G’day all, and welcome back after the Christmas break. I’ve had some amazing action on the water over Christmas, boating an incredible amount of natives with a few mates. A subject that comes up the most while out in the boat is what colour lure to put on. The popular colours were gold with black scale pattern in the Oargee shallow diving lure. This lure on the first trip, I never changed it, and had huge success. On the second trip there was a bit more lure shuffling going on until I found their preference, the Oargee in straight gold. A couple of mates were getting good results on green. The third trip I started with the gold and had some success but wasn’t satisfied that I had the right colour. I changed colours a few times but it made little difference. I was still picking up fish, but not as regularly as I would have liked. Why a shallow diving lure? The water we fished was shallow in most spots with the occasional deeper stretch. If I used the deeper model, the lure spent too much time crashing into the river bed and not enough time swimming with its true action. What are the best colours? Well that depends on water clarity. If the water is clear, darker colours, more natural colours, or match the hatch. For dirty waters try fluorescent or brighter colours. The river at Barham has been producing some nice fish to 80cm, mainly on bait. The water is slowly cleaning up and will hopefully be a lot better quality in the coming weeks. People often ask why we get dirty water at times, and my answer is that we often get flows of a few thousand megs that come from the Goulburn River. This normally creates a rapid rise bringing muddy water with it. Also during holiday season a lot of Wake and Ski boats around Echuca creating wash and stirring up the edges make muddy water that eventually comes to us. The Murrumbidgee is fishing well in all areas, with fish up to and over the metre mark on both bait and lures. The lakes around Kerang are still fishing a bit patchy. Lake Meran is producing a few Redfin but they are hard to find at the moment. Charm is also having the same problem, but I did hear of some nice yellas being caught at both these locations trawling smaller lures. The  Oargee lure was certainly the most popular lure we used on our three trips away over the last few weeks. They can be very hard to find at times with the demand being very high. Trend in Barham have a good stock of these currently. Don’t rely on the big tackle shops to source these, as they find it difficult to keep them in stock. Pop into Trend and check their range before they become hard to get. 

Cheers Baz