North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

been down south for the last few weeks and did some fishing and we did quit well i also caught and released and 70cm cod .heres the photos report later.

Nice cod JD, some good Yella fellas there too...

Good mixed bag, nice to see something different. You guys are unstoppable on the fish

Looks great.....but cold.

Great to see the Cod went back. Better than the last pic you sent me Jordan.

Hows the water situation down there?

pretty low but still a few fish around

G 'day JD , hey that regulator in the back of Shanes photo, I can't think of the name of the creek but is that the one that feeds into lake Victoria looks familiar to me. If it is the one i'm thinking of you put your boat in near a little bridge and boat a fair way up stream to get to it.

Cheers Flicker

Makes it easier to find the fish when theres no water for them to swim away from you.


Jeeez Jordan. Just seen your Karma. You been running amok on your scooter upsetting people again.

flicker wrote:G 'day JD , hey that regulator in the back of Shanes photo, I can't think of the name of the creek but is that the one that feeds into lake Victoria looks familiar to me. If it is the one i'm thinking of you put your boat in near a little bridge and boat a fair way up stream to get to it.

Cheers Flicker

thats the one flicker its called the frenchman creek

Crikey, what is it with karma, everyone loves dishing out negatives, but less keen on the positives???

Might have to give karma points the flick, or put in a comment system to justify karma points ....

thats it, getting confused between frenchmans and deadmans, done a bit of fishing yabbying and shooting around there, the fish can realy go off at times when they let some water through, remember having a blinder at the rufus regulator one easter.

Cheers Flicker

Comment system sounds good. Or delete the negative aspect anyway. Doesnt worry me but have had other new guys comment that it seemed a little unfriendly.

yeah we caught 40 up the rufus camping with my uncle on boxing day it was awsome

love catching Cod. good fish JD. If you boys ever get up to the ACT there catching monsters from Lake Burley Griffin at the moment, most all over a 1m. Have a look at fishnet.com.au under members photos and use search member name ambigua, mates racking up some huge fish.

Geez, awesome cod

Some nice cod there boys thats for sure - we didnt really target them during our trip but a mate sent me a text message when i was driving home and they went for an overnight trip to a creek above Renmark which is fed from the Murray and they landed 6 cod (all returned) and lost a couple of big fish to snags - seems the commercial netting buy back IS working - surprise surprise!!
As Jordan said we have been down south and managed to get out on a few trips on the Murray - with some success.
Currently the river is running at about 50% of entitlement and things along the river for irrigators has been somewhat grim but they are hanging in there.
With the river so low i decided to visit a creek called the Frenchman with jordan and a mate. It is located about 90km from Renmark and is a man made creek which feeds water from the Murray into the Lake Victoria storage. As Flicker said the fishing at the regulator can be awesome when they water is being let in as it seems every golden perch int he system moves up to see if the can find a feed. On the first trip we found the level to be lower than i had ever seen and i wasnt overly hopeful of doing any good but we gave it a crack. It is about a 20 minute run from the bank launch to the regulator and we were the only ones on the creek. We got straight into it hooking 3 nice golden perch and some nice redfin immediately. The fishing slowed but every now and then we were getting some perch. Seems there were a few fish moving around and they were keen to grab a shrimp when they came across one. We moved downstream and got onto a nice silver perch and a couple more goldens when we tied to the bank and tried casting out. Almost straight away Jordan snagged a nice hook up which we called for a carp as it was going mad but it turned out to be a nice cod who after some nice photos was returned. Tally for the day was 9 perch and 4 or 5 redfin as well as the cod.
Headed back up on the 22nd for an overnight trip and bagged out on golden perch with my father who is a bit of a perch catching machine.
The fish werent super hungry - they were smashing shrimp and not really taking them so a light touch was required. Most of the time i fish in Murray with a cocktail of shrimp and tiger worm but the silver perch were jumping all over the worms as soon as it hit the bottom. Yabbies accounted for a few golden perch at a few of the deep holes we fished.
My father and Jordan fished above Lock 8 were we had all our success last year and only managed to land 2 perch one day and said that the river was turning green due to lack of flow. Heres hoping the water that was falling above Broken Hill flows down the Darling and gives the whole system a bit of a flush although i got a feeling that they will push a lot of it into storage at Menindie or to Lake Victoria.
Jordan also fished at the Rufus river regulator which is where the stored water from Lake Victoria is released back into the Murray. Only problem is the water is usually heavily discoloured by the clay bottom of the lake so the water down stream of the Rufus i usually very dirty. This is another regulator which goes off when conditions are right. They did really well on another overnight trip on boxing day so the fish are still there and catchable if conditions are right despite the low water levels.
It was nice to do some fishing in the river and visit the areas that i spent a fair bit of time in as a young bloke.

Cheers
Shane