golden perch guru, Jamie Hardman, have also stamped their mark on the fishery, with regular podium finishes. These

switched-on, highly innovative anglers are always looking for that little edge that can make a big difference… and they often find it. In 2018, fishing writer Kevin Savvas penned a great piece for Fishing World magazine’s website detailing some of the presentation techniques he’d been taught by experts like Jamie Hardman. Some of the techniques shown to Kevin Savvas involved faster and somewhat more aggressive retrieves with metal blades and both hard and soft vibes than the subtle lift-droplift more commonly used by those seeking yellowbelly. Others were at the dead slow end of the scale. Savvas also described a crossover between a straight retrieve and what he calls “tapping the slack”, which is a form of lure manipulation commonly used by barra anglers to make a hardbodied lure “dance” and dart erratically without moving too far. It’s achieved by dropping the rod tip towards the lure momentarily to create semi-slack line, then “popping” or twitching the rod tip sharply against that semi-slack line, stopping just as everything comes tight and before the lure moves too far. If repeated in a continuous series of short, sharp twitches, this can really bring a lure to life. Building in an occasional pause ensures that the lure also stays in regular contact with the lake bed. Savvas and crew achieved this action with their rods angled up at around 10 o’clock (which works well on spinning tackle), but

1 02 ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Modern electronics are a big help, but the nut that holds the reel is still the most important component.

LEFT

Winners are grinners.

BELOW

it can also be done with a low rod angle, and this is often more comfortable if using a baitcaster. Kevin Savvas christened this distinctive retrieve “The Hardman Shuffle’, which seems apt. Another presentation Savvas detailed in that informative article was what he called the “Churn-and-Burn”. After casting out and allowing the lure to sink to the lake bed, it was retrieved with five or six fairly brisk cranks of the reel handle, followed by a distinct stop and pause to allow it to sink and touch the bottom again. This pattern was repeated all the way back to the boat or bank, with most hits coming on that all-important pause.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

103

Jamie Hardman (far left) is one of the true innovators in yellowbelly fishing and his young bloke Harry is a rising gun. Along with fellow Team Jackall member Marty Vanvegchel (right) they finished second for the third year running in the 2019 Windamere Golden Classic.

LEFT

Another angler who’s been working with subtle twists to retrieve styles is Glen Stewart’s son, Murray. In a wonderful podcast interview with Rhys Creed and friends for the information-packed Social Fishing podcast series, Murray outlined a “shake-and-shuffle” retrieve that basically combines a slow roll of the reel’s handle with a constant shaking of the rod tip, interspersed with the occasional pause. On the right day, this shaking strategy was also absolutely deadly on goldens. By the time of the Lake Windamere Golden Classic in mid-October, 2019, this slow-cranking, shaking, pausing presentation had become the “go-to” strategy for many successful competitors, and was widely being referred to as the “Shake-and-Bake”. It was mostly being employed with slightly larger soft vibes like Transams and Zerek Fish Traps, but also works with smaller soft vibes like the Jackall Masks, as well as hard vibes and even metal blades.

Furthermore, the effectiveness of these variations can shift from season to season, day to day, and even hour to hour. It really pays to mix it up and find out exactly what’s pushing the fish’s buttons at that precise moment in time. All of which helps take me full circle: back to my very first experiences with impoundment yellowbelly, at Copeton Dam during the early 1980s. I was fishing there with Rob Smith, chasing yellas on the edge of a 100 per cent full dam by casting-and-cranking Storm Hot ’N Tot hard-bodied deep divers. We were doing reasonably well, but Rob was kicking my butt about three-to-one… until I accidentally discovered a subtle retrieve trick that turned it all around for me.

Nuances and subtle alterations to retrieves such as those described here might not sound like such a big deal, but on the right day, they can spell the difference between almost constant (or at least regular) action and the dreaded donut.

Those lures dove deeper and deeper as we pulled them away from the bank and its fringing weed bed until they reached an area directly under the rod tip. Here they would actually swim past a point where the line was perpendicular before turning and suddenly climbing up out of the depths. A lot of our strikes were coming at that exact moment, when the lure turned back on itself and began to rise. However, on one retrieve — just a few cranks before my lure reached that critical flip-around-and-climb point — a fly managed to crawl in behind the lens of my sunglasses. I stopped cranking and raised my hand to deal with the sticky little intruder… and the rod was almost ripped from my grasp by a fired-up golden.

