Aug 28, 2026

Trellys Fishing Report 28th August 2026

Spring is upon us, and that means that there are quite a few changes happening in the Victorian freshwater fishing world.

This coming Monday is the 31st of August, which is the final day of the Murray cod season and the Murray crayfishing season. Both seasons close at midnight on Monday night.

The Victorian trout season opens NEXT Saturday, the 5th of September. Cod season and cray season open on the 1st of the month, but trout season is always the first Saturday of the month.

I will have more to say about the new trout season in next week's report.

Worth noting is that although the Murray cod season is closing, several lakes remain open. Here in North East Victoria, Lakes Eildon, Nillahcootie, Eppalock, Cairn Curran, Eildon Pondage and Arcadia Hatchery Pondage are open all year round to cod fishing. These lakes no longer have a closed season.

The rules are different again in the Western District rivers and lakes, so make sure you download a copy of the Vic Fishing app to keep up to date with current regulations.

Now for the fishing report, and things are starting to really warm up in the fishing world. I am receiving a steady flow of reports from a few locations around the place as the longer daylight hours trigger the fish to start biting.

Lake Hume

There have been some lovely Yellowbelly caught off the bank at Lake Hume this week, with live yabbies being the best bait. The Bowna area seems to be fishing the best.

Elsewhere in the lake there have been plenty of carp caught off the bank as well as the odd redfin.

Waranga Basin

The Waranga Basin seems to be the pick of the crop for redfin fishing at the moment. Each week I have seen a couple of reports of fish being caught there.

One fella commented on one of my Facebook posts telling me that he caught around 10 or so redfin casting soft plastics off the bank. He said the redfin were busting up in the shallows on dark and he was casting his soft plastic at them and they were smashing it, but they weren’t very big.

I did see another photo this week of 4 quite large redfin trolled in 4 meters of water on a small 10 foot Old Mate lure off Harriman Point.

So Waranga Basin is starting to fire and it appears that the larger fish are all out deeper. Small redfin from the bank and larger models from the boat.

Lake Nillahcootie

I ventured across to Lake Nillahcootie again earlier this week for another successful fishing trip. This time I landed 4 Yellowbelly and 1 Silver Perch, and no carp! That’s 100% native fish.

All of my fish were caught angling off the bank with worms with sunset being the best time of the day.

Lake Eildon

On Wednesday just gone I headed over to Lake Eildon. I wanted to fish at Kennedy Point, but it was too windy, so I followed the road around to the big reserve near Peppin Point.

I had to find a spot with the wind behind me, and the only spot that I found was on a large shallow open area.

Fishing over newly flooded grasses, I managed to catch 7 carp for the afternoon. The action was consistent, but there was no sign of any decent fish such as Yellowbelly, Redfin or Murray cod.

I last fished Lake Eildon 6 weeks ago and it took me 5 hours to catch 3 carp. This time it took me 3 hours to catch 7 carp.

The fishing is picking up over there, and although all I caught were carp I can’t help but think that had I found a steeper bank with a bit of structure I may have picked up better quality fish.

As always I have seen plenty of photos of very large Murray cod being caught over there by those dedicated “big cod” anglers.