Thomas Dimopolous with a sample of the whiting to be caught in Corio Bay (Picture: Ivan Bereza).
Billy Reece with a sample of his whiting catch off Curlewis (Picture: Andrew Johnston).
Corio Bay/Bellarine Peninsula
On a promise to take Ash Reece and his 10-year-old son Billy out fishing on Saturday, Andrew Johnson could see the weather wasn’t looking too good, so he headed out for a trial run off Curlewis early in the morning to test the waters, so to speak.
Well, the waters tested pretty well with the capture of 15 whiting. And, at the appointed time of 10.30, picked up Ash and Billy, who – despite the stiff breeze and some rain – were champing at the bit to get going.
As it turned out, the lad caught the biggest of the 32 whiting they caught, a beauty of 42 cm.
Naturally, a good many others caught them as well including Mark and Tina Sesar who were out off Clifton Springs to catch Sunday’s early afternoon high tide change.
As it happened, it took them several moves to find a good bite, but find one they did, and by 5.00 pm, they’d taken their respective bag limit catches of whiting.
After that, they headed close in off The Dell where they broke out the squid jigs on the drift, and over the next hour or so they caught eleven squid, and there were some good ones among them.
Amber Wild of the Maryborough Angling Club with the 112 cm Murray cod she caught at Koondrook (Picture: Kevin Wild).
Freshwater
Looking for a change of scenery at the weekend, Kevin and Amber Wild, both members of the Maryborough Angling Club, headed up to Koondrook on the Murray, a journey of 180 kilometres. And naturally, they took their fishing gear and some chicken for bait.
The fishing was a bit slow to begin with, but at around lunchtime, Kevin caught and released a 63 cm cod, so the trip wasn’t in vain.
Anyway, come 5.00 pm and time to leave, Amber hooked something that wasn’t playing fair, and had caught her line around a snag.
Well, if there were no snags, the fish would be elsewhere. So, they persisted in freeing the line, eventually revealing a Murray cod that measured 112 cm, which they photographed, and then released.
A little closer to home, John Clements of the Lake Purrumbete Holiday Park reports fishing for redfin on several occasions, once with Jacinta Kelly of Drysdale for a good tally of redfin to 800 grams on soft plastics.
Of course, others were doing likewise, among them was Jarrod Tyler who’d come all the way from Birchip to be rewarded with a similar catch of redfin, also on soft plastics.
Mark Sesar with a sample of his and wife Tina’s whiting catch (Picture: Tina Sesar).
Selin Rahman with a sample from her and husband Paul’s mulloway catch from the Glenelg River at Nelson.
Nelson
Last week Paul and Selin Rahman took a run down to Nelson on the Glenelg River near the South Australian Border.
They took freshly caught squid with them, but the 12 mulloway they caught – the biggest measuring 75 cm – were captured using pilchards for bait.
Never the less they did hook three possibly larger fish using the heads from those squid, but pulled the hook on each occasion.
Off the Beach
Early last week, Ray Millman first tried one of his usual beach fishing haunts just north east of the Torquay Boat Ramp, only to find the amount of weed that had washed in with the rising tide and heavy swell had made fishing well-nigh impossible.
Moving to Jan Juc was also a disappointment with the same problem, so he made one last try at Torquay at 63W near public amenities where he was rewarded with 43 cm snapper.
But now, after dark, with the weed rolling in here as well and pickers stealing his baits of mackerel and barracouta, he called it quits.
John asks:
Geoff, I berleyed up some beautiful gars the other day, but after catching a couple, they went off the bite. You could see them in the berley but they wouldn’t bite. Why would this be?
John, garfish are a skittish, and very nervous fish. What probably happened was that your berley attracted some other species as well, possibly mullet, that put the gars off the bite.
All fish are vulnerable to attack by predators whilst feeding, and – although most other fish that do show up in a berley trail for gars, like mullet – are harmless, the gars take no chances; they just stop feeding.