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A Victorian coastal town surrounded by water with superb views to boot, Mallacoota is at the forefront of Australia’s most loved fishing destinations. ‘Coota was established way back in 1830 when Ben Boyd and the Imlay brethren built a major Whaling station south of Two Fold Bay, Eden. The lighthouse on Gabo Island was erected in 1862 after a major shipwreck resulting in the loss of 33 lives, it is a well known reference point for the Sydney to Hobart Yacht race as well as providing weather information for the area.
The Township and surrounding district provide visitors and locals alike with plenty of angling opportunities. From far upstream below Genoa in the Wallagaraugh River, to the Top and Bottom Lakes of Mallacoota, many species of fish and urban animal abound. Large southern Black Bream and enormous Dusky Flathead have made ‘Coota an iconic epicentre of bustling waterway commotion, remarkable goals easily achieved fishing in one of the many infamous, trusted locations.
Getting there :
Mallacoota is a modest four hour drive, 400km journey from Canberra down the Monaro Highway. Although you can take a few scenic routes ( Particularly down through Eden ), I was advised that the quickest after work travel option is a pleasant downhill trip through Bombala and into the Cann River district. Turning left at Cann River onto the Princess Highway reveals a 71km trip to Genoa which includes turning right and winding your way down to Mallacoota Inlet, passing the Gypsy Point turnoff on the way.
Mallacoota can be reached by either road or one of the cities coastal Train / Bus services. The train leaves Melbourne and after you transfer to a coach at Bairnsdale a bus service will take you onto Genoa. A Genoa to Mallacoota ( And return ) bus route is available but only operates three days a week. Canberra offers a NSW Country Link service to Bega then a V/Line Bus service to Genoa and onto the local bus service to Mallacoota. Alternatively you can come from Bateman's Bay / Narooma by V/Line coach to Genoa then catch the bus service to Mallacoota.
Accommodation :
Accommodation is easily found at Mallacoota with options of caravan parks, luxury apartments or quaint bed and breakfasts. There are also many private flats and holiday homes available for rent in the area. Bookings several months in advance are required to secure these premises for your stay. With a general population of 1200, this has been known to swell in advance of 10,000 during school holiday periods and long weekends.
We chose to stay at A’Wangralea Caravan Park ( *** ½ ) which featured en suite cabins, large grassed shady sites, free BBQ area and full camp kitchen, boat parking and pet facilities. Karen and Ian Lewis have run the park for many years and were more than helpful on numerous occasions, the park is close to the shops, beaches and boat ramps.
Gypsy Point - Saturday Morning 26th January :
Having watched and read every single fishing DVD / Magazine featuring articles on Mallacoota and the Gippsland lakes, I planned my fishing trips carefully and precisely. Armed with several items of background information together with the revised AFN Mallacoota fishing map, I ventured out Saturday morning to the famous Gypsy Point. An ideal looking location complete with stubborn, token ducks that refused to move to let me park my car… I wonder how many reports these birds have made it into before?.
Launching around 6am just below the Boutique resort, I was pleasantly surprised to see an angler soaking baits off one of the many jetties, not only was the waterway dead still, I spooked a couple of large Bream mooching just off shore as I paddled towards a very vacant Wallagaraugh River. I decided to troll up towards were the Genoa River and Wallagaraugh join and look for some exposed snags to cast lightly weighted soft plastics while bottom bashing hard bodied Bream lures ( Jackal Deep Chubby ) along the way.
Today was reserved for targeting big southern Black Bream but sure, a by catch of Flathead, Estuary Perch or even Bass would be welcomed with open arms. With the first initial fish of the trip being caught within 20 seconds of throwing out my Ghost Ayu coloured Jackal Deep Chubby, I had high hopes of exceeding realistic expectations. I soon found out Black Bream fight harder than their silver brethren, my conclusions are based and drawn mainly due to the deeper body shape they seem to possess ( Take it with a grain of salt ).
