Murray Scott with a pair of nice squid from Queenscliff (Picture: Darcy Scott).
Queenscliff
On Saturday evening, Murray and Darcy Scott fished Queenscliff hopeful of a good session on the squid, and – jigging on the drift within the Lonsdale Bight – soon picked up some crackers around the 2 kg mark, but with Darcy nearly spooled of line on one protagonist, they were obliged to go in pursuit.
Darcy’s squid was the biggest he’d ever caught; it was longer than the fish bin and eventually introduced to the scales for a verdict of 4.05 kg: Now, you don’t come across many southern calamari of that size.
Steve O’Keefe and Anna McLean also had the squid jigs out in more or less the same location, but one squid was all they needed for whiting bait.
With the tide still running out, they tried for whiting in much the same area, and there is no doubt they would have taken their respective bag limit catches. However, the bite diminished as the tide eased off making the two extra fish required, a tough ask. But, with a total of 38 fish, and some over the 40 cm mark, they had little cause for complaint.
Darcy Scott with his 4.05 kg squid from Queenscliff (Picture: Murray Scott).
Corio Bay/Bellarine Peninsula
On Saturday morning, Andrew Johnson headed down to one of his usual whiting marks off Curlewis. Unfortunately, though, all he encountered there were just a few small fish, so he went prospecting for more fertile ground.
As sometimes happens, it took perhaps half a dozen moves, and a considerable dent in his supply of mussels and pipis, to catch fifteen keepers among the overwhelming numbers of smaller fish that he says “were on the chew.”
Mark Richards and Darren Pidgeon headed out at around 2.30 pm on Sunday, and eventually found some whiting in front of one of Leopold’s caravan parks. Initially though, the fishing was slow and their fish, although legal size, were small. However, with a change of tide expected at around 3.30 or so, they were still hopeful of a good catch.
Not in vain either, but it took longer than expected for the incoming tide to pick up, and with it, plenty of action from the whiting. They had a tally of 38 by dusk, including some around the 40 cm mark, but reluctantly left them biting because of prior social commitments.
Freshwater
Harley Griffiths and Stan Owen usually fish Corio Bay at this time of year, but with good reports from Lake Purrumbete they’d collected a good supply of mudeyes, and – using the time-honoured bubble and indicator floats in tandem – they were hopeful of catching a good size brown trout.
Instead, they suffered an onslaught of tiger trout, mostly quite small, so they kept the remainder of their mudeyes for later, and trolling various lures, they picked up their fish of the day, a rainbow trout of possibly 2 kg.
Simon Werner tried his luck from the rock wall at Wurdiboluc Reservoir, taking a brown trout of about 600 grams on a mudeye, and a slightly larger rainbow trout on his Bob ‘N Spoon, which was eventually lost through one of the many misfortunes that plague us from time to time.
Chris asks.
Geoff; someone’s put up “No Fishing” signs on the St Helens jetty; what’s going on?
I have some history there, Chris. As a youngster I fished from the St Helens swimming enclosure, initially with at least one of my parents, and not far from where I lived at Rippleside. That would have been from the late 1940s.
When the wooden swimming enclosure was pulled down, possibly in the late 1950s or early 60s, and replaced with a concrete jetty (rather than a swimming enclosure), a “No Fishing” sign was erected at the south west corner; I imagine to encourage swimmers, which were scarce, and to dissuade its main users; fishermen.
People still fished there though, and eventually the “No Fishing” sign was removed. But, spotting a swimmer here, at any time of year, was – and still is – a challenge akin to spotting a cyclist on the newly erected, but rarely used, bike paths in Geelong’s CBD.
But as you’ve seen, the “No Fishing” signs are back, and during my visit to said jetty on Sunday, there were – as expected – people fishing there