Freshwater
John Clements of Lake Purrumbete Holiday Park reports fishing Lake Bullen Merri with Bill Classon for a respectable catch of rainbow trout to 1.5 kg and chinook salmon to 2 kg, while anglers fishing from the bank were also successful.
Young blood: Three year old Billy Andrews with a 1.4 kg rainbow trout that he caught from Lake Bullen Merri (Picture: Brad Andrews).
Among them were Brad Andrews and his three year old son Billy who fished here on Friday and Saturday mornings, where – with a bit of coaching – Billy caught both chinook salmon and rainbow trout, the biggest weighing 1.4 kg, using glassies for bait.
While Lake Purrumbete is still producing the occasional large brown trout, said John, rainbow trout to 1.5 kg or so have more common. However, redfin are still the main catch with scrubworms and minnow the best baits.
Corio Bay/Bellarine Peninsula
On Saturday, Justin Burns and wife Katryna went lure fishing on Corio Bay; initially an exercise that didn’t seem promising.
But they persisted, and eventually – between the old Alcoa Pier and Leopold – they caught a variety of fish including several really good size whiting to 40 cm or so and rock flathead, using 2” Berkley Crabbys to bring home the goods.
Mike Windsor of Clifton Springs Boat Hire reports that last week’s good weather attracted anglers from far and wide including New Zealander Kenny Carson who fished with Les Gillespie. Between them, they caught ten squid and ten flathead out near the mussel farm.
Also fishing out here were Simon Werner and Jake Callahan who struggled to find the squid at first, but eventually located a good patch around midday from which they caught some absolute purlers from one to 2 kg.
David Batty and Peter Walker took bag limit catches of whiting off The Springs; good ones too, with the biggest measuring 41 cm. Then, fishing out deeper and using pilchards for bait, they caught several flathead to 40 cm and a gummy shark.
On Wednesday, Andrew Phillips and George Uranus fished offshore from Point Richards from late afternoon until evening where they too hit a good patch of whiting, taking their respective bag limits of fish from 28 to 41 cm using pipi and squid for bait.
Also seeking the whiting were Andrew Johnson and Brodie Bell who were out off The Springs by 8.30 am on Friday, but – try as they might – they didn’t get a sniff of a whiting until around mid day. However, with the tide coming in during the early afternoon, their fortunes changed for the better with a catch of 30 fish from 35 to 40 cm.
Rod Ludlow of Beachlea Boat Hire at Indented Head reports that squid have rarely been better around the Peninsula than they are at the moment, with both quantity and quality at a premium.
Among those to do well on these tasty cephalopods on Friday were Jeff Richards and Ken Shae who each took their respective bag limit catches of squid that averaged over a kilogram apiece; the biggest weighing 2 kg.
Jamie Peel, Jayden Peel, Chris Zammit and Darren Zammit with their 100 kg tuna from Portland on Saturday (Picture: Bob McPherson).
Portland
Down Portland way, Bob McPherson reports that several barrel size bluefin tuna were caught last week, the biggest weighed 120 kg and was caught by Emro Abazovic and his crew off Cape Bridgewater.
Emro Abazovic with the 120 kg tuna he and his crew caught close in off Cape Bridgewater (Picture: Bob McPherson).
David asks:
Geoff, can you tell me if sardines, like those we buy in tins, are the same as the pilchards we use for bait?
David; Wikipedia describes the terms pilchard and sardine as imprecise because they are used to describe various fish in different localities
On one of my trips to South Australia, I noticed that a packet of pilchards I brought also bore the Latin name for the species; Sardinops neopilchardus; a categorization by Viennese ichthyologist, Dr Franz Steindachner in 1879, as I was to discover.
Following your question, I Googled Australian sardine, which revealed that title for a NSW, DPI article classifying the Australian sardine as Sardinops sagax, but it also mentioned its former classification was Sardinops neopilchardus. Interestingly, the article was accompanied by an excellent illustration of a pilchard by Bernard Yau.
Further reading on this subject may be found by Googling “When is a pilchard not a pilchard? When it’s a sardine!” It reveals an excellent article on this very subject by Jamie Merrill in the UK Independent, November 2, 2014.