A nice Bream with a total length of 33cm was released unharmed after posing for my amateur photography sitting. These fish were in large numbers, holding formation around and in the sandy flats diagonally opposite the Coleman track. The Suji Shrimp patterned Chubby was cast and retrieved straight off a sand bank through a weed bed and was immediately clobbered hard. This time a traditionally coloured Bream around 30cm was sent back to his mob, complete with attached stringy weed and a soiled attitude.
Leaving my wading pole in the car ( Still never used it ) forced me to traipse through very shallow sections and often found myself run aground. Fortunate for me this is where the bulk of the action was, King George Whiting, Mullet, Flathead, Luderick and Bream frolicked with there backs well out of the water. I tied on my Jackal SK Pop and blooped among the surface commotion, foul hooked a small Shrimp so after five minutes switched to Gulp Alive 2” Shrimp in natural colour accompanied with a small Squidgy resin head.
Passing through the river junctions I trolled my Chubby’s slowly upstream while casting the lightly weighted scented plastic towards the banks of the Wallagaraugh. The wind had picked up to around 12 knots, as I was now in under one meter of water and snagging lures on weed often, I started to get a little uneasy. Spotting the nearest fishy looking submerged tree, I paddled over and was greeted with an audible, pleasing revelation.
Bream were feeding in the shallows and all along the structured banks, hordes of them boofing the surface with great gusto. Now I was told the Bream would be here thick and fast, Mallacoota Bait and Tackle told me, the Squidgy DVD’s told me, AKFF member Y-knot told me, my Father told me, AFN Fishing Map told me etc etc. Witnessing the loud feeding frenzy and spotting some XOS Black Bream / Luderick brought me back to the main motive of why I was here in the first place, to experience fishing this dream like destination and fulfill some untouched goals I had set myself earlier the previous year.
Drifting as close as I dared I aimed my cast at first tight into the bank, twitching ever so slightly and slowly. Some Bream fled, some formed packs trailing the smelly Shrimp inquisitively and some downright belted the artificial bait for all its worth. Lost a few fish early on due to my inability to strike whilst in awe. After a quick technique override, I learned from previous inexperience and mistakes and procured my first Black Bream from the snag… A healthy 36cm model ( And at the time, a new Bream PB ) that was released after a spirited fight in shallow water and some quick photos to boot.
Twitching and hopping the Shrimp imitation proved very patient work, I have never been a fan of fishing with soft plastics ( Always choosing to use a hard bodied lure instead ) but I knew this was the correct way to fish for Bream round these parts. Two hours and around seven Bream later, the wind and my rumbling stomach forced me to turn around and head downstream 2km back to the wharf. I had planned on fishing Double Creek Arm ( Including Captain Creek ) after lunch and Gypsy Point again late afternoon so preserving any spare energy became a priority… Hard to avoid the dreaded Nanna nap!
On the way back I trolled the Chubby’s through the same flats and weeds were hours earlier I caught a 30cm Bream. Rear rod with the Suji pattern started swimming back towards whence It came, picked it to be a decent sized Flathead due to constant headshaking but turned out to be my second ever legal Tailor throwing his Whitebait breakfast all over the shop. A 35cm Chopper would have easily added to a substantial meal ( If I had kept all the legal Bream ) but all fish caught were returned to the water.
Double Creek Arm ( Captains Creek ) – Saturday Afternoon 26th January :
Cant keep a good man down ( Or a super keen kayak fisherman mind you ), only bothered moving back to base camp for enough time to grab a bite to eat, kiss the missus on the cheek and tell Claire’s sisters two year old daughter that ‘Uncle go catch big fish!’. I passed over Double Creek arm on the way into ‘Coota the night before and as I went to Gypsy Point this morning. Consulted the AFN Fishing map and decided to launch out Captain Creek and continue into the Double Creek Arm via a short stint at Top Shot.
The Captain Creek car trail has been well worn and traverses along the edge of the bed until it reaches a formidable swamp marsh. Unless negotiating a tricky launch near the bridge the only option is to follow the road to the marsh and launch just before it. Many cars have come to grief here lately with deep boggy sections and sticks and various wood placed meticulously on and around the dirty earth wounds. If driven carefully in dry conditions a 2WD would easily suffice, my Subaru Forester relished in the conditions.
