Kevin Wild with one of the Murray cod he caught from Lake Mulwala last week (Picture: Amber Wild).
Barwon beauties
The Barwon estuary is renowned for good fishing at this time of year with bream among the contenders, and – having gone to the trouble of gathering some sandworms – Stan Owen and Tony Ingram were going to give them a try.
However, on their arrival at the Sheepwash on Thursday morning with the tide running in strongly, and with ferocious bait thieves on the job, their sandworm supply was seriously under threat. So, they used up what remained of their pipis from a previous trip taking a mixed bag of mullet and salmon.
It wasn’t until early afternoon on the approach of slack water that they broke out the sandworms once more, only to find toadfish and other pickers were still on the job,
In fact, it wasn’t until the tide started trickling out, did they give the sandworms a final run that produced not only a couple of nice bream around the 700 gram mark, but a luderick as well which was a good deal larger than either of their two bream.
Back at the Sheepwash boat ramp, the diversity of the estuary again became apparent when another angler displayed a couple of decent estuary perch.
Corio Bay/Bellarine Peninsula
Making a pre-dawn start last Tuesday, snapper aficionados Stan Owen and Jason Treloar took a run along the edge of the Corio Channel off Corio Quay and Moorpanyal Park, North Shore where they’d picked up a couple of nice fish three weeks earlier, but despite several more tries, nothing since.
However, this time their efforts paid off with the capture of four nice fish from 4.5 to just on 7 kg from 7 metres of water between the channel and the rocks.
Andrew Johnson did a solo run last Tuesday morning after the whiting, anchoring up in front of Leopold’s “The Sands” Caravan Parks by 7.20 am, one of his favourite whiting marks.
There was no need to move on this occasion because the bite was “on” so to speak, and an hour later he’d raised the anchor and was on his way home with a legal bag of whiting that measured from 34 to 41 cm.
All were caught in around four metres of water using pipis and squid for bait.
After launching at Point Richards on Thursday morning, Gordon and Carol Williams were out to fish the remainder of the incoming tide and were soon off to a promising start with several good size whiting.
However, as is sometimes the case, a hoard of undersize pinkie snapper moved in on their baits, so they moved further west toward Spray Farm where they’d been successful on previous occasions. And, as it turned out, once again.
They probably would have finished with bag limit catches had a seal not moved in on them around 1.30 pm. But by then, the tide had died along with the whiting bite.
Also after the whiting were Andrew Phillips, Adrian Cole and Mark Sesar, who – after launching at Queenscliff at around 1.00 pm on Thursday – they found the flood tide had slowed noticeably, so they decided to have a try for the squid first and fish for whiting on the outgoing tide.
They caught a total of 23 squid before they noticed that the tide had begun running out. So, they moved out into deeper water east of Coles Beacon where their first whiting was an absolute pearler of 44 cm. And the bite continued into the afternoon along with a stiffening southerly that increasingly made fishing difficult.
Never-the-less, they hung in there, until conditions became so uncomfortable that they decided to return to Queenscliff. Their final tally of good size whiting was a surprising 54, all really good size fish.
Freshwater
Kevin and Amber Wild of the Maryborough Angling Club took a run up to Lake Mulwala, mainly to do some maintenance on their cabin last week. Naturally, they took their fishing tackle and picked up a couple of nice cod to 80 cm.
Closer to home, Kevin reports that most local waters, including Cairn Curran Reservoir, have been quiet. However, Tullaroop Reservoir is still producing redfin over the 40 cm mark and is currently the most productive water in that district.