Fishing Victoria Forum

Hi all, fairly new to fishing (took it up during Covid) and still learning. Just wondering if anyone had any tips for catching live bait at Lake Bullen Merri?

I have heard it was easy and just put in a bait trap with a tin of seafood or fish based cat food inside and throw it in the water. Within an hour you will have heaps.

So knowing the above I went to Lake Bullen Merri and proceeded to fail and only catch two minnows lol.

What I did, put a small can of fish (tuna I believe) into the net and put it off the boat club jetty. This is where I got two, but it was extremely shallow. I think the net was in there for about 40+ minutes. A fisherman there told me I needed to throw it out deeper. So I put the seafood cat food in as well and through it out as far as I could from the fishing club jetty and left it for 20+ minnows and got nothing. I then tried closer to the boat ramp under construction in some deeper water and after about 15mins there I got nothing. After failing so spectacularly I kayaked out to go fish my only two minnows.

So all, what did I do wrong and what do I have to do different to get success?
- Is there a better spot on the lake to throw my trap?
- Do I need waders to get out deeper?
- Should I be using a small or large tin of bait?
- Should I be using a different type of bait?

Thanks all in advance for the help

You can't transport them to another lake you must use them in Bullen Merri can cat food in a bait trap look for some weed beds

Hey mate. I usually throw my trap off the jetty in front of the clubhouse. I did what you did and usually only have to wait 15 mins to get a **** load. Being winter, they are a bit harder to get. They don't like windy days and you get much more when it's calm. I've been getting from there for years and I can't work out what you did wrong. I use pellets but I have used everything from dog food toi cat food and they all get minnows

sandef wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 19, 2022 7:14 pm

You can't transport them to another lake you must use them in Bullen Merri can cat food in a bait trap look for some weed beds

There is no weed at BM, no structure what so ever except the boat ramp, it's just all volcanic sand

I probably should have added this was early in the morning from 6am until about 7:30am. Does the time of day have an impact?

Woofi wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 19, 2022 7:28 pm

I probably should have added this was early in the morning from 6am until about 7:30am. Does the time of day have an impact?

Should not make a difference, if anything it should be better. There wasn't ant blue green algae was there? The only thing I can think of is that it's getting a bit cold for them

Just in case anyone comes back to this thread I ended up working out the issue.

I was determined to work out what was going wrong before I went back there fishing properly so I have been back twice this week.

The first time I went back I tried a different spot on the lake but still came home with donuts after two hours. On the way home I got another net from Kmart to try next time. The new net I picked up was green as compared to the other one which was blue.

The next time I went out I tried them both. After 20 minutes the green net had heaps of minnows in it and the blue net had nothing. I tried the blue net with the exact same contents in the exact same spot as the green net was, left it another 20 minutes and it had only 2 minnows. Back in the drink for all the minnows.

So at the moment the minnows simply just don't like blue nets.

Lesson learnt and now I have two different colour nets just incase the fish don't like one colour.

Well Woofi all I can say is 10 points for trying and great that you had success. Many if not most of us would not have though minnows would not like blue nets!

Woofi wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 26, 2022 2:15 pm

Just in case anyone comes back to this thread I ended up working out the issue.

I was determined to work out what was going wrong before I went back there fishing properly so I have been back twice this week.

The first time I went back I tried a different spot on the lake but still came home with donuts after two hours. On the way home I got another net from Kmart to try next time. The new net I picked up was green as compared to the other one which was blue.

The next time I went out I tried them both. After 20 minutes the green net had heaps of minnows in it and the blue net had nothing. I tried the blue net with the exact same contents in the exact same spot as the green net was, left it another 20 minutes and it had only 2 minnows. Back in the drink for all the minnows.

So at the moment the minnows simply just don't like blue nets.

Lesson learnt and now I have two different colour nets just incase the fish don't like one colour.

I've only ever used the brown traps from anaconda, never thought they mightn't like blue nets