The take-away message from all of these twists on conventional lure presentations is that you should never, ever stop thinking, learning and experimenting. Seemingly tiny variations in the way you move your lure through the water can make an enormous difference to your overall results.

From that cast on, I began incorporating a deliberate pause into every retrieve just prior to the lure’s turn-around point, and that’s exactly how, when and where I hooked most of my fish for the rest of the trip. Trust me, little things really can make a big difference in this game.

Along with several of the other approaches described here, the “Shake-and-Bake” produces an action that is no doubt an excellent imitation of a yabby or large shrimp shuffling and foraging through the sediment of the lake bed.

1 04 ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

THE FUTURE: A FISH FOR LIFE

Far too good to catch just once! Starlo releases a fish that’s likely to be at least 15 years old.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

105

The vast majority of our golden perch impoundments are “put-andtake” fisheries. No publication such as this one would be complete without a few parting words on the important subjects of sustainability, sharing the resource and fishing for the future. As explained elsewhere in this e-zine, the vast majority of our golden perch impoundments are “put-and-take” fisheries. In other words, the populations of yellowbelly living in them would decline over time due to fishing mortality and natural causes, if not for constant and regular re-stocking with hatchery-bred fry and fingerlings. Without such restocking, goldens would most likely disappear almost completely from these waters after just a few decades. No doubt, some limited successful spawning does occasionally occur in a few of our man-made impoundments, especially under ideal conditions, and some of the fry produced may even survive until maturity. However, it appears that these limited cohorts of “wild-spawned” fish in dams are relatively small and would certainly be insufficient to maintain a viable population over time. Because these impoundment golden perch fisheries are man-made and rely on re-stocking for their existence, there’s a valid argument that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with killing a few yellowbelly taken from those dams for the table. I have no problem at all with that argument, and have done it myself on rare occasions. On the other hand, I would make the case that larger yellowbelly (in particular) from our dams are actually rather inferior table fish, as they tend to be very fatty and are often tainted with a strong “muddy” flavor that many people don’t enjoy. I’m quite a fan of the taste of smaller yellowbelly from rivers or natural lakes and billabongs, but I’m much less keen on those heavier, fat-layered dam fish. In fact, I don’t like them at all. By all means, try one for yourself if you wish, but be prepared to be disappointed!

In contrast to their relatively low value as food fish, I would also make the case that mature golden perch living in our impoundments are extremely valuable as a recreational resource. They attract plenty of attention from anglers, who in turn inject lots of money into outback economies that often find themselves struggling through our ceaseless cycle of droughts, floods and fires. In other words, I’d respectfully suggest that big yellas are simply too good to catch just once before being turned into a less-than-satisfying meal. They are much more valuable — both economically and socially — back in the water, continuing to grow, and awaiting their next encounter with a bait, lure or fly. The good news is that golden perch can live for a long time, are reasonably robust, and appear to cope quite well with the stresses of catch-and-release, especially if handled properly. This means there’s a very good chance that they may be caught more than once during their potentially long lives, greatly adding to their “value” and the return on investment made by government agencies and other stocking organisations.

1 06 ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

This yella is probably about the same age as its beaming captor.

LEFT

Click to watch a method for successfully releasing goldens pulled from deeper water. LEFT

ABOVE & BELOW

The best way to measure your fish is on a wet Brag Mat.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

