Campaspe River Fishing

Long before European settlement of Victoria the Campaspe River provided an abundance fish to the local Aboriginal people.

Fish species included cod, golden perch, Macquarie perch, catfish, freshwater yabbies and more.

In addition to messing with the natural flow of the river by building weirs, Europeans introduced tench, English perch (redfin), trout and European carp to the river.

It is now the opinion of some, although it was the wrong thing to do, that future populations of fishermen got lucky with the introduction of redfin, one of the nicest eating freshwater table fish found in Victoria.

As a boy, growing up in the 60's and 70's in Victoria, I fished as often as I could.

The closest body of water to home was the Kennington Reservoir on the edge of Flora Hill, a suburb of Bendigo. A mostly dry creek flows in to the South end of the reservoir at the corner of Condon Street and Reservoir Road.

The time grandmother learnt to fly.

My uncle told me that before the roads were sealed and the area became built up, he was bringing grandmother home from the Bendigo Railway Station one evening past the Kennington Reservoir.

Grandmother was returning from a trip to Melbourne for the day. Anyway, uncle picked her up in the gig which was pulled along by an ex trotting horse. As they neared the corner at the creek, the horse sensed he was nearing home and picked up speed in addition to cutting the corner.

Uncle said what happened next had to be seen to be believed.

The left wheel of the gig dropped into the creek which had the effect of catapulting grandmother high into the air to land with a thud several seconds later in the mud and bull rushes of the creek. Fortunately she wasn't seriously injured but her best rabbit fur coat would never be the same again. Naturally uncle got the blame for the accident and was severely lashed by grandmothers' tongue all the way home.

The Kennington Reservoir always held fair numbers of redfin and in my early teens I did the best I could to catch as many as possible. I had a canvas kayak on a light framed bike wheeled trailer. I used to attach the trailer to my bicycle and tow it from home to the reservoir.

I had some wonderful times as a boy growing up.

The family periodically went away on memorable fishing and camping trips, mainly to the Wakool River at Stoney Crossing, North of Swan Hill.

We also camped alongside and fished the Murray River in the Bamah Forest a few times. The river in the forest was shallow and always flowed faster than I liked.

Another favourite place was the Little Murray at Fish Point, the place where I caught my first Murray cod. It weighed 6 pounds coz fish were always weighed in pounds.

The Little Murray was also where I caught my first European carp. It must have been around 1970 and I was 10 years old.

In the mid to late 70's redfin came on the bite in Lake Meran between Boort and Kerang.

Over a couple of years hundreds of boats caught thousands of fish. It was incredible. Clean clear water, average of three metres deep, no snags, sandy bottom and sandy shores.

Most fish were very even in length and weight. Just on a pound in most instances. It was not unusual to take home fifty or more fish for the day.

What the hell these hundreds of thousands of fish lived on was beyond me.

The water was too clear and clean for yabbies and shrimp in any significant numbers, so the redfin must have been living off cannibalising their own young. For a while they may have lived off of the Murray cod fingerlings that the fisheries department released into the lake.

The redfin in Lake Meran went off the bite just as fast as they came on the bite.

They disappeared overnight.

Of course the intense fishing pressure would have thinned them out, but their decline was so sudden it was remarkable. Not that that matters now. In the ten year drought starting in the early 2000's the lake dried up completely.

When I last saw it it was dry and full of gum saplings growing up to 2 metres high. I believe it has filled with water again since then.

The day fishing trips.

In addition to our camping trips the family did many day trips to our favourite fishing holes in the Loddon at Bridgewater and Bears Lagoon, and the Campaspe at Axedale and Elmore.

Bobbers or jaggers as some may know them were the lure of choice. We rarely ever took bait. Bobbers only ever seemed to work on redfin so every time you hooked a fish you knew it was edible.

My earliest recollections of fishing are that from the early 60's to the late 70's, redfin were prolific in both the Loddon and Campaspe rivers, almost to the exclusion of all native species of fish.

Cod and golden perch were as scarce as hens' teeth.

Shooting cod.

In my lifetime the Campaspe has ran too cold for catfish, although reports from the Argus newspaper stated they used to be in the river. Mind you, people also used to shoot cod in the surrounding creeks before Eppalock was constructed if you believe the newspaper reports.

