Stuart Scott with a 7 kg snapper he caught from Corio Bay on Wednesday night (Picture: Stuart Scott).
Corio Bay/Bellarine Peninsula
Fishing in front of the Mountain View Quarries on Wednesday night, Stuart Scott was hoping for a snapper when at around 7.30, one of his rods gave a half-hearted salute that could have been anything really. But taking no chances, he paid out a good deal of slack line before loading up on what turned out to be a 7 kg snapper.
Hoping for a repeat performance, Stuart put on another pilchard and at around 8.00 pm, he caught a second snapper of 5 kg.
Australian Salmon have been a saviour for many anglers who are not catching much else, with good numbers popping up anywhere from Corio Bay to Queenscliff where Andrew Phillips and George Uranus were fishing for squid on Friday.
When suddenly surrounded by salmon feeding on whitebait, they quickly rigged their whiting tackle with 15 gram metal lures on which the trebles had been replaced with single hooks. So, with cast and retrieve the order of the day, they caught fish after fish, most of which were released: Those that they kept ranged from 900 grams to 1.5 kg.
With rumours of whiting being caught downstream from the red portside marker some 400 metres off the Queenscliff harbour entrance, Keith Berry and Tom Robinson anchored up here on Thursday morning’s ebb tide, but they didn’t have much luck. However, their luck changed in the Queenscliff harbour where they caught several good size silver trevally on the incoming tide.
Michael Evans took this close-up of one of the redfin he caught from Wurdiboluc Reservoir on Sunday evening.
Michael Evans with a sample of his redfin catch from Wurdiboluc Reservoir on Sunday night (Picture Michael Evans).
Freshwater
John Clements of the Lake Purrumbete Holiday Park fished the lake with James Reid last week, first using scrubworms for bait before switching to soft plastics; they caught 40 redfin ranging in size from 35 to 46 cm.
Trophy size brown trout are still on offer at Lake Purrumbete as Tim Beusman demonstrated last week, catching one of 4.52 kg along with a couple of smaller specimens while casting and retrieving a bibbed minnow-type lure.
John also mentions that land based anglers to have done well on chinook salmon and rainbow trout to 1.5 kg at Lake Bullen Merri include fly fisherman Hugh Maltby who had no trouble matching the hatch so to speak.
Trevor Holmes of Victorian Inland Charters week and his cousin Rod Rees fished Lake Toolondo early last for a catch of respectable redfin on Ima Flit and Daiwa Double Clutch lures. However, the larger trout have been shy, and – as Trevor explained – they are presently carrying spawn and not all that eager to bite.
Murray Scott fished Lake Bolac along the Glenelg Highway on a couple of occasions last week, first with Scott Teesdale, then again with his brother Russell and friend Carl Alexander.
Their most challenging endeavour was to find bank side locations offering some shelter from the north and north westerly winds. Taking good catches of rainbow trout to 1.8 kg proved less challenging, with most destined for the smoker.
Michael Evans fished the last two hours of daylight at Wurdiboluc Reservoir on Sunday, and casting a gold-coloured Nories Wasaby Spoon, his catch included three nice redfin; the biggest measuring 45 cm and about 1.5 kg. Michael also caught a number of smaller fish that he released.
These weren’t in the usual, more open spots said Michael, but over the weed beds along the rock wall where he’d found them on previous occasions.
Rod Rees with a pair of respectable redfin from Lake Toolondo (Picture: Victorian Inland Charters).
Tom asks:
Geoff, if you inadvertently wind the free end of your line back through the level-wind on your reel, is there any way you can re-align the level-wind without taking all the line off the reel?
Tom, without re-threading the level-wind, if you pull some line off the spool, determining its position on, and in which direction it was moving across the spool, you can then mark the line with a small piece of adhesive tape or the like, at that point.
Cut the line just below the marker and wind the handle of the reel until the level-wind reaches the spot you have marked. Then, provided you’ve matched the position, and direction, of the level-wind’s travel with the direction and position of the marker, you may thread the line back through the level-wind and it should be OK.