Bullen Merri

[robbo101]

I don't often find time to post but I headed to lake Bullen Merri on the weekend and thought I would share some info.
Arrived 1530 Saturday and fished till dark. Boat based fishing and trolling only. Strong winds kept me busy keeping things straight. Stayed on the upwind side of the lake for some cover. Used A combination of flat line and down rigging. with various colour and sized lures tried spotted dog and rainbow coloured rapalas of different sizes with no luck. also holographic tassie devil again no luck even with a small flasher in front of it. Quite a few small fish on the sounder but seemed to be in patches. Didn't seem like many people were catching anything either.

Sunday morning started first light. Trolling only again. Was hopeful to see some fish feeding on the surface but didn't see a single thing. Didn't fill me with much confidence....!
Again tried rapalas for a while, right along the edges with no luck so after a few hours swapped to tassie devils one pink#55 and the other a brown trout pattern but metallic shiny finish. Ran the pink on the downriver at around 7m and after a while picked up a small salmon. Looking from Boat ramp out on the far left side of the lake. Note another guy trolling a pink Tassie on the surface picked up what looked like a 3lb salmon 5 minutes later right next to me. we were both hugging the bank, I was just out far enough for the rigger to clear the bottom. he was almost on the bank.

5 minutes on from his fish I hooked a nice 4lb salmon that gave me some stick on 6 lb line. This was on the flat line with the brown trout coloured lure. Note I run my flat lines as far back as I dare further from the boat the better, less chance of them being put off from sound and shadow etc 50m minimum.
Took me quite a while to get this in and managed to clear the down rigger and get it up in the process to minimise the chance of a tangle!(its happened before!)before I got it to the boat.
Moving on again long line out first then begun to set the down rigger, had only just clipped the line to the release and the flatline was on again! This time a 3 lb salmon.
After this things shut down again and I headed in at 1100.
From what everyone was saying fishing was quite tough with minimal catches both boat and land based from others. Think I was a bit lucky with my lure choices and location hence passing what worked on the day.
All fish caught around 0900 and within 400m of each other.
Think it was important to keep changing lures to find something they liked.
Also to note both myself and the other bloke who got the fish were trolling slow. very slow 1.4knts on the gps and slower. if you can't go slow tow a bucket or something to slow things down. lots of people were trolling what looked like twice as fast but i suppose you have to tow at a speed that your lure works as well, so maybe they needed to, but i kinda doubt it!

Hope this info helps someone out.
I can't wait to get down there in a few months when things get cold to chase some big browns!

Cheers Rob.

[Marty.A]

Mate that is a very informative report thanks for posting :good:

[GONE FISHING]

Good effort on at least getting onto some fish fr what seemed tough going for quite a few others.

A day out and getting some action on the rod end is always a satisfactory result in my books. Well done mate :thumbsup:

[Nude up]

Nice report at least you caught fish

[Lightningx]

Great report mate. Sounds like you caught some nice fish :thumbsup:

[ecoronad]

Thanks for the report. It's been a while since I've read a detailed report about Bullen Merri. Good to see that at least you had some success compared to others.

[Redhunter]

Great read mate! Sounds like you worked hard for those fish. Hopefully things will start picking up down there soon.

[barra mick]

Nothing like changing lures all day!

Nice report

Bm