Casting a line

Australia may well be the sunburnt country but her flooding plains and sweetwater environments still play host to a wide variety of freshwater fish. Many favoured target species are found in coastal estuaries right through to fresh headwaters.

Targeting freshwater species means setting up amongst mountains, next to rivers, beside lakes and gently flowing streams. Some of our most beautiful destinations spawn life for freshwater angling opportunities, and we’d be mad not to make the most of them.

TROUT

Alternative Names: Salmo trutta, spotted river foxes.

Identification: Trout colouration varies with age and habitat, but they are often silvery or olive, with dark spots on the sides of the body. The spots are often surrounded by a lighter halo. Brown trout can have slight rainbow colouring, but no teeth or tongue, and no spots on their tail.

Size Range: Overseas trout may grow up to 1.4m (20kg), although in Australia, only our largest specimens may occasionally reach 90cm (14kg).

Distribution: Trout are an introduced species found in the cool streams, lakes, and reservoirs of south-eastern Australia, Tasmania, and south-western WA. Trout fishing is highly regulated and our dams and rivers are regularly stocked.

Habitat: Trout inhabit cool streams, lakes, and reservoirs. They live in freshwater, but some run to the ocean and return to freshwater to spawn, just like salmon (which trout are closely related to).

Feeding and Diet: Trout eat small fish, insects, molluscs, and crustaceans. It is a predator of small native species such as galaxids.

Angling Methods: Fly fishing is probably the most recognisable method of trout fishing. Mostly done in streams and rivers where trout swim in the shallow and attack at the surface. In lakes, dams, and rivers, you can cast lures as you would in saltwater. Just add it to your balanced spinning rig and start chucking. Soft plastics, spinners,  and hard bodies are often combined with attractors like ‘Ford Fenders’.

Eating Quality: Trout are not only popular with anglers, they are also popular on the dinner table. However, taste can vary considerably according to their current eating habits and water quality. But they always taste great smoked!

A large Murray cod

REDFIN

Alternative Names: Perca fluviatilis, redfin perch, English perch, European Perch, reddy.

Identification: Redfin are easil recognised by black or red bands on the sides of their bodies. They have a quite distinct dark patch at the rear of the dorsal fin and well-defined red fins. Typically for most perch species, there’s a hump behind the depressed head and a fairly large mouth.

Size Range: While it’s been suggested that redfin can grow as large as 60cm and around 10kg, evidence is hard to find. The majority of fish encountered in Australian waters range from 300g to about 2.5kg.

Distribution: Redfin are an introduced species that are common in freshwater environments in New South Wales, Victoria, south-eastern South Australia, Tasmania, and south-western WA.

Habitat: Redfin prefer the sweetwater life in lakes, dams, and slow-flowing streams. Unlike many freshwater species that commonly enter saline estuaries, redfin prefer to stay sheltered amongst structure such as rocky outcrops and submerged trees.

Feeding and Diet: Crustaceans such as yabbies and shrimp, worms, molluscs, insect larvae, and smaller fishes.

Angling Method: Redfin are one of the most popular freshwater fish in the country. Reddies are very easy to fish for with simple bait methods such as running sinker and paternoster rigs. They also engulf many lure types, particularly loving any presentation with similar colouring to themselves. You can spin, jig or troll and they’ll even take a fly. Redfin respond well to flashing attractors, livebaits of small fish, yabbies or shrimp, and are suckers for a scrubworm.

Trout can come in a range of colours

MURRAY COD

Alternative Names: Goodoo, cod, greenfish, Mary River cod, Murray perch, ponde, pondi and Queensland freshwater cod.

Identification: The Murray cod is a large grouper-like fish with a deep, elongated body. It has a broad, scooped head, and a large mouth lined with pads of very small, needle-like teeth and the lower jaw protrudes slightly. Murray cod are white to cream on their belly with yellowishgreen to green backs overlain with heavy darker green, but occasionally brown or black, mottling.

Size Range: The Murray cod is the largest freshwater fish in Australia, and one of the largest in the world. Adult Murray cod regularly reach 80-100cm. They are capable of growing to more than 1m and the largest on record was above 1.8m and about 113kg (249lb) in weight.

Distribution: The Murray cod is named after the Murray River and their natural range encompasses the whole Murray-Darling basin, particularly the lowland areas, and extending well into upland areas. They extend from southern Queensland, through New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, and Victoria to South Australia.

Habitat: Murray cod inhabit a remarkably wide variety of habitats, from cool, clear, fast-flowing streams in upland areas to large, slow flowing, meandering rivers in the extensive alluvial lowland reaches of the Murray-Darling basin.

Feeding and Diet: A long-lived fish, adult Murray cod are carnivorous and mainly eat other fish. The Murray cod is the apex aquatic predator in Aussie freshwater and will eat almost anything smaller than itself, including smaller Murray cod, golden perch, silver perch, bony bream, eel-tailed catfish, and introduced fish such as carp, goldfish, and redfin, plus yabbies, freshwater shrimp, and Murray crayfish. Murray cod have even been known to eat ducks, cormorants, freshwater turtles, water dragons, snakes, mice, and frogs.

Angling Method: Murray cod can be caught on bait or lure, but targeting them on lure is far more exciting and enables you to cover more ground in your pursuit. Keep on the move, casting big lures into likely structure. The warmer months are better – you still get fish in winter, but they become less active around April onwards. Murray cod will bite throughout the day, however early morning and evening still remain prime times. Best lures include large deep-diving, hard body minnows, large spinnerbaits, double blade spinnerbaits, lipless crankbaits, soft plastics, jitterbugs, and other surface lures.

Eating Quality: Many love them, but just as many dislike them. A large, flaky flesh that needs all of the fat removed or it spoils the taste.

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Written: Sat 01 Sept 2018
Printed: September, 2018
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