By CHRIS PITMAN
ADAM Van Der Lugt, Georgie Beeforth and Ricky Forte made the most of last weekend’s great weather, fishing Queenscliff Harbour for silver trevally.
Casting soft plastics, Georgie landed two of just on 35cm while Adam also caught a couple around the same size.
The trio noted that the most productive soft plastics were Gulp Turtleback worms in Pumpkin Green.
Craig Varker fished the harbour on Monday morning’s incoming bag for an impressive bag of 10 trevally to 35cm.
Pinkies to 50cm were also taken inside the harbour over the past week but, unlike the trevally, tended to move on quite quickly.
As everyone else headed west for tuna over the past few weeks, Gone Fishing Charters’s Chris Vasilevski had a hunch that some could be found a little closer to home.
Heading out of Queenscliff last Thursday and making his way down the coast a little, Chris started trolling around the plentiful bait marked on his sounder.
Soon after one of his rods screamed into action which led to a three-hour fight that ended with Chris boating a southern bluefin tuna of just over 100kg.
As a result, numerous boats were out over the weekend, with a few finding barrel tuna in 50m off Barwon Heads and all the way down to Lorne.
Further down the coast, Allan Brow trolled just out from Apollo Bay where he landed a tuna of 110kg on 15kg tackle after three hours and some smart boat manoeuvring.
Allan then hooked another tuna but pulled the hooks after three hours and 20 minutes.
Anglers fishing inside the bays turned their attention to snapper as the season switched into full force. Point Richards Channel was a hot spot with pilchard and silver whiting accounting for fish to 6kg.
Relatively new to Victorian anglers, the technique called micro jigging, which involves sounding fish then vertically jigging small specifically designed jigs, began taking off with snapper to 5kg.
Indented Heads produced reasonable numbers of squid around reef structure in four to five metres.
Size 3 jigs in white colours achieved the best results when fished around sunset.
The whiting in this neck of the woods was a little slow but some of the fish that we caught averaged almost 40cm.
Tackleworld Geelong’s Michael Moore returned from a trip to the Glenelg River where he spent numerous hours casting hard-body lures along the edges.
Michael caught bream and estuary perch, with the best bite at night under any form of light where the fish schooled in large numbers.
Freshwater anglers again caught Chinook salmon at Lake Bullen Merri.
Persistence paid off with fish of 2kg taken on pilchard fillet.
Next door, Lake Purrumbete fished well for brown trout to 1.5kg for anglers trolling the east bank at first light with Tassie Devil lures.
The Barwon River continued producing redfin around Buckley Falls on lures cast among the snags.
The reddies averaged around 800g.
Anglers will be spoilt for choice over the next week with snapper at Clifton Spring taking both bait and lure. Offshore from Barwon Heads should be worth fishing for large tuna or on the bottom fish for snapper and gummy shark.
Barwon River should fish well for bream or mulloway on live baits, while rainbow trout should still be available in Highton’s St Augustine’s Lake for anglers using Powerbait on running-sinker rigs.
