Bream caught at 'The Local' river

Checking out 'The Local' river spot for bass

Friday 2 February 2024

The lake/dam fishing has been absolutely terrible of late... We've had so much rain that everything is at capacity and spilling which combined with heat waves and record temperatures has completely shut the bass fishing down. So what to do?! Head to the river and see if we can intercept some bass that've gone over the dam wall!

Peter from PTPFishing very kindly offered to take me to his 'Local' river spot for this session (we're keeping quiet about the exact location so as to not annoy the locals...) and despite the bad conditions we had high hopes. The theory was sound, with the dams spilling there should be fish that have gone over the wall in the river system waiting and hungry...

We were on the water just after sunrise and spent the first couple of hours exploring the structure and lower reaches of the river before heading upstream. The scenery was amazing and it was a real treat to fish such a wild venue with constantly changing banks, depths and all manner of snags to throw a lure at.

We wrapped up after 5 or so hours having explored the entire upstream stretch and although a paddle up the river was a fantastic experience, the fishing was (almost as expected) pretty poor. Peter managed a number of bream and a flathead before finally finding a bass but I struggled to buy a bite, landing just the one small bream.

Peter put together a video of the session, defo worth a watch:

It was great not to blank and my first taste of river fishing from a kayak left me wanting more... I think we'll just have to wait until 'prime' river conditions arrive and we'll give it another go!