Gawking around before pushing off I noticed large Bream frolicking in the many snags towards the skinny creeks water and huge bully Mullet as long as my arm sunning themselves ( Before breaching for the sky I might add ). The wind had picked up to around 15 knots, while it was quite sheltered in the arm I was pushed for time ( Had to go fishing tonight with future family, the things we do eh? ) so quickly headed into Double Creek Arm in search of Bream and some sort of magical by catch ( Flathead hopefully ).
The Arm looks quite large but the vast majority of Double Creek is very shallow, while it looks like a major river section the depth encountered is probably how it was originally named ( Also having two creeks running into it would have helped ). Watching rogue large Stingrays, superior Bream and micro baitfish flee across the subsurface proved way too enticing. I made my way out into the middle of the system, clipped on my Lively Lure Mad Mullet and Micro Mullet ( Yes, both Bleeding Mullet patterns ) and commenced a slow troll against the wind.
Trolling proved to be the only option as drifting with the wind casting plastics moved me at a rate even the GPS struggled to keep up with. Didn’t take too long before my Mad Mullet was taken by an aggressive Flathead. With no time to manipulate the other deployed rig I was quickly pushed over both lines and mutually entangled braid, one way or another the Flathead had engulfed the lure through his cavernous mouth and out his raspy gill plate ( Panic quickly set in at first sighting ). Somehow I managed to land the 61cm Lizard and secure my new species PB, complete with almost fully severed leader.
Finding a leeway from the wind proved difficult but not impossible, spent a good 10 minutes fiddling with the new leader after untangling the mother of all braid knots. It was now 4’Oclock and these moments in time were working against me, resolute with confidence it was time to push up as far upstream as I could towards Big Bight and The Narrows, in turn allowing the ensuing drift to steer me back into and down Captains Creek for some quick photography ( And optimistically a fish or two along the way ).
From the moment I turned back for the creek I hit a Purple patch, once the lures were placed in trolling position behind the yak a fish would hit one in under a minute. At these sorts of speeds ( 5kmph average drift without paddle blade stabilization ) one would expect only a school of ravenous Tailor to be interested in my offerings. Luckily for me ( And my shockingly retied leader and lures ), Bream wasted no time in sprinting across the flats and beating any other competitive fish for a hard and sharp artificial meal.
One fish of note was foul hooked through the tail, this 31cm Bream went like the clappers but quickly grew tired fighting the current and drag setting. Released about seven Bream in little more than 1m of water, five minutes before entering the Captains Creek mouth I realized my time was well and truly up and departure was immanent. Took a few shots ( Which didn’t do the snag city enough justice to be honest ), packed up the car in haste and carefully took off back down the beaten track towards town.
Gypsy Point – Saturday Night 26th January :
Our departing newly found acquaintances in the nearest cabin donated some mixed smelly bait for the boys to use off the Outfitter. Both had not been fishing for many years but looked forward to navigating the pedal based tandem kayak around Gypsy Point, after all, they had put up with my excessive ranting and raving for the last two years about fishing from a kayak and particularly the Hobie brand and the hands free fishing concept.
Arriving around 6:30 pm at Gypsy Point Wharf, the stubborn Ducks finally decided to move for my car when Jay tempted them away with pieces of apple. After a quick run down on the do’s and don’ts of using my Outfitter ( Gentle with the Twist n Stow, Mirage Drive and shallow water don’t mix ) we headed off down the Genoa River towards Colemans Inlet and Cape Horn . On the way I hooked up big time, swinging the yak and towing me before the hooks pulled ( Big fish + small trebles don’t mix ). Really didn’t matter if it was a Stingray, Flathead, Chopper or Jewie… I was a crestfallen man.
Couldn’t find any further action on bait or lure around the Inlet or Cape Horn so suggested we move back to the sand flats near Gypsy Point to get the guys onto an upcoming hot bite ( Or so I hoped ). Whilst heading back trolling the Chubby duo I caught a nice Bream, undersized Flathead and a small Chopper. Wasn’t long after the sun had slowly dipped when I heard some hollering in the background, Jay and Ollie had moved over to the shallowest part, initiating some kind of Genoa Bream feeding frenzy.
