A lure angler this week encountered a large group of browns moving up the Eucumbene River, landing nine and losing at least another five. All were small fish, averaging 0.5 kilogram. Other anglers reported seeing more groups of browns further up the river, including some large fish.

Last week several large browns, including one weighing 6.2kg, were caught on fly in the lower reaches of the river. All the indications are that there will be an early spawning run this year, especially if the rainstorms continue and the rivers stay high.

Lake Jindabyne and Lake Eucumbene are both fishing well. Jindabyne produced some lovely rainbows to over 2kg and browns to 1.9kg for trollers, fly fishers and bait anglers. Best locations were Kalkite and East Jindabyne. Fish were taken on green Tasmanian Devils, mudeye patterns and Power Bait and scrub worms.

At Eucumbene, Frying Pan was the prime location. Anglers caught excellent bags of browns and rainbows in the flooded channel of Frying Pan creek, using sinking lines and mudeye flies, live mudeyes under bubble or waggler floats and mudeye flies behind a bubble float.

Canberra Cup winners. Final

Congratulations to Matt Tyler who took out the overall prize in the eight-week Canberra Cup fished in Lake Burley Griffin over the past eight weeks.

Matt landed, photographed and released a 63-centimetre Murray cod caught on a lure near Black Mountain Peninsula. Chris Troth was second with a 42cm golden perch and a 23cm redfin caught on bait.

There were 20 keen anglers who contested the final round. Fish were hard to come by, but there were some nice golden perch, redfin and Murray cod.

Googong reservoir continues to produce big fish. Redfin to 58cm were caught this week by bobbing lures, yabbies and scrub worms down about 10 metres in the middle of the lake. Some good golden perch also were taken, one 62cm long and weighing 5.7kg.

Large numbers of fish were caught during the Australian Yellowbelly Championship at Burrinjuck Reservoir last week. Forty-one teams participated and landed 297 fish in 13.5 hours. The fish averaged 41cm and the largest was 60cm.

Jamie Loomes and Paul Brown took out first prize, for the second year in a row, with Tim and Matt Papworth second. Most of the fish were caught on soft plastics fished over flooded trees in 10 metres of water, in the main basin and the Murrumbidgee Arm as far up as the Yass River junction.

Anglers have been working hard to find Murray cod. The water level has dropped to around 30 per cent of capacity and cod mostly have been quiet, but some were caught on large deep divers and spinnerbaits. Best results came from bumping the lures right on the bottom during the day, and also at night.

On the good news front, 30,000 golden perch and 30,000 silver perch fingerlings were released in the reservoir and in the Yass Dam and Yass Weir last week. They should be of catchable size in two to three years.

All the news from the coast has been good. There were bream, flathead and estuary perch in the Clyde, flathead and whiting in Tuross, more whiting in Durras and nice sized prawns in a variety of locations.

Offshore, stray yellowfin to 30kg were caught wide of Bermagui and mahi mahi were common in 70-100 fathoms. The good marlin run continues and kingfish showed inside Jervis Bay, close in at Batemans Bay, at Montague Island and Mowarry Point at Eden.

Flathead were easy to find in 25-35m over sand and gravel but an early start was needed to beat the leatherjackets.