107

Something different — chasing yellas from a float tube! RIGHT

Interestingly, as I wrote the final chapters for this e-zine, that truth was hammered home to me in no uncertain terms. While competing in the 2019 Lake Windamere Golden Classic, I captured a solid yella that was carrying a tag. I almost didn’t notice this important fact at first, because the small, plastic spaghetti tag was so discoloured and coated in short slime that it was almost invisible against the fish’s dark flank. The only thing that drew my attention to the tag was a spot of well healed but slightly reddened flesh around the actual tag site. The serial number on the tag proved impossible to read in the boat, so we reluctantly trimmed it off and took it back to camp, releasing the fish without its little piece of plastic jewelry. Eventually, I was able to clean and dry the tag enough to read it under a bright light and a magnifying glass, and then pass the details on to the good folks at NSW DPI Fisheries. A week or so later, they came back with all of the relevant information from their files. That golden perch — which measured 516 mm ( just under 52 cm) when I recaptured it on 11th October, 2019 — had been tagged on 22 September, 2009 measuring 400 mm. That’s an impressive 10 years and three weeks at liberty (3,671 days, to be precise), during which time the fish grew 116 mm in length and probably doubled its weight. For me, this fascinating recapture clearly underlines the value and viability of catch-and-release for this species. Research has proven that the vast majority of yellowbelly that are handled well and returned to the water promptly (especially those hooked in the mouth, rather than the throat or gut) will survive, and no doubt many go on to be caught again: once, twice or even more often. That’s great news.

Big yellas are simply too good to catch just once! We can all do our best to ensure the survival of any golden perch (and other species) we choose to release by minimising their time out of the water and avoiding injury, especially to their slime coating, fins and eyes. Keep fight times as short as practical, even on light gear. Use a modern, knotless landing net rather than one of the older style ones made from knotted cord. Support the fish’s weight at all times, ideally with wet hands. If you’re going to measure it, wet your brag mat first, then slide the fish onto it. Use long-nosed pliers to remove the hook and then get the fish back into the water, snapping a quick photo in the process, if you wish. If it’s hooked deep, leave the hook in place and trim your line or leader close to the fish’s mouth. The biggest enemies of golden perch intended for release (apart from deep hooking and physical injuries caused by being dropped or kept out of the water too long) are high temperatures (water and air temps), excessive time spent in live wells or other holding tanks, and the “brarotrauma” or pressurerelated injuries related to being pulled from relatively deep water.

1 08 ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

The best way to ensure a fish survives is never to remove it from the water in the first place, but if you do, minimise its handling.

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

109

Any golden perch hooked at a depth of 6 m or more is likely to experience at least some degree of barotrauma or pressurerelated injury, and this seems to be exacerbated in larger specimens. It’s really important to unhook these fish and get them back into the water promptly, as any time spent in a live well will significantly worsen their condition, often causing them to “gas up” and turn upside down. If the perch you’re releasing has difficulties diving back into the depths and flounders on the surface, it’s best to use some form of “drop weight” to quickly return it to the level at which it was hooked. Some anglers advocate “needling” these fish with a hypodermic needle to release the gas from their

The tagged fish described in this chapter. Note how hard it is to see the tag (circled). ABOVE

Romen from Roaming Productions has caught more truly large goldens than most anglers. He pulled this brute from Canberra’s Googong Dam. 1 10 ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

Check out the girth of this Googong beast!

RIGHT

(Photo courtesy of Roaming Productions.)

swim bladder, but I’m not a huge fan of this rather invasive process. I much prefer to use a drop weight. If you don’t have a dedicated drop weight on board (a large sinker with a barbless hook attached, tied to heavy line), it’s easy enough to innovate. Check out the short video clip hereabouts showing how we used a small anchor, some light leader and a barbless hook to do the same job, successfully returning a large yellowbelly to the 10 m depth level it had been pulled from.

The yellowbelly is well and truly out of the closet and in the limelight now.

Given half a chance, this cute little perch could grow into a whopper!

BELOW

Australia may be the driest continent on earth after Antarctica, and have a relatively small collection of freshwater angling species, but we’re also blessed to be home to some of the world’s larger and more interesting varieties.

Our magnificent Murray cod, for example, is a true heavyweight of the freshwater world, while our barramundi and saratoga are highly-prized angling targets that are beginning to attract the international acclaim they so justly deserve. In our golden perch or yellowbelly we have an abundant, accessible and hardy fish that fills a very similar niche to the famed largemouth bass of North America, grows to similar sizes (or bigger), and responds to many of the same angling techniques. Some of us may have taken this wonderful native species for granted in the past, but the yellowbelly is well and truly out of the closet and in the limelight now, proudly wearing its mantle as one of our premium freshwater sportfish. I, for one, am absolutely delighted about that!

ON GOLDEN PONDS — catching yellowbelly in dams

111

On Golden Ponds — catching yellowbelly in dams.

Articles inside