Now I know I shouldn’t say this but by this stage I was over bloody Bream, previous nightmares of immense 3m Mallacoota Flathead kept me sharp enough to give the Mad Mullet lure a swim, stirring up the sandy bottom as I moved towards the ever giggling girls ( Sorry guys, ‘Two little girls from school are we’ ). Finally the TD Advantage combo bounced back a few times, closely followed by the TD SOL combo, a nice 57cm keeper Flathead and 34cm released Bream were boated quickly one after the other.
Plenty of fish were caught before we realised how late it was getting ( Mainly thanks to the timely Mosquito plague ). With Claire organising dinner whilst Ollie’s fiancé Penny and Jay’s wife Jillian were in cooperation nursing their respective siblings, we packed up both the yaks and drove the 11km to our temporary home. Studied the AFN map for Sunday mornings trip sighting a dirt track into the South West Arm that headed down to Sandy Point in the Top Lake region… Three trips in one day without so much as a Nanna nap!
South West Arm – Sunday 27th January :
Its funny organizing a fishing expedition including someone who has a child, just when I turned my alarm off and made time for my morning ritual ( Nescafe Blend 43, Peter Jackson Gold ) Jay was running across the camping ground at full speed exclaiming that Oliver wanted a sleep in and ‘Could we just go in the Outfitter?’. The car had been packed the night before so all we had to do was lift the Quest from the cars roof racks and go for a bush excursion down to Sandy Point and find a picture perfect launching spot.
We had to ferry the gear and the yak a short distance before instigating direction, an express bearing towards Palmer Bank sand flats. A few small boats were drifting the 5m drop off, working over the edges before they moved into the shallower section set out by the channel marker. More Swans than I would hazard to have a guess at loitered on Palmer Bank, singing loudly and otherwise spoiling what looked like Flathead heaven.
Top Lake is made mostly of a weedy bottom ( Making drifting frustrating ), we soon learned that casting our lines out close to the yak and short leashing the sinker depth brought on bites a lot quicker in the shallower water. Jay landed a nice 34cm Bream on a Whitebait and Prawn cocktail, we decided to keep any Bream under 40cm just in case we could not locate some Flathead for tonight’s BBQ feast… Considering the cabins fridge only contained four Flathead fillets ( “Not enough!” I was told ) and our group numbered nine people, the pressure was on well and truley on to obtain a feed of fish.
We both managed plenty of small Bream but nothing that would suffice, a change of tactics were required so we moved into the deeper channel and commenced drifting. This time we found the further our bait was from the Kayak, the more bites we seemed to induce ( Productive ground covered quickly ). I had just cast out a Prawn and flicked the bail arm when I felt a tug, setting the hook on a very cranky 37.5cm ‘Coota Black Bream. To say I was stoked is an understatement, 37.5cm is a new kayak Bream personal best, eclipsing the previous days achievements ( And the preceding two year effort involved ).
You couldn’t wipe the smile of either of our faces, “Does Mallacoota get any better than this?” I chuckled. Bait started running low and the fish started to shutdown as the sun rose higher, I persuaded a doubtful Jay that trolling lures was a fun thing to do and a great way to return to the launch site. Camp Shot and Pipe Clay Point are located on the western side of Top Lake and looked to be varied in water depth, both sizes of the Lively Lure Bleeding Mullets were flicked behind before we crossed the shallows one last time.
Weeded trebles remained an issue, perhaps the Chubby’s would have been a better throw ( After a quick inspection, both had brutally damaged rear trebles ). On one weed check retrieve my rod almost flew out of my hands, another great Bream climbed on board for the ‘Paf and Jay show’ basically jumping into the net. Once at Camp Shot Point the lures no longer hit the bottom, 4m of tannin stained goodness lined our trail of farewell but not without a strange noise. At first I dismissed it as nothing, but it grew louder and louder to the point of me incessantly scanning the horizon for what I assumed was a large Whale.
