Darcy Scott with a sample of his snapper catch taken off Avalon on Saturday.
Corio Bay/Bellarine Peninsula
Making an early start, Darcy Scott was on the water off Avalon by around 4.00 am on Saturday, hoping for a snapper.
He caught five as it turned out, three just over the 40 cm mark, and a couple just under. He stayed on for a while, hoping for a few more pinkies, but with the sun now in the sky, the show was apparently over.
Making a 4.00 am start on Sunday Morning, Andrew Phillips and Darren Baldock were soon anchored up in their favourite spot off Avalon, but with banjo sharks continually taking their baits they decided to move.
Travelling slowly east, they picked up a promising reading in 8.5 metres of water, and within 15 minutes or so they had a snapper of about 2.5 kg. They followed that one up with another five, the biggest at 3.8 kg, before the bite shut down around 6.45 am.
Mark and Tina Sesar fished out toward the channel off Clifton Springs on Sunday morning, but there wasn’t much doing until just before the high tide change around mid-day when Mark caught a nice snapper of about 5 kg.
In addition to that, before coming in, they each caught a half dozen squid at The Dell in the early afternoon.
Chris, Lenny and Cash with their snapper taken off Curlewis (Picture: Mike Windsor: Clifton Springs Boat Hire).
Mike Windsor of Clifton Springs Boat Hire also reports that The Dell has been producing squid with Nikola Jovic and his sons among those to catch them here.
Mike also sent in a photo of Chris, Lenny and Cash, three of the anglers returning to the ramp with snapper over the weekend. However, Andrew Johnson, Peter Dawson and Dennis O’Brien found them slow at their recently productive snapper spot, discovered a kilometre or so north-east of the Point Richards 7A channel marker.
Moving back across the channel toward the Point Richards spoil ground proved more fruitful for they boated two snapper of about 3 and 4 kg almost immediately, but that was their lot for the day.
Mark Sesar with a nice snapper taken off Clifton Springs on Sunday (Picture: Tina Sesar).
Freshwater
John Clements of the Lake Purrumbete Holiday Park reports that redfin are still the main catch; fish usually from 400-600 grams. However, Bannockburn angler Mick Giles’ weekend catch included fish to a kilogram.
Some good size chinook salmon have also been taken from Lake Purrumbete of late including one of 3.4 kg by Les Broughton of Geelong. He caught that on a pilchard fillet suspended just above the bottom while Roger Tolland caught a 3 kg rainbow trout on a mudeye fished beneath a float.
John also mentions that visiting anglers have taken brown trout, reportedly around the 3 kg mark, but none of those were officially weighed in.
Chris Stamalos with one of the snapper he caught last week (Picture: Calvin McLean).
Ahmed asks:
Geoff, on September 24 last, you described fishing with sliders from the beach. I wouldn’t mind trying that. Can you provide any direction on how to proceed?
Ahmed, having first spooled your reel with a good quality nylon monofilament line, the next requirement is the ability to make a long cast with a heavy, grapnel-type sinker of similar design to those introduced by UK Company Breakaway, copies of which are available in Australia.
Having been cast out, this sinker is designed to grip the bottom somewhat like an anchor, an essential requirement for the operation’s success.
Your leader – which should be at least twice the breaking strain of your main line, and be of wire should catching sharks be on your agenda – should be a metre or more in length with a hook, or possibly two hooks at one end. The other end is attached to the arm of a non-return slider, the assembly for which you can purchase from eBay.
Having made your cast, the non-return slider is attached to your line via the obvious spring configuration, with the arm of the slider – to which the leader is attached – facing forward; a configuration that prevents it from being pushed back up the line by the incoming waves.
Then, having baited the hook on trace, the device is allowed to slide down the line to the water, where wave action – along with some assistance from the angler shaking the rod – permits the assembly to keep going out until reaches the end of the line or is taken by a fish.