Trevor Buck with a rainbow trout

Lakes, fishing, kids and caravans, they all go hand in hand and I secretly yearn for more. Well, I don’t know about the kids…

Australia is home to a plethora of majestic inland waterways, each with their own inhabitants, secrets and attractions, and the vast majority provide excellent camping and angling opportunities.

The camping can be as diverse as simply pitching a swag under a shady tree, or taking advantage of the many comforts and benefits of winding down the stabilisers in a waterside tourist park using the sport/art of fishing as an excuse to travel.

One of my most treasured television experiences was with Rob Sitch and Tom Gleisner on ‘A River Somewhere’, where the boys perfectly encapsulated my angling philosophy of using fishing as a vehicle to travel wonderful destinations with very little actual expectation, but a vast amount of appreciation. Let’s face it, I’m 55 years of age and have been lucky enough to travel and fish ever since I was old enough to hold a rod, and yet I am still finding magnificent destinations that I’ve never experienced, often right on my back doorstep. Only last week, I  visited Victoria’s Lake Fyans – a wonderful little impoundment at the foot of the Grampians, only two-and-a-half hours from my home in Melbourne, Vic. It was always on the bucket list, but was one of those locations that I kept driving by on the way to some other watery utopia.

It’s only a small lake of 5.3sqkm and, as it was built in 1916, it is very well-established. The Lake Fyans Top Tourist Park is a wonderful destination with cabins, powered and unpowered campsites, a terrific dual lane boat ramp, great facilities and a beautiful aspect  looking over a sandy beach toward the Grampians. There’s something timeless and mystical about a lake that supports a forest of dead trees, and, trust me, in some of our waterways you need your wits about you to find your way out of them if you’re in a boat. It’s very easy to lose your bearings on the water, especially when you’re surrounded by a submerged forest under a cloudy sky. The imposing dead trees seem to have bare gnarly fingers reaching out to engulf you as they twist skyward.

But these submerged forests are the home of a vast amount of life, particularly piscatorial. In Victoria’s west huge flocks of cockatoo’s and galahs gather around nesting sites in the hollows, and it’s common to see predatory ravens and small raptors raiding their nests. Kangaroos and wallabies abound and will take you by surprise as they graze right throughout the camping grounds. Overhead magnificent wedge tail eagles sour through the air stream, circling in the upwellings and nesting in high branches. In a good season every tree base is covered with mudeye casings left when the amphibian dragonfly larvae hatches into flight. These are rich food sources that are high on the wily old spotted river fox’s preferred diet.

Of course trout cannot breed in these impoundments as they need a fresh stream to run up to for spawning. At times you will see all of the lakes females rolling around on the surface as they try to loosen their belly’s full of unfertilized row. It can be a frustrating time when they will not eat, but at other times they become most aggressive, particularly toward lures. It takes a better man than I to understand the brain of a heavily pregnant woman  no matter the species, and I recall one weekend where the laboring girls would only succumb to a pink “Tassie Devil” one day, and a combination black base with yellow top and poker dots the next.

Lake Fyans

By far my favorite form of fishing these waterways is with a long wand and a float. It can be as successful in a suitable spot off the bank as it can out of a boat, yet the latter obviously allows more options. It’s thrilling watching your float bob and disappear as your scaly foe silently engulfs your bait, and it keeps most kids mesmerized for hours, young and old. But remember these are quiet and still waterways and the fish generally aren’t used to suspended baits, noise and resistance as they feed. They often seem temperamental due to this, as well as other climatic, seasonal and barometric reasons.

Fly flickers understand better than most just how diverse a trout’s diet can be, ranging from insect hatches one minute, to wood grubs falling around a dead tree base, tiny fresh water mussels, yabbies or even a scrub worm or some other morsel washed into the waterway from fresh rainfall the next. They also love smaller fish prey and will eat small redfin or other natural baitfish if you can dip net some.

For float fishing I have long threadline outfits (around 2.7 meters) built on blanks so soft they bend right through to the butt. I fish predominantly with 2kg monofilament right down to the hook. You need the length to manage a cast as I adjust the trace length to suit the water depth. The edges of weed beds are terrific fish haunts as the predators, our targets, patrol the edges looking for unwary morsels to emerge from the shelter. I usually try to judge the bait  depth to be suspended about a meter from the bottom, however it pays to vary the depth if not successful as it may be caught in weed. You can use a worm, yabbie or even gents (maggots) as some bait examples, however I just love mudeye – and so do the trout!

You must fish as light as possible and adjust your float according to the bait. A suspicious trout will quickly reject the best presented bait if it feels the weight of a float or any other unnatural obstruction. Light lines and tiny hooks are essential. I use miniscule size 14 hooks for mudeye fishing with the hook pinned either through the wing base or the saw-toothlike edge of the tail. They live longer through the wings and trout prefer them live. The long, soft rods and monofilament line give a shock absorbing effect so as not to pull out the tiny hooks as the fish lunges. Most well-presented live baits can still swim on the hook and you’ll be amazed at just how active a mudeye that barely moves out of water is when sent back into a watery domain. They often try to swim to a branch or reed to hide, so you need to ensure to keep ‘em moving.

Once on the lake my friend Trevor picked up a beautifully colored little rainbow on his first cast with a red and black “vibe” style lure and we thought we were in for some great action to come. Unfortunately it was the only one for quite some time, and my bait fishing only produced a higher level of consciousness from prolonged meditation. But you know what? It didn’t matter at all as the time slipped by in the peaceful surrounds of yet another gratifying day of peace and relaxation. Not to worry, there’s always another day, and another lake somewhere!

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Written: Fri 01 Feb 2019
Printed: February, 2019
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