IFS staff Paul Donkers and Rob Freeman spent the opening weekend checking angling licences and examining anglers’ bags with some very pleasing results.  On arrival at Four Springs Lake early Saturday morning, the car park was full and the shoreline dotted with spin and bait fishers in what was surprisingly fine weather.  By lunchtime the weather has turned very nasty with wind squalls and heavy rain.  Despite these conditions anglers persevere with the vast majority ending the day with bags of multiple trout in the 1 – 2.5kg range, all in great condition.

Over Saturday and Sunday 126 anglers were checked for a catch of 149 brown trout and 16 rainbow trout, with approximately 8% of the catch (all sized fish) released.  The majority of fish were taken by boat anglers casting hard bodied lures and soft plastics.  The few fly fishers that did fish this water also had success fishing sunken wets and nymphs just off the bottom and generally in close to the shore.  Shore based anglers also caught good numbers of fish with spinning the more productive method over bait.

One of the interesting aspects of the creel information collected was the capture of fin clipped brown trout.  During the off-season the Service released 2,000 adult brown trout taken from the spawning run at Liawenee.  All of these fish were ‘tagged’ by having the small adipose fin on their back clipped.  Consequently, these fish could be easily identified from the fish that were previously stocked into Four Springs as young hatchery reared (wild origin) brown trout.  These fin clipped fish represented approximately 17% of the brown trout captured by anglers and there were good signs of these fish beginning to put on weight.

Over the weekend, approximately 71% of anglers indicated they either trolled or spun using hard-bodied lures or soft plastics, 18% bait fished (with several anglers also spinning), 11% fly fishing.

Highlights of the weekend were the catches of Ashley Roles who caught his biggest brown trout ever, a well conditioned 5lb’er.  Bella Summers who out fished her dad with two great brown trout and a chunky rainbow, George Webb with a bag of 5 magnificent trout, and Phil Batchelor who reckons his fish cost him $270, as this was his first trout in three seasons, but it was well worth it weighing in at over 6lbs!