At first, Jay couldn’t understand why I was in a near panic, once we both came across a school of small Tailor ( Resulting in a double hook up ) I screamed at him indicating to wind as fast as he possibly could. While trying to release both the tailor , steer the Outfitter and keep a lookout for this noise laden object, the Lake exploded in a burst of white wash about 20m behind us… The biggest Seal I have ever seen was swimming upside down towards us, scoffing baitfish and causing a large disturbance in the water.
Once it came along side, it took a few brief looks at us to decide if we were a danger or not ( Well at least that’s what I hoped it was doing ) before it took off steadily upstream. We managed to keep it in our sight and gain some ground when it doubled back a little. Tried to get some photos but gave up after steering over the top of it and getting an exact size and girth of the mammal. This Seal’s measurement was ¾’s of the Outfitters size, almost as fat and definitely more graceful than either of my Hobies could ever be.
Jay reminded me that my cameras features included video capture and it had an underwater housing ( Didn’t have to tell me twice! ). Followed the fascinating Seal along past Pipe Clay Point and onto Sandy Point were we lost sight of it, Had a quick view of the footage and realised our encounter was as long as seven minutes. Five minutes of video spoilt only by my inability to point the camera correctly the whole time and the fact the cameras housing muffled Jay’s squeals and my AKFF inspired running commentary ( Video has been edited to 2 minutes total run time )..
Betka River – Sunday Afternoon 27th January :
One last chance to go fishing but I had a bad case of the zonings, sculled a few glasses of coke to pep the system and decided to drive down to the Betka River for a quick glance. Estuary Perch are reported to be in large numbers but you could never tell with all the people catching Poddy Mullet at the entrance. Fisheries Inspectors dished out fines to people fishing from the bridge, my fishing licence expired at 5am Monday morning and was keen to show it off but alas was left alone. Most of us went to Betka Beach but a few diehards ( Myself, Claire and Oliver ) launched into the classic looking river system.
This was SX 40 territory, shallow and concentrated the only problem I faced was what pattern / colour to use. I was undecided so tried something I don’t adopt to often, removed the net from the left rear holder and placed on the front hatch while I trolled three lures at once. Now as long as I wasn’t turning or branching off I held my own, but when I hooked my first Tailor I had a crossed line due to losing momentum and using slightly suspending lures… Pushing my luck never pays off, or so I kept telling myself.
Gave up on that idea eventually and broke out the Gulp Alive 2” Shrimp on a resin head, couldn’t find a bump or a hit but found a serious snag which deprived my plastic a safe trip home. Tied a new leader which was promptly bitten through by an unknown fish, still dragging the other lures out the back I got over the plastic revolution and concentrated my efforts on belting the river floor. Was finding the going tuff watching Claire and Ollie in the distance hooking small Bream on Prawns, where the hell had my fish mojo gone?.
An hour passed from launch without a single fish ( Excluding the annoying tailor and bust off ), cue Double hook up time. One after the other both Ecogear lures were snaffled by different species, one a small Flathead, the other a very legal dark Bream. Released the Flathead and headed towards the mouth into really shallow water, at some stages I could hear the rudder scraping the bottom. The Fish Finder refused to return a clear enough signal but who needs a visual indicator like this when your rod tip action stops in haste before bending in half ( A sure sign of a legal Flathead and dinner time ).
Hard fought battle resulting in plenty of missed netting opportunities, first set of trebles pulled before I caught sight of the fish. 48cm of Flathead power snaking the shallow water below the yak in search of its freedom, these long 7’ Daiwa rods have really given me an advantage ( No pun intended ) on the yak. Our dinner was complete, while I probaby wouldnt keep one for the table, the next time I fish this area the upper reaches of the Betka River and its Estuary Perch will be my first port of call…
Summary :
Most of my wildest dreams came true in Mallacoota but I was sorely missing a few things on my check list, notably industrious EP and true monster Flathead. For me the key factor of enjoying this trip so much is that it was only a 4hr drive from my house in Canberra and a short 110km burst south of my parents house in Merimubula. A wonderfull family retreat that had me checking the local papers for prices of permanent van sites and holiday homes, I hope this report can be refered to in the future and other members of KFA can enjoy this waterway as much as my extended family and I did...
