Warburton Blackies
Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2018 8:23 pm
Hi All
The old Defender was due for a service in Melbourne today and to get away from the Goulburn Valley heat I drove down to the Warburton area to camp and try and get a good night's sleep! I also spent a couple of hours fishing a stream I haven't visited before checking it out for my old friends the Gippsland blackfish.
As you can see from the pic the stream is not very big - it doesn't need to be to hold decent blackfish. In general I have found that those with sandy bottoms, like this one, have lower densities of blackfish than those with gravel bottoms but the average size can be quite good:
Within 15 minutes I had my first blackie from this spot. I simply placed a worm rigged with a small sinker in under the shade of the ferns near their roots:
This is the fish, around 20 - 25 cm long:
A little while later I picked up a much better one from beneath an undercut bank, in the 30 - 35 cm range:
I came across this terrific looking spot, a log across the stream with a raft of foam on top of a quiet area. I knew there had to be good one in here!:
And here he is, a solid blackfish that would be close to 40 cm long: This is the best pic; I took a couple of others, but in the dim light from the shade of the ferns they were blurred with the fish also jumping around. In the hot conditions I tried to get the fish quickly back to the water. You can see from my boots that as they increase in size the blackies become quite deep in the body:
Finally, I picked up this small trout in a pool; I saw a few others but I wasn't targeting them:
So there you have it, a couple of hours fishing on Melbourne's doorstep for four fish, two of which were quite reasonable blackfish - and from a stream I've never fished before. They were caught from about 3 - 5 pm so you can catch them during the day in streams like this one.
Best Wishes
Truedogz
The old Defender was due for a service in Melbourne today and to get away from the Goulburn Valley heat I drove down to the Warburton area to camp and try and get a good night's sleep! I also spent a couple of hours fishing a stream I haven't visited before checking it out for my old friends the Gippsland blackfish.
As you can see from the pic the stream is not very big - it doesn't need to be to hold decent blackfish. In general I have found that those with sandy bottoms, like this one, have lower densities of blackfish than those with gravel bottoms but the average size can be quite good:
Best Wishes
Truedogz