Nelson - Glenelg River

On the weekend past I made the journey west to on of my all time favorite places to fish on the Glenelg River in Nelson.

It had been a big few weeks and I needed to get away from every thing and almost every one for a day or 2 so I could partake in some serenity and try and find some of my old mojo.

I grabbed a good mate Dale and in the early hours of Saturday morning we started our journey in the darkness that 2:00am brings, car and boat loaded the 400km trip was under way. After a couple of hours into the trip on the approach to Colac Dale and I had a conversation about how the Police always sat at the bottom of the hill coming into Colac. Being fully aware of this I put some music on and forgot all about the conversation we had just had. Coming over the hill I saw the 80 sign so I turned the cruise control off and coasted down the hill, then I saw the 60 sign and started on the brakes just as a saw the blue and white checkers of a local divy van. DOH!. It seems that I had not slowed up quick enough and went past the 60 sign at 76. For every action there is a reaction and in this case the reaction was red an blue flashing lights in my rear view. More pissed off at myself than the local constabulary we exchanged pleasantries and speeding fines and we were again on our way.

The sun was coming up as we approached Nelson a bit behind our scheduled time but this weekend was about relaxing and not rushing to meet schedules, we approached the ramp on the pub side only to find the water level too shallow to launch. Water was filthy on the edge and not much better in the deep. We decided to head over the bridge an launch on the other side where the ramp is a bit steeper.

We putted up towards Donavans where the lecky motor was deployed and started to flick some lures around. I started of with a Gan Craft Big Spider Micro on a 1/32 jighead to fall own the edges in the hope a bream would come out and play with it and Dale got started with a DRESS Drepan mini vibe to fish the secondary drop off.

The water was still filthy and there were no Bream to be seen, we made a move to Pritchards hoping the water would be a bit cleaner but the further we traveled the worse the water got, I did get a few hits on the spider but too busy yacking and not paying enough attention saw me panced a couple of times with the bream winning a plastic and me getting a clean jighead back. Dale managed a couple of small Bream on the DRESS vibe but things were just not working for us.

We took the boat out o the water so we could check into the accommodation and grab a feed, now if I can take one thing from this weekend that is that the lamb, gravy an cheese jaffles at the shop in Nelson are to die for and I did my best to smash a few of them over the weekend.

We put the boat back into the water and looked for a bit of clean water. No matter where we looked we could not find any fish or clean edges, even the schooled up fish could not be talked into a vibe after tea bagging for a while. We made some lure changes. I went to an ecogear grass minnow and Dale went the SX40F. We plugged away for a while when I managed to pick up a small jew. I was pretty hapy with the capture as I was only fishing 1lb line and a 3lb leader running through a new Gan Craft Grid 2lb rod. It handled it perfectly. we continued on a bit further with Dale picking up another small Bream or 2 and a small Perch. Defeated we headed back to the room to drop off the boat and then to the pub for a feed.

After a good night sleep we made the decision to have another crack at the Glenelg rather than head to Portland to have a crack at some Tuna - we made the wrong decision. We caught stuff all an every one fishing Tuna bagged out. I will not bore you with the details of our defeat but I had an awesome weekend away fishing with a mate an that's what its all about.