Autumn has arrived and I have a moment to take a breath and reflect on the unusual summer that was.
For fishing, it certainly felt different. Easterly winds dominated, and rainfall was very good except for a few parts of Victoria. Temperatures were warm, but without any super-hot days. For most of us, bushfires and grassfires were mercifully absent. And it was the second wet and almost fire-free summer in a row.
On the water, there was plenty of it in the north-east Victorian streams; sometimes verging on an inconvenient quantity for actual fishing, although never for the fish, which thrived in numbers and condition.
One interesting side benefit has been the amount of water now in store. With high inflows and limited downstream demand, Lake Eildon is going into autumn at 83%, while Dartmouth and Lake Hume are well over 90%. Money in the bank for the future.
Up in the Snowy/ Monaro, it’s been a long time since they’ve had a summer like this. I fished Eucumbene at 45% in early December, and came back in late February to 47.5%… and the level has risen since.
All the main impoundments are similar, with Jindabyne stuck in the high 90s all summer and with full-grown trees and picnic tables partly submerged, resembling the scene of an endless flood! Only Tantangara has been kept as low as possible due Snowy 2.0 work.
Meanwhile, the Snowy/ Monaro streams finished summer looking more like you would expect at the end of spring.
In the salt, I was hampered in my summer sea fishing attempts by constant onshore easterlies: very fly-unfriendly! I did manage one good offshore day, but even that was cut short by the gathering wind. A pity, because salmon, kingfish and tuna numbers appeared to be very good.
Inshore and estuary fishing was great though, with the easterlies less of a problem if you picked the right aspect. The west coast, plus West Gippsland were good to me, with EPs, flathead and salmon about in decent quantities.
All up, it felt more like a coastal Sydney summer at times than a southern one, but I’ll take that rain and lack of extreme heat every time.