Trelly's Weekly Fishing Report - January 23, 2026
by Trellys 23 Jan 05:05 UTC
23 January 2026
Yellowbelly © Trellys
This week I come bearing VERY exciting news, and very sad news.
Firstly to the exciting news, The Redfin are back in Lake Hume. I am super excited to announce that Lake Hume is once again a viable Redfin fishery. I will speak more about this when I go through a select few locations below.
Now to the sad news, and that is that this hot dry summer is starting to take a toll on a few waterways. Many of my favourite yabbying dams are either dry, or getting very close to drying up, and now I am seeing a few trout streams starting to dry up.
For now, it is only the bottom ends of a select few streams. These streams are prone to drying up and have been drying up infrequently for years, but with 6 weeks of summer still remaining and some very hot weather in the forecast, I am starting to get quite concerned about a few of these streams.
As I type there is almost no rain in the forecast for the next 10 days. Thankfully we have impoundments and they still have a healthy amount of water in them.
While some of these impoundments may look very low, Lake Hume at 30% and Lake Eildon at 50%, that is still quite a lot of water. Lake Eildon still has 1.7 million megalitres of water in it, which is over 6 FULL Lake Eppalock's, or 12 full Cairn Currans.
Above all, Lake Dartmouth, which feeds Lake Hume is still sitting at 70% which is more than enough water to completely fill Lake Hume.
So while it is very hot and dry, there are still plenty of places to go fishing.
Now where have the fish been biting?
Loddon River
There has been Murray cod, Yellowbelly and carp caught in the Loddon River in the Bridgewater area this week. Tyler Kennedy caught a 66cm carp at Bridgewater.
Ovens River
The fishing has been very hot and cold in the Ovens River since Christmas time. I will have a great session, then say the fishing is great, and then have a really poor session.
I did fish at the Ovens in Wangaratta early yesterday morning. I fished from 5:30am until 8:30am using only Jan Juc Worms as bait.
I managed to catch 1 Yellowbelly (around 30cm), 3 small trout cod and 2 turtles.
I have not caught very many turtles in the Ovens River over the last few years, but as the lagoons along the river are now drying up, the turtles will likely be moving into the river to seek refuge before returning to the lagoons once the water returns.
I always catch more turtles in the river during drought years.
Goulburn River
River levels have been a bit up and down in the Goulburn River recently, but a few Murray cod and Yellowbelly have been getting caught around Shepparton.
From what I can gather the Goulburn has been a bit hit and miss like the Ovens River lately.
Lake Hume
For the first time in a few years, I am catching good numbers of redfin at Lake Hume again.
As always, the larger fish are being caught by anglers in boats, but there are no shortage of smaller redfin around the shallow edges of the lake to be caught by anglers wading, or fishing from the bank.
I fished Lake Hume a few days ago with my friend Sonny. The Redfin were going bonkers. We must have caught 30 to 40 Redfin between us.
All were quite small. A couple were probably big enough to keep... just!
Most fish were caught on soft plastics with the Strike Tiger Micro Minnow and Strike Tiger Nymph doing most of the damage.
We also caught a lot of fish on blades later in the evening. At one point, I caught 2 small redfin at once on a TT Switchblade.
Lake Eppalock
There have been some lovely Yellowbelly caught at Lake Eppalock this week. There have also been a few good catches of redfin up to 35cm as well. Lake Eppalock seems to be fishing very well at the moment.
Zach Nicho trolled a lovely 53cm Yellowbelly on a diving lure in Lake Eppalock last week. Well done Zach.