Just when all hope was lost of some good fishing conditions, we were blessed with a couple of fishable days over the long weekend. With that came some great fish returning to the cleaning table and others released to fight another day.
Saltwater: The offshore brigade have been waiting for any glimpse of a fishable day were greeted with some good conditions on the long weekend and it seems to have been worth the wait too. Peter Goode took out good mate Anthony Smith off Port Fairy in search of some deep water snapper and the boys didn’t disappoint with a great feed of fresh fish coming aboard. Goodie landed a solid snapper from the depths, and Smithers got his PB school shark that weighed a smidge over 23kg. The boys also caught some tasty latchet, terakihi, and some other slightly smaller snapper and gummy shark. These sort of days make it all worth while with getting up super early and making the long trek out to the grounds where these boys were. In some areas it’s a 50-70km boat ride to fish in the depths they target bigger snapper in. Closer inshore there has been a steady stream of smaller snapper often known as pinkies. These little buggers are known for taking your baits and leave you with nothing else but a skeleton usually but when they are between 30-50cm they are a popular table fish. Scaling down your hooks and bait sizes will help you get more fish into the boat and less bait thieving along the way too. There has been some nice gummies coming onboard the boats fishing in the 40-50m marks off Warrnambool and Port Fairy and these should continue through spring and summer. Speaking of summer are we going to see the annual migration of school size bluefin tuna become more common this year or will they be here one minute and gone the next? Either way there are anglers already revved up at the prospect of these speedy fish being available again.
Estuaries: Most of the estuaries in our local area remain open to the ocean and are beginning to fish quite well. The Glenelg is fishing exceptionally well for both estuary perch and bream. Anglers using a mixture of soft plastics, hard bodies and vibes have been landing some great fish throughout the middle section of the river. Max and Janaka Kandage had a fantastic day over the weekend landing some ripper perch on edges using metal blades. The boys got 4 fish over 42cm which is a very good day in anyone’s book. There has been multiple reports of mulloway being caught up river and some big ones lost too! Unfortunately these fish have been taking the smaller lures aimed at bream and perch so the unsuspecting anglers haven’t had much hope in stopping them anyway. Anglers using bait and specifically targeting them have had better success stopping them and have been catching some quality fish. Hopefully the fish continue to fire coming into the warmer weather and we can all get stuck into these super cool fish. The Fitzroy River opened its banks on the weekend and was soon left with not much water according to a member of the public. Corey fished it on Friday with good mate Trevor Richardson for a dozen nice bream to 40cm and some mullet and the usual small salmon. Although we didn’t set the world on fire with numbers when we found the bulk of the fish we did get some nice ones. Using a pink shrimp style plastic cast into the shallow areas was the undoing of the better fish on this particular day. There were a lot of fish in spawn mode that wouldn’t touch anything we landed in front of them. Just casting to the shallow water around these schooled fish was enough to tempt a couple bites. This is usually the case when you find big numbers of fish where they school up in the middle of the river, just fishing the outside of the schools can usually get a bite from them.
Freshwater: Rocklands has been super busy this school holidays with a lot of people making their way to the hidden gem. The yellow belly have started to school up and get active which has been great for all anglers. Fishing from the bank with baits has been productive especially with live yabbies and live worms. Matt Cook landed a 59cm yella while fishing with a bunch of worms on the bottom. Fishing with a loose drag will allow the fish to take the bait properly without feeling any resistance. Anglers fishing suspended fish in deeper water have been finding the Gulp Grub in black to be a very good option. Shaking these in one spot is a dynamite retrieve that gets the yellas going. The local lakes have been hit and miss with some anglers doing well on the trout and salmon and others struggling to get a fish. Using hard bodies along the edges is a great way to cover distance and track down the active fish. Something flashy is also a great way to draw a fish in from a distance that might not actually be keen to eat. Lake Gillear played host to Koroit and District Angling Clubs competition on Sunday where most found it tough. Justin Harper landed the biggest redfin which weighed just over a kilogram, while in the junior section Elise Bishop took out the title with a nice 992g reddie.
Hopefully the weekend holds out and we see more reports come in. Until next week tight lines and best of luck.