It is my opinion that drawing water from the depths of Eppalock altered the river temperature so much that it played havoc with native fish populations, including shrimp. This temperature change however suited redfin and trout.

Stories from the old guys.

During my youth I listened in awe to stories told by my father and uncle of what fishing was like just a few years before I was born.

Cod, golden perch and catfish almost jumped out of the water into the boat. Redfin were considered a rubbish fish. Because there was little refrigeration, redfin were tipped onto the nature strip for the neighbours to pick up, take home, clean, and cook at the end of each fishing and camping trip.

By the time I seriously got into fishing, native fish like cod and golden perch had become scarce. I caught heaps of redfin but not many cod or golden perch, although I often fished for them.

One of the main problems I found was that if you used worms or shrimp or yabbies for bait, the redfin were on the hook before any native fish had a chance to look at it.

Then things changed.

European carp came on the scene and within ten years redfin had almost disappeared. However, cod and golden perch made a return.

Why?

Prolific numbers of redfin may have been a pain, but at least they are an edible fish. Prolific numbers of carp are just a pain.

Carp are quite inedible in my opinion. When you pull them from the water they have quite an odour or pong about them.

So where have all the redfin gone?

Why did they disappear so quickly?

Yes, they are still around to be caught, but in nowhere near the numbers they used to be.

Living beside the river.

I now live at River Gardens Axedale on the banks of the Campaspe River. Not far from where I used to come fishing as a boy. Probably only a couple of kilometres North.

Frankly, now you couldn't catch a feed of redfin in the river if you fished for a fortnight.

You'll catch cod. You'll catch golden perch. You'll catch carp. In fact you can see carp sunning themselves near the surface of the water in their hundreds on sunny days. We never see small ones though. Never smaller than 30 centimetres, but that is a discussion for another time.

There are still redfin in the river. And they can be in fair numbers at certain times so a neighbour tells me.

According to our neighbour, after the drought ended with a massive flood going down the river, redfin came on the bite. No really big fish, but plenty of small ones that the kids had fun catching.

Sadly, by the next year they were gone again. What is going on?

Are carp to blame?

The sudden demise of redfin in the late 70's and early 80's seemed to be linked to the explosion of carp numbers around the same time.

One would think that the prolific breeding of carp would prove an endless feast for redfin and also result in an explosion in their numbers. This didn't happen though, so what did happen?

Is something sinister afoot?

I decided to do some research.

European carp are apparently not to blame for the demise of redfin.

As much as I would have liked to have had carp as the villains, this isn't the case.

Epizootic Haematopoietic Necrosis Virus.

Redfin suffer from a disease called Epizootic Haematopoietic Necrosis Virus. EHN for short.

EHN first appeared near Lake Eildon in North East Victoria. It caused regular fish kills of small to medium sized redfin. The virus doesn't appear to affect any other type of fish.

It is suggested that EHN has lain dormant for thousands of years, possibly killing off its previous host, simply waiting for another host to come along.

Redfin apparently are the ideal host.

EHN is a savage virus that causes massive haemorrhaging to the redfins internal organs. EHN kills redfin in huge numbers.

As redfin fight back and once again increase in numbers, EHN again decimates their populations. This has now been going on for two decades or more. This is the reason why you can be catching reasonable numbers of redfin one year, and not see a redfin the following year.

Redfin are fighting back.

The good news for lovers of redfin is that there is some anecdotal evidence that redfin are staging a return to waters previously affected by EHN.

These returning fish are growing to decent sizes and so far are not succumbing further to the EHN virus.

Unfortunately this doesn't appear to be the case in the Campaspe River below the River Gardens homestead at this time. There's not a redfin to be caught.

One of our bed and breakfast guests who was under a gum tree catching bardi grubs for bait needs my help.

To catch a bardi grub you scrape a couple of inches of soil off the ground below an overhanging gum tree branch. This will expose a hole that the grub lives in.

A bardi grub hole can be up to three feet deep. If you poke a long thin reed down the hole the grub will bite the end of it and hang on. You then pull the reed from the hole with a smooth action and before the grub realises what has happened, you have it out of the hole.

Well, this guest is only a little guy and apparently the grub got the better of him and pulled him into the hole instead of the other way around. I'll have to go dig him out.