Tackle Tactics » Tips-Techniques » Sweetwater-Impoundments-Brackish » Rain, Rain, Redfin & Trout
Rain, Rain, Redfin & Trout
By Gary Brown
Gary wanted to call this one 'Rain, Rain, Rain and more Rain', however the boys persisted, fished hard and scored a few. Sit back, stay dry and follow Gary and Dave on their adventure.
What do you do when you have pre-booked (3 months out) a freshwater guide in South-West Victoria and he emails you a week out and tells you to pack some warm clothes and wet weather gear as the weather forecast is not ideal for the week?
It was going to be 13 degrees on Tuesday and not much warmer for the rest of the week, with up to 10mm of rain for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The winds were expected to get up around 30-40km from the west, making it very uncomfortable, cold and wet.
You make sure that you grab as much warm clothes and wet weather gear as you can pack, along with your rods, reels, soft plastics and lures that you can fit in.
Michael was not wrong! It virtually rained and blew its backside off for the three days that we fished Lakes Purrumbete and Elingamite, as we couldn't fish Lake Bullen Merri because of the blue green algae and the other option of the Hopkins River bream, estuary perch and even mulloway was also a blown away, choppy muddy mess and not worth the two and a half hours down and back.
Day One had us fishing Lake Purrumbete, which is a volcanic lake in the Western district of Victoria and is a large lake over 500 hectares in size that is open and very exposed to weather conditions. Lake Purrumbete is truly unique for a couple of reasons. The first is its depth, from being a natural volcanic lake. It has crystal clear waters averaging 45 metres deep and scattered deep holes as deep as 60 metres or 200 feet in depth.
The first night down there it rained non-stop and as we hit the water at 6am on the Tuesday. We tried fishing the shallow weed beds with ZMan 2.5" and 3" Slim SwimZ on 1/40oz and 1/28oz TT Lures HWS (Hidden Weight System) jigheads and even with the 30-40km winds assisting our casts we didn't even get a take, let alone see a fish!
After two and a half hours of casting and working the shallows, we decided to very slowly troll the deep section of the lake with down riggers, deep divers and ZMan 3" MinnowZ rigged on 1/8oz 3g #1/0 TT Lures RevlockZ jigheads. After another couple of hours of bashing our way through the half a metre chop, while getting blown away and dumped on by the rain, it was decided that we would go in for an early lunch.
After regrouping, we hit the water again as the sun started to shine through, even if only for a few minutes. More hours of trolling and casting... even soaking live gudgeons and minnows still didn't produce a fish. With our tail between our legs we headed back at about 7pm with no fish.
Seeing that Lake Purrumbete was a waste of time as it was so chopped up with the wind and Michael said that it had risen over 350mm in the past two months, we decided to head to Lake Elingamite about 40 minutes away.
Lake Elingamite is almost perfectly circular and 2km in diameter. It has a small area in the middle that varies from 2.5 to 3 metres in depth. The whole of the perimeter has plenty of weed for the trout and redfin to feed and hide in.
As we arrived the clouds parted and the sun came out. Was this a sign from the fish gods that we would start to catch fish? I bloody hope so!
For most of the next two days we concentrated our fishing in Lake Elingamite as Lake Purrumbete was still being whipped up into a frothy, dirty mess and nothing was going to bite in those conditions.
Even with the use of down rigging live gudgeons and minnows. We also anchored up with the spot lock on the Minn Kota and cubed with pieces of pilchard and sent down unweighted fillets of pilchards for the Chinook Salmon. We also tried worms and live shrimps to no avail.
Check out the following freshwater rigs that we used:
http://tackletactics.com.au/Rigging-Guides/Gary-Browns-Freshwater-Bait-Fishing-Rigs/Strip-Bait-Rigs
http://tackletactics.com.au/Rigging-Guides/Gary-Browns-Freshwater-Bait-Fishing-Rigs/Live-Shrimp-Rigs
Luckily for us Lake Elingamite produced some good size redfin, rainbow and brown trout. Due to the shallowness of the lake and the weed that is around the edges, we cast our arms off for the next two days, while using a combination of ZMan 2.5" and 3" Slim SwimZ on 1/40oz and 1/28oz TT Lures HWS (Hidden Weight System) jigheads, along with 2", 2.5" and 3.5" GrubZ on 1/16oz, 1/12oz, 1/4oz and 3/8oz TT Lures HeadlockZ jigheads.
Michael also had us throwing a variety of shallow and mid diving hard bodied lures over the two days.
Even though we had a tough three days of fishing in the wind and rain we did manage to get a few quality browns, rainbows and redfin.
Gear List:
Okuma LRF Spin Rods (Full Grip) - LRF-S-742L-FG rod
Okuma Ceymar Spinning Reels - C-30
Platypus Super Braid - 2lb
Platypus Stealth FC Fluorocarbon Leader - 4lb, 6lb and 8lb
ZMan 2.5" Slim SwimZ
ZMan 3" Slim SwimZ
ZMan 2" GrubZ
ZMan 2.5" GrubZ
ZMan 3.5" GrubZ
TT Lures HeadlockZ jigheads
TT Lures Hidden Weight System (HWS) jigheads