Pumped: Steve Arthey with the120.4 kg tuna he caught offshore from Cape Otway on Friday.
Offshore
Having just taken delivery of a used, 19 foot, Haines Hunter, Steve Arthey – along with friends Jack Harris and Nathan Forrester – took it for a run off Apollo Bay on Friday.
Hopeful of catching a tuna, they put out a spread of lures that included a small pink skirt, which – at around 11.30 pm – was engulfed in a massive strike as they traversed the west side of “Big Reef,” some 38 km offshore from Cape Otway.
It took Steve some two and a half hours to subdue the 120.4 kg tuna he’d hooked, which was found to be encumbered with a commercial long-line hook that had obviously been in its mouth for some time and trailing about 20 cm of trace.
Another point of interest was that, on cleaning the catch, it was found to have been feeding on redbait (Emmelichthys nitidus), which may explain its preference for the small pink lure, rather than any of the larger offerings in the spread.
Jarvis Doody 12, with a brown trout from Lake Toolondo (Picture: Victorian Inland Charters).
Corio Bay/Bellarine Peninsula
Australian salmon are about, but not always easy to find. However, Justin Burns picked up a good reading on his sounder between Cunningham Pier and Yarra Street on Friday, and – dropping a Berkley Nemesis soft plastic down to the bottom – came up tight on a salmon; others followed.
There are squid to be caught on both sides of the Corio Bay outer harbour with Neil Slater picking up a respectable catch in four metres of water off Avalon on Saturday, while on Friday, Andrew Johnson and Dennis O’Brien picked up another half a dozen off Clifton Springs that included a couple approaching 2 kg.
Following their squid capture, Andrew and Dennis tried for the whiting, but initially, the fish they caught – while probably legal size – were all returned. That all changed as the sun went down though, with an additional catch of fifteen fish around the 38 cm mark.
Lachlan Doody with a 46 cm redfin from Lake Toolondo (Picture: Victorian Inland Charters).
Freshwater
Lachlan Doody, and his son, Jarvis 12 – both dedicated cod anglers from Mildura – fished Lake Toolondo with Trevor Holmes of Victorian Inland Charters last week.
A successful trip as it turned out, for young Jarvis caught his first ever trout, and Lachlan, the biggest of several redfin at 46 cm.
Making a freezing daybreak start on Lake Fyans near Stawell last week, Kevin Wild and partner Amber Stone caught a dozen redfin to 40 cm, first trolling Fish Arrows, then casting soft plastics.
John Clements of Lake Purrumbete Holiday Park reports that fishing on the lake has been quiet, but Warren Stanford picked up a nice brown of 2.7 kg, while Maz Stolowski picked up several chinook salmon from Lake Bullen Merri.
Tom Mizzi with a nice bag of winter whiting he and father Daniel caught off Portland. They ended up with 32 in 2 hours (Picture Bob McPherson).
Portland
Down Portland way, Bob McPherson reports that offshore anglers are still catching tuna, mostly juveniles, but Paul Skinner, Steve Nicolazzo and Ed Sommer were among those to take bigger fish with one of 111 kg (gilled and gutted), that they caught in 80 metres of water.
Ollie asks:
Geoff, articles I’ve read on estuary fishing, variously refer to the gathering of “clickers” or “nippers” for bait. I gather these are some kind of shrimp; but do these names refer to the same creature or, are these separate species?
Ollie, clickers are pistol shrimp, so called because they have a large, specialized claw that produces a sonic shock wave as it’s snapped shut, stunning crabs and other creatures on which they prey.
The local variety of pistol shrimp is about 3 cm in length, greenish in colour, and sometimes found in small reservoirs of water under oyster shells and the like at low tide. Varieties elsewhere may be larger and more colourful. However, pistol shrimp are rarely used for bait.
On the other hand, nippers, or pink nippers – another crustacean – are highly regarded for bait and are known locally as Bass yabbies. They live in sand or mud burrows within the intertidal zone but are often incorrectly referred to as clickers by would-be fishing gurus.
Using a bait pump and a sieve you can collect them at low tide, but there is a bag and possession limit of 100: Take too many and you risk a fine. Don’t ask me how you would count 100 bass yabbies in a bucket of water though. 861