Destinations: Mallacoota Inlet

This is Bastion Point, Mallacoota, about as far east as you can get in Victoria without having to go off-road and off-grid. Melbourne, a distant memory, is more than a six-hour haul away making our destination further away from the Victorian capital than even Mildura high up in the state’s northwest corner. It’s almost the same distance for anyone heading south from Sydney, seven hours to the north.

Any decision to come to Mallacoota, then, isn’t made in haste for two of Australia’s largest cities. However, it’s only a four-hour trip for anyone heading down from the nation’s capital city, Canberra, with the most direct route taking them right over the top of the Australian Alps.

Once you’re here, Mallacoota is worth the effort, particularly if you like your fishing. Thousands of people flock up here every summer, with fishing and boating high on the list of activities.

Even in the depths of winter, a steady stream of large trailer boats makes its way along the Princes Highway to spear off at Genoa and make the winding trek south. Once in the water, they will head about 20 kilometres offshore to chase swordfish and tuna on the edge of Australia’s continental shelf.

The Croajingolong National Park that rings Mallacoota was burnt heavily in the devastating Black Summer fires that swept the area late in 2019 and well into 2020. The township was dramatically evacuated by sea and air after the fires cut road access.

Mallacoota itself was spared from the fires, so the popular holiday destination is once again on the radar for visitors.

What attracts many boaters here are the wide, safe, and largely shallow enclosed waters of the Genoa and Wallarauch Rivers that form an extensive tidal lake system that runs out into the sea.

The big attraction for anglers are dusky flatheads that can grow to some pretty large sizes. The bigger ones, which respond well to soft plastics dropped on their nose or even swimbaits that cruise lazily past, are best returned to the water where they can provide future generations of fish – they tend to be a bit tasteless, too.

The smaller, tastier fish are ideal for the dinner table.

The fun way to catch the smaller flathead is to target them with lighter gear. They’ll put up a good fight, shaking their head all the way into the boat, making landing them all the more rewarding.

If you don’t have a boat, you can just walk the knee-high shallows looking for gutters, sandbanks and drop-offs in which to cast soft plastics, bouncing them across the bottom to raise small puffs of sand. Flathead are good with ambush, so you’ll catch them as the lure drops into the strike zone.

Watch out for stingrays, which also tend to like the shallows.

Stay on the sand and avoid the vast tracts of mudflats; walking through thick ooze isn’t much fun. Pack some weedless hooks, too, as the weed on the expanse of water can be rather thick.

If you have a boat, the best fishing spots are easily accessible. Head up the channel past Rabbit Island and Tea Tree Point to the shallows of Goodwin Sands or Eight-Foot Bank just north of the Mallacoota township, or stick to the deeper water of Bottom Lake. 

Just east of the boat ramp is a place called Howe Bight, a large, shallow and weedy expanse that’s best left to smaller boats. If you have a shallow-draft bass boat with an electric trolling motor, it’s a great place to chase the bigger lizards that tend to favour the site.

You can head further up the lake system via a channel running past Swimming Point to the Mallacoota Inlet where a small reef system provides some of the better fishing.

If you’re sightseeing, you can get up into Top Lake, fed by the Genoa River. Head upstream to look for deep holes to chase bream, or find a secluded anchorage such as Coleman Inlet, which has several swing moorings, to overnight away from the land-based crowds that have flocked to Mallacoota.

If the entrance is open, head south to target yellowfin and if you have a tribe of kids in tow, use the evenings to spotlight for prawns around the sandbars and low islands that make up the estuary.

Everyone tends to head to Mallacoota for summer, with the place emptying dramatically once the school holidays end in late January. However, for those with a bit more time on their hands, the best fishing tends to be from late summer to early autumn, making an Easter visit well worth the effort.

One of the other attractions, though, is Mallacoota’s access to the Tasman Sea. 

If you like your beach fishing, places such as Big Beach, Tip, Betka and Quarry are known for producing good salmon and tailor off metal slugs cast into the breaks. During summer, there’s even a chance of hauling in a tuna.

But it’s offshore where the bigger fish lurk. If the entrance is not open or too rough, the Bastion Point boat ramp has had a recent extensive makeover to make it much better to retrieve and launch a vessel through a wider range of conditions – but make sure to ask locals which is the better option on the day.

Once offshore, it’s a 22 nautical mile (40km) trip out to the continental shelf where some of the state’s best sports fishing is found – think yellowfin tuna, decent-size barracouta and swordfish.

About the same distance south but well inside the edge of the continental shelf is another fishing hotspot, the New Zealand Star Bank.

Closer into Mallacoota, though, are the reefs scattered between Tullaberger Island and Gabo Island (another 6.0 nautical miles, or 11km, east) that attract everything from red morwong to wrasse, leatherjacket, snapper and even cod, with gummy shark also caught.

Mallacoota Inlet, a twin-lake system, is on the eastern tip of Victoria and close to Gabo Island: 750km from Sydney; 523km from Melbourne; 350km from Canberra; and, 23km off the Princes Highway from Genoa.

The town is well equipped for tourism and includes 11 picnic areas with jetties on lakes for swimming/fishing/skiing; an airport; doctor's surgery; health and support service; a permanent population of about 1000; a holiday population of 20,000; a number of beaches; golf, bowls, yachting, fishing, tennis, pony, and gun clubs; five caravan parks, including the council-owned 600-site Mallacoota Camp Park on the lake's edge complete with boat moorings; three motels; hotel-motel; 20 choices of units and flats; B&Bs; houseboats; boat cruises, hire boats, and canoes; two lake-access boat ramps; one ocean access ramp which should only be used with local knowledge and extreme caution; whale watching; and, two supermarkets, post office, banks, two service stations, ATM, and a variety of shops in a small shopping centre.

Mallacoota’s industrial area contains marine service and parts businesses, including the production facility for fibreglass fishing boat brand Cootacraft.

For more information, visit www.visitgippsland.com.au/destinations/east-gippsland/mallacoota