Paul
Mayer with one of the
snapper he caught at Rippleside (Picture: John Didge).
Paul
Mayer with one of the
tailor he caught while fishing for pinkie snapper off Rippleside (Picture: Paul Mayer).
Corio
Bay/Bellarine Peninsula
Lara fishing identity Arie de Wit, made an early start at the Grammar School Lagoon; one of his favourite fishing haunts, but things were pretty slow to begin with.
Moving to just east of the boat moorings didn’t improve matters; not immediately anyway.
And, with the tide now running out, so was his luck; or so he’d thought.
But around mid day, one of his rods buckled over, its reel singing to the tuneof a good size pinkie snapper.
It was the first of five Arie caught in a short but frantic session before the bite shut down,the largest of which measured just on 40 cm.
They must be about, for Paul Mayer and John Didge (the jig man), found another school of good size pinkies off the proposed Rippleside marina site, catching and releasing several to 60 cm using Munro soft plastics.
Andrew Johnson and wife Jenny couldn’t find any whiting, so on Wednesday they headed out off Portarlington where they caught a dozen nice squid, the biggest a beauty of around 1.5 kg.
They tried again the following day, but the water was cloudy and the only interest shown was from one very large squid that would repeatedly follow their jigs but without making contact, and – to make matters worse – another boat was
coming uncomfortably close.Turns out it was the water police, who checked them out as far as safety gear went: All was OK,but that one large squid had been spooked.
Martinus
de Lange with his catch of
Tommy Rough from the St Leonards Pier.
Martinus de Lange
visited St Leonards Pier early last week to fish the evening ebb tide for TommyRough.
There were dozens of them milling around under the lights of the pier when he arrived, so hewasted no time in breaking out a Sabiki rig, and – using it to great effect – he took his bag limit of 20 in short order.
Kevin
Wild with the 86 cm Murray
cod he caught from the Loddon River (Picture: Amber Wild).
Kevin
Wild with the Rainbow
trout he caught from Talbot Reservoir (Picture: John Gray).
Freshwater
Kevin Wild of the Maryborough Angling Club, and wife Amber, had been soaking baits of raw chicken from the bank of the Loddon River below Laanecoorie Reservoir for about an hour on Saturday when Kevin caught, and released, an 86 cm Murray cod. Prior to that, and following some promising reports from Talbot Reservoir nearEvansford, Kevin and fellow club member John Gray arrived with a good supply of mudeyes; Kevin catching a rainbow trout of about 1.5 kg.
Kevin also reports that Tullaroop Reservoir is still fishing well for redfin, the best approach being down-rigging soft plastics (preferably white in colour) at depths to 18 metres: Kevin’s father-in- law, Don Rayner has recently
taken fish to 40 odd cm using this technique.
Don Rayner with a couple of nice redfin from Tullaroop Reservoir (Picture: Amber Wild).
Portland
With good weather on Saturday, Bob McPherson and Lachie Wombell took a run out to the edge of thecontinental shelf, where – in around 500 metres of water – they commenced bottom-bouncing on the drift.
The fishing wasfavourable, and it wasn’t long before they’d taken bag limitcatches of blue-eye trevalla and gemfish, the latter being more than willing to take baits of their own kind.
Four year old Kai Dawe with a
flathead he caught from Cunningham Pier using pipi for bait (Picture: John
Dawe).
Harold asks:
Geoff, I’m trying to catch a big winter snapper but am not having much luck. I hear the Grammar School Lagoon is a good spot to try for them at this time of year. What are your thoughts?
Harold, while the Grammar School lagoon is known to produce snapper at this time of year, the presence of those larger fish is by no means dependable. Some years, with the appropriate expenditure of time and effort, they are there to be caught, but in other years they don’t seem to be present in sufficient numbers to warrant the effort.
As teenagers, RossMiddleton and I spent a good deal of time fishing for them here, catching a good many throughout autumn, winter and early spring, including several over the old 20 lb mark:
While we had success on the high tides at either dawn or dusk, the most productive time of all was during the first two or three hours of the flood tide, particularly when that occurred either late at night or during the early hours of the
morning: I trust this helps.
Please send
fishing reports and photos to geoffw10@optusnet.com.au