It was Ebb Tide Tackle's pleasure to host Mr Fishing Kaki - Mr Luke Meow Bear from Singapore over the last few days. Our goal was to introduce Luke to a Murray cod or golden perch and since we have been recently dialed in at the year round open Lake Eildon in north east Victoria we were quietly optimistic. In typical form for the spring of 2016, the weather was horrific; squalls, whitecaps, rain and a rock bottom barometer - fishing was tough.
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| Big girl... I think we have found Lyds lifting limit for future fish! |
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| Thanks for the helping hand Luke - that's real joy! |
Despite being up against it we fished long and hard, dusk to dawn on Saturday; "you wont catch them when you're on the couch" as they say. Our one chance came in the first hour of Saturday, my partner Lydia walking a Kuttafurra Mud Honey over a deep water vertical snag in 14 meters, boom, she was belted with the lure no more than 4 meters under the surface, clearly this fish was up to feed. It was obvious this was a good fish however I didn't quite anticipate how good. Lydia handled it like a pro, and after photo's the obligatory brag mat shot showed it just fell short of the magic meter - or did it? you be the judge by the photo.
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| 99.? almost there |
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| Such a well conditioned 'typical' impoundment fish |
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| The cod swam off well, powering to the depths |
That was the end of the native action for us. We sounded up some solid golden perch who would not play. We put in an extended effort (as we normally do) but the fish seemed to have lock jaw. A highlight among the crap weather was seeing Luke score a long and lean brown trout at 64cm's whilst we targeted goldens, a species first for him! Ah well, he will just need to come back next year to get his cod! As a side note, we stayed in the excellent Jerusalem Creek 'Boatells' - I cannot recommend these enough; they make fishing the lake a semi luxury experience and there is noting like stepping directly off the boat into a hot shower at the end of the day.
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| Long skinny brown on vibe for Luke - a first! |
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| Rain - hail - shine... Mr Fishing Kaki casts |
A great part of the weekend (the cod of course was hard to beat) was chatting with Luke. Exchanging notes on all things fishing but most particularly fishing with top water, bibbed minnows and swim baits for Asian species like grouper, yellow cheek and snakehead. I think we learnt a lot from each other and shared so many laughs, while Lydia caught the fish...
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| Luke loved the Aussie lures in my tackle box; the White Crow Warthog and Mudeye Mohawk being favorites. |
