Fishing for salmon at the mouth of Andersons Inlet. (The pipe is part of a complex sand pumping project.)
For travel convenience (i.e. not having to drive across Melbourne) I can be inclined to favour western Victoria for my estuary fishing. However, there’s no doubt Gippsland is rich in estuary opportunities. Even relatively close to Melbourne, places such as Andersons Inlet, the Tarwin River and the deceptively extensive Powlett River are a good start.
David, a lifelong friend, conveniently has a house down this way with his wife Katie. The winter solstice weekend was locked in as a good time for a catch-up with Jane and I… and of course, a spot of fishing.
Andersons with another storm approaching. As they say, you can't have a rainbow without the rain!
As can happen around the shortest day of the year, it was quite cold and wet, but the fish didn’t seem bothered. For the anglers, the bracing outdoors only added to the anticipation of home-cooked teppanyaki after dark (David and his wife Katie lived in Japan for years) and a warming beverage to go with it.
The stormy entrance to Andersons Inlet had produced a couple of enormous (3kg) salmon to David the weekend before. However, my fly session only produced two about a tenth that size! Experience over the years has taught us that salmon success here, at least with the larger models, relies on being in the right place when a school swims past: a mixture of luck and planning. Even so, Andersons can be a great land-based option on fly, with the deepwater channel quite reachable from the shore, and not too much interference from waves and wash.
David on the Powlett with foam marking the salt/ fresh boundary.
The Powlett a little later felt very fishy. On the first evening we had been a bit slower getting to the water than ideal, with the tide already retreating. Despite seeing a few fish and one decent follow, no luck. However on the second try a day later, the tide was still pushing up. Down in the bluewater, drifting weed remained a nuisance, fouling the fly as it had the previous evening. But I found staying just upstream of the fresh/ salt mixing zone reduced this. I quickly felt the confidence of being able to fish my Merri Minnow with appropriate strips and pauses, without weed interference. Only ten minutes in, a pause was followed by a decent yank in the other direction, and a good bream was soon in the net.
Powlett bream.
A few minutes later, my fingers slipped on another very hard pull (bugger!) although not long after, I hooked something briefly unstoppable. Dreams of bream glory were however sidelined as a half decent salmon leapt three times. ‘Only’ a salmon perhaps, but at a fat 40cm, I was very happy to land it.
... and a half decent salmon.
Another miss, and then a slightly smaller bream to the net rounded out a productive hour. I hardly noticed it had been raining the whole time.
Back at the warm dry house, with a solstice bonfire burning just across the road, the cold rain was soon forgotten and plans were already being made for another trip. Yes, winter estuaries have much to recommend them.
