It was Daniel’s first visit to Lake Bullen Merri in south-west Victoria, and as you do when introducing someone to new water, I was hoping the 90-minute drive would be worth it. Not that I’d made any promises, but I may have mentioned the 20lb chinook on the angling clubroom wall, three trout species, and record growth rates. I’m sure I also added the rider that Bullen Merri could be notoriously fickle – although I can’t be certain Daniel heard that bit.

Anyway, we arrived to find the lake looking beautiful, and I was just a little surprised that ours was the only vehicle in the basic carpark. In fact, there were no other cars in sight.

Although the wind was a bit stronger than I would have liked, the water was very clear, with shallow edges dropping into unfathomable depths. ‘Doesn’t it look fantastic?”, I exclaimed, sweeping my arms out as if the lake was my creation.

We wadered up, rigged up (tippet checked and replaced, an olive Magoo for Daniel, an olive BMS for me), and walked towards a rocky point which offered some shelter from the stiff winter breeze.

We placed ourselves about 50 metres apart and began fishing. Just then, a ute pulled up near our car, the occupant got out, grabbed two bait rods, and began striding purposefully towards the point. Surely not? But yep, with no-one else for kilometres, the middle-aged bait fisher set up in between us, and hastily cast his Powerbait into the depths.

“Geez, you made a bit of a bee-line for this point,” I chuckled, “Must be fishing well?”

“Nah,” he offered sadly. “Just the only place near the car where I can get out of the wind.”

I had already decided that Daniel and I wouldn’t be hanging around the point for long: there was so much other water to explore without fishing in a crowd, and I had my eye on another area about 200 metres away, a spot where JD and I had encountered some big fish the previous winter. Still, while we completed a few more casts, I asked our new acquaintance if he’d fished the lake recently besides today? “Yeah, most days,” he explained, “I’m a local.”

So, any action?

“Nothing!” he shook his head. “Fished alright up ‘til Christmas, but terrible since.”

“All the minnow are out in the deep water,” he continued, “Haven’t even seen a fish move on the surface.”

The report was so bad, I was beginning to wonder if it was deliberately so – a ruse to keep competing anglers away from the lake. But then he added, “I’ve fished here for 30 years, and the lake is nothing like it used to be.” If our fellow angler was acting, it was a De Niro-esque performance.

It was time to move on regardless. I called Daniel, wished the baitie luck despite myself, and began heading west along the deserted shore.

When Daniel caught up to me, he quietly asked if we should head to another lake? “Sounds like this one hasn’t been very good.”

It occurred to me in that moment that, up to this point in his short flyfishing life, my son had more or less avoided interactions with failed fishers – by which I mean those anglers who not only catch nothing, but blame everything except their own fishing skills. I had some educating to do.

First, I explained to Daniel that it’s one thing for an angler to say they haven’t caught anything, but it’s a red flag if they then eagerly offer their credentials; such as being a local, or that they fish that water often, or they are privy to something being fundamentally amiss (like trout feeding on minnows way out in the middle of the lake and beyond reach). Or – worst of all – they reveal the vast number of years they’ve been fishing there.

The short translation is, it’s not them, it’s the lake.

I then pointed out that we had come to Bullen Merri not because of some angler’s report of good fishing (although that would have been a nice bonus) but because the fundamentals stacked up. Prior to our trip, I had not heard anything about the actual fishing at Bullen Merri, positive or negative. However, the water quality had been reported as good (important on a water occasionally prone to issues with alkalinity and algal blooms), and the stocking history was excellent (we’d actually double-checked that on the drive down on the Vic fish stock database). Finally, both the time of year we were visiting, and the conditions on the day (light to moderate wind), were what I prefer for this lake.

I hastened to add that, for all these positives, nothing is certain in winter lake fishing. However, the fundamentals favoured us, and that was about as much as we could hope for.

If Daniel still doubted our chances, it didn’t show. As I looked up the shore to where he was now fishing a crescent-shaped bay, his body language reflected expectation: scanning the water, while also attentively staring behind his fly for any sign of interest. His retrieve varied too, from a favourite figure-eight, to long strips, even the odd roly-poly – and of course a hang and lift at the end, every time.

Meanwhile, I was fishing between the small cliffs where JD and I had that action last winter. I figure-eighted the BMS, and maybe I should have been applying the same attention Daniel was, because by the time I registered the small but distinct hit, I was too slow to do anything about it. Although I tried a few more casts, I’d missed my chance. I wound in and wandered up the bank. “Dad, I’ve had some great action,” he announced as I got closer, but without taking his eye off the water. “Two follows from a beauty, nipping at the fly all the way to the rod tip, but didn’t hook up. Might have been a salmon.”

The grim report from our Powerbait mate was fading fast. Next, we saw schools of galaxias only metres from the bank – not ‘way out and down deep’. Then I spooked a good fish in a foot of water, and soon after, Daniel caught a lovely tiger trout. The next few hours were regularly interrupted by smelters, follows, misses, and more good fish landed – including a nice rainbow which Daniel polaroided and guided me onto.

We eventually got back to our starting point just on sunset. Daniel eventually reeled in, after ‘just one more cast’ to a big fish he’d polaroided in the half-light. (Oh for young eyes!) The temptation of a Camperdown hamburger was finally greater than the chance of another fish.

He took in one more long look across the water, and announced “Well, that’s as a good a fishing as I’ve had on a Victorian lake.”

By the way, of the bait fisher and his ute, there was no sign.

Philip Weigall

Editor