by Dan Mackrell
The South West Lakes in Victoria are very unique in the fact that they are the only place in Australia where you can go and catch Chinook Salmon, they are also stocked with Brown Trout, Rainbow Trout and Australian Bass. These lakes are stocked with fish each year from brood stock grown out in hatcheries. The Salmon seem to thrive in the volcanic lakes with an abundance of minnows, insects, larvae and gudgeoen for the fish to feed on. The salmon only survive in these stocked lakes for a few years but they have exceptional growth rates and with an abundance of food it’s not uncommon for a 2 year old fish to reach 7lbs. With photos and stories floating around from the past of fish reaching weights above 20lbs it would be awesome to see things get back to what they were. These days a fish of 10lbs is a real trophy fish.
Being only a short drive from my place I had a small window to go fishing on Sunday afternoon. With light winds a deep baitfishing session was on the cards, picking up some bluebait, tinned catfood and some chook pellets I was all set. Launched the boat and started sounding around in depths between 15 & 25 metres, once I started marking a few fish I would stop and anchor up. Throwing out a mixture of the chook pellets and catfood as berley at regular intervals you could soon see the fish arrive in the berley trail swimming through the sounder beam below.
Rigging up the light Samurai 101 and Majorcraft Crosstage CRK702 spin rods a simple rig using 6lb Unitika Aiger Fluorocarbon with a tiny ball sinker running directly to a Gamakatsu size 6 Baitkeeper hook was all that was needed. Hiding the hook inside the bluebait is important as the Chinook Salmon can be very fussy. It’s a technique very similar to cubing for tuna just on a greatly reduced scale. You generally don’t have to wait long to get a bite once the fish are in the trail but for such an aggressive fish they muck around and peck at the bait for quite some time before eating it properly.
Once you have the fish around the boat it is also great fun to catch them on lures and soft plastics, I have used Atomic Metalz, Atomic Semi Hardz minnows, Atomic Plazo Minnows and paddle tails all to great effect. Simply a matter of dropping lure to the bottom and slow rolling or twitching it back to the boat.
Chinook salmon are a great sportfish and really do put up a great scrap, they are also very tasty and go well in the smoker. These fish are solely stocked as a put and take fishery and with a bag limit of 5 per person that’s plenty. Once you have a school of fish fired up it can be mayhem with double and triple hook-ups to keep things interesting. So next time your heading to the South West Lakes in Victoria make sure you try this technique out.
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