Jan Pope of Ararat with a 2.7 kg brown trout from Lake Purrumbete.
Tom Hogan of Drysdale with a 3 kg brown trout taken from Lake Purrumbete on the fly.
Freshwater
Tom Jarman picked up a beautiful brown trout measuring 71 cm on the fly from Lake Purrumbete last week and says the bigger fish are to be caught along the shallow weed edges.
Tom’s fish was caught on a Shrek (Olive streamer) while using a type 3 sinking line and says that the best fishing is in windy conditions, that’s as long as you can put up with the cold.
Drysdale’s Tom Hogan also picked another beauty on the fly from Purrumbete, a brown of 3kg that kept him busy for a quite a while.
Offshore
Adamas deckhand Simon Werner reports that snapper, from legal size upwards, are in good numbers offshore from Barwon Heads with 10-year-old Chad Collins – who was on charter with his father Anthony at the weekend – catching a nice one of 5 kg.
Simon also mentions that gummy and school shark are also a possibility with the same approach. Slimy mackerel are also in good numbers out here too, said Simon, and provide excellent bait for the aforementioned species.
Chad Collins 10, with his 5 kg snapper taken from Adamas Charters (Picture: Rod Lawn).
Corio Bay/Bellarine Peninsula
With a break in the weather early last week, Gordon and Carol Williams headed out off Clifton Springs to catch the morning high tide change.
All was quiet until the ebb tide picked up at around 10.30 am when they began to catch a few decent whiting off The Dell.
However, that bite shut down sending them on the move to one of there more familiar haunts east off McAdams Lane, but once again it was the same story with what looked like another good bite shutting down. But at least they caught enough for a feed.
Queenscliff
Launching at Queenscliff on Tuesday morning of last week at around 9.30, Andrew Phillips and Tony Greck headed north, first anchoring up off the entrance of Swan Bay at around 9.30 to catch the outgoing tide, and hopefully some whiting.
Well, it took a couple of moves to find a good bite in the vicinity of Coles Beacon, where – using pipis and squid for bait – they eventually finished up with their respective bag limit catches of good size whiting.
Moving in closer, they found the water clarity good enough to try for a squid or two and were again successful, adding yet another bag limit catch for the day.
There were fewer boats out off Queenscliff last week as one would have expected with the improvement in the weather, However, there was no need to leave the harbour to take a good catch of fish.
This was amply illustrated by Derrick Hargreaves and Jason Treloar who fished Friday morning’s rising tide.
After a cold start, there wasn’t much happening until they got a berley trail going, after which they picked up several salmon and silver trevally both while baiting with pilchard fillets and casting soft plastics.
Tom Jarman with the 71 cm brown trout that he caught from Lake Purrumbete on the fly.
Barwon Heads
After a successful hunt for shore crabs at a location neither are prepared to disclose, Stanley Owen and Jason Treloar headed down to the Sheepwash on Friday evening to catch the low tide change, and hopefully a bream or two.
And it was at slack water just after sunset before the first bait was taken, resulting in a nice bream of around 700 grams. This was followed with a beauty of 1.5 kg, but that was it for the evening.
Better Boating Clinics
Recreational boat users may register to participate in a series of clinics to be held around the state on the protocols of boat launching, and which will include tuition – under the guidance of experts – on trailer reversing
Funded by the Better Boating Fund, which reinvests recreational boaters’ licence and registration fees, the clinics are free, but you do have to register at www.betterboating.vic.gov.au
Those exclusively for women will begin at Limeburners Point on August 10, continuing at Ballarat’s Lake Wendouree on August 25, and Lake Eppalock on October 6.
Those for both men and women will be held at Ballarat’s Lake Wendouree on Saturday September 7, Patterson River on Sunday September 15, Rhyll on Sunday September 22, Point Richards on Sunday October 13, and at Altona on Sunday October 27.
Jamie Behrens with the 16.8 kg mulloway that he caught on the fly.
Upstate
Soaking a live gold-spot mullet in the Maroochy River on Friday evening was Jamie Behrens of Bli Bli in Queensland; his patience being rewarded with a 115 cm, 16.8-kilogram mulloway that fell afoul of Jamie’s stinger hook.
On cleaning his catch, Jamie found a fresh gold-spot mullet – not the one he used for bait – in its stomach, so perhaps it was its preferred taste for mullet that proved to be its undoing.