Genesis of a lake's fishery

There's a truism that states ‘old age is for regrets’, but I’d rather think that old age is for reminiscing.

Sitting in camp during an overnight fishing trip recently, the subject of our early experiences on Lake Wivenhoe was raised.

Having lived in the district all my life, we’ve been fishing the big lake since it first filled 40 years ago.

As soon as my sons were old enough to walk, they’d accompany my dad and I walking the banks fishing for spangled perch and snubnose garfish.

That was in the years before the lake was being stocked with fingerlings, so naturally occurring species were the only fish available.

Steve Timperley in the early 1990s releasing a large tagged bass. A time of dropping water levels before the lake spilled in 1996.

Snubnose garfish thrived in the calm waters of the lake and continue to breed and prosper today, though very few anglers even notice them.

My sons honed their fly-fishing skills on those tasty little garfish, in preparation for trout fishing sojourns south of the border.

Hundreds of sea mullet were trapped in the lake when the wall was completed, growing to astonishing sizes in the landlocked environment.

They could regularly be seen free jumping – and an 8kg mullet splashing down was an impressive sight indeed.

When the lake first overflowed in 1996, the entire mullet population escaped over the spillway, making its way to the ocean.

Running deep diving lures in open water was the technique that showcased Wivenhoe’s big bass fishery.

The first fish to be stocked into Wivenhoe were both golden and silver perch, again about four decades ago.

Sadly, silver perch are now largely ignored as both a stocking option and as an angling species, largely due to the success of bass in the eastern watershed lakes.

During those formative years of Wivenhoe’s stocked fishery, because they’re quite happy foraging along gently sloping clay banks, silvers provided an easily accessed target for shorebased anglers.

One of their attractive qualities was their readiness to take a humble earthworm as bait, making them an ideal starter species for kids.

Golden perch on the other hand gravitate towards hard structure, congregating around rocky points often far removed from access points.

During the very early days, after fish stocking commenced, golden perch were targeted along the lake’s shoreline.

The fishery in Wivenhoe changed exponentially once the stocked Australian bass reached catchable numbers.

Due to low stocking rates (per hectare), unlimited forage and very limited harvest, trophy sized bass became the drawcard for this lake.

Bass over the 50cm benchmark were not an unusual sight, with obese specimens weighing more than five old fashioned pounds (2.3kg) being commonplace.

A handful of anglers resorted to fishing during the winter months, attempting to avoid the millions of blue catfish naturally occurring in the lake.

That winter bass fishing habit soon expanded to other lakes and, unsurprisingly, produced satisfying results.

As technology improved, the images on sonar screens delivered more information to anglers, resulting in open water schooling bass being targeted.

Fly fishing using heavily weighted flies experienced a boom in popularity during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

And because the bass were uneducated to vertical lure presentations, jigging with metal lures was insanely productive when it first entered the scene.

Following on the heels of the jigging phenomenon came deepwater fly fishing with weighted flies, popularised by pioneers such as John Schofield.

John’s successes prompted many who’d never seen a flyrod to take up the discipline purely to access those mid-lake bass schools.

Wivenhoe continued to provide a trophy bass fishery for about 30 years, until significant changes in 2013 when its waters were opened to power boats.

The dynamics changed rapidly afterwards.

The fishery continues to evolve but that, as they say, is another story.