Long Weekend At A Mountain Lake

It was the Queens Birthday long weekend here recently, so we took the opportunity to go to a fairly remote mountain lake for a weekend fishing – Lake Dartmouth.

We went for trout fishing, but disappointingly we didn’t catch a single trout. We tried multiple lures trolling, at various depths and speeds. We tried casting lures, and we tried baitcasting. It just wasn’t our weekend, and sometimes that happens.

The scenery was amazing, but the lake was down a bit on capacity, and the banks were steep with few places to camp. We camped on a little spur of mud that would normally be underwater! It had no shelter, so we set up a big tarp for wind protection. We thought as soon as the wind picked up, we would be sitting ducks. But surprisingly, the wind direction was opposite to the way the valley we were in was facing, so despite it being very windy, our little spur of mud was relatively calm.

What we did catch was a couple of big European carp. For those that love carp, in Australia they are hated. They do put up a good fight, but they have ruined our mud-based waterways and clogged up the water so that our native fish can’t get adequate oxygen in the water.

If you are anywhere else in the world, and love fishing for carp, Lake Dartmouth is where you need to come. We have been there in the middle of summer when all the carp are sunning themselves on the surface of the lake, and you could practically walk across the lake on their backs, from fish to fish!

Australians get a lot of satisfaction catching and killing carp. It is illegal for us to return them to the water, so we have to kill them. They are so full of mud that they are not worth eating. I have heard that if they are flushed with clean water, then they can taste great – if anyone knows anything about this, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

The other fish we caught were a couple of native Macquarie perch. They are critically endangered, and Lake Dartmouth is the only place we’ve ever caught them. The fact that we were able to catch two bodes well for their numbers. Of course we put them straight back so that they could continue to grow and breed – very exciting for this beautiful little fish.

The dog had fun too!