Gippsland Lakes

Storms and floods won’t stop keen anglers

GIPPSLAND LAKES Brett Geddes

b.geddes@bigpond.com

Is there any more that nature can throw at us. First the drought and fires of 2019 and ’20 followed up by that pesky pandemic the next month or two.

FISHING AFTER THE FLOODS

I will get to the fishing reports soon and I’ve got some great news, but I have to expand on just how devastating this winter storm has been. Gale force winds around 100kmh are the worst came the floods. Rainfall totals in some areas were between 200 to 300mm in just over 24 hrs. Some creeks and rivers rose quicker than anyone had seen in living memory and a few of those feed straight into the Gippy Lakes. I’d say I’ve seen higher flood levels in recent goods yet again.

BREAM AND PERCH

After about a week or so as the rivers gradually dropped and slowed down a few of us started to explore the area. The Nicholson River was one of the first to produce and huge numbers of bream from the entrance right up to the railway bridge had schooled up. It’s one thing to sound up thousands of bream but a real challenge to get them biting. Some cracked the code and the stand out lures were soft plastic grubs worked extra slow and deep producing bream to 40cm and even the odd estuary perch around the bridge pylons. As the Mitchell R dropped a few reports came in from the Silt Jetties and bream mostly 30 to 38cm were taking prawn baits and blade lures. Closer to town there was a big log jam on the Bairnsdale highway bridge and that gives you some indication of how much water came steaming down from the huge Mitchell catchment. I predict this river will be the hotspot into the next month or two as the bream spawning season ramps up. I joined a good mate for our first post flood look at Hollands Landing and we didn’t know what to expect. I pictured a muddy flow of chocolate water but although it was very high to our amazement rather clean. It took a little while to work out where the fish were but I knew working blade lures deep and slow was our best bet and over the next five hours the results were stunning. Between us we released 28 cracking bream with only about 10 of them under 40cm! Our best six fish measured around 43 and 45cm and I weighed one fat model at 1.49kg. We also found two EP at 36 and 38cm. It proved yet again that floods are the lifeblood of all estuaries and if you want to catch lots of big fish, just add water! A day later another mate Mickey Dee went to try his luck on these big fish and absolutely smashed them. He used his own home-made blades to return an amazing 13 bream to 42cm and 12 estuary perch to 45cm. He said one massive perch he dropped at the net would have been 50cm.

In a cruel twist, the three of us returned to Hollands Landing just a few days later and couldn’t wait to do battle with these treasured big fish, but it wasn’t to be. To prove that no two days fishing are ever the same, we worked for hours and hours without so much as a bump! We didn’t land a single bream, and just when we expected a grand haul of trophy fish, the bream decided to teach us a lesson. The only joy was me finally finding two perch and my mates getting one each, all around 38cm.

LOOKING AHEAD

With all this fresh water around, the bream spawning run will be a cracker. They won’t have to push into the very upper river reaches like in drought years. With that in mind, I expect the Tambo River to fish well a couple of kilometres either side of the boat ramp and up around the highway bridge. I’ve already mentioned the Mitchell River and expect the Nicho to keep holding massive schools of bream in its lower reaches.

As for Hollands Landing, well good luck with that because I can’t work the joint out! Great one day – devastation the next.

Just after the Gippy Lakes floods, the bream lure fishing was red hot some days, with most bream over 40cm. However, other days produced donuts!

still hanging around and now the latest onslaught. The deluge and wind storms of June 2021 will be remembered as probably Victoria’s worst. The Gippy Lakes area was one of the hardest hit. But don’t worry the fishing has already bounced back and hopefully continues into many have ever seen and so many huge fallen trees shut countless roads and destroyed too many homes. Thousands of homes were left without power for up to 3 weeks or more and that’s unheard of in my books. Watching the news reports was like seeing the wreckage of a Victorian cyclone. Then years like 2007 and ’12 so from a fishing perspective I knew what to expect. A lot of us know that high stream flows can really fire up fish feeding behaviour and I’ve learnt how to tackle dirty floodwaters like many other anglers. Sometimes the results can be stunning and this flood event delivered the

Double hook-ups have been common when the bream have been feeding hard in the recent fast-flowing freshwater. These two bream, measuring 40cm and 42cm, took blade lures.

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