ON THE BITE with Peri Stavropoulos
Near-glass seas, bays and lakes saw anglers spread right across the region.
Keeping it local, the Geelong waterfront and other local land-based hotspots were offering some good fishing for small Australian salmon and pinky snapper. If fishing off the rocks, bluebait, pilchards and squid are proving to be great baits or if fishing near structure, it’s well worth giving soft plastics a run as they prove time and time again to work very well.
Reports from the Bellarine Peninsula over the weekend were certainly hot and cold amongst the many boats out there. Having such calm and clear water with lots of boat traffic definitely makes it challenging but some anglers proved that theory wrong with some great captures. Clifton Springs right through to St Leonards had King George whiting on the go, again some boats either gone none or a few and some bagged so it was quite patchy.
Same goes for the calamari – some anglers smacked them and others struggled.
The South Channel offered some quality gummy shark fishing this past week with some solid reports coming through of anglers landing some good sharks. Fishing the tides with fresh baits like salmon and calamari (plenty around to catch at the moment) should see you in for a good shot to land a few.
The Queenscliff Bight is starting to fire up with the giant calamari that come in every year to spawn with reports of some serious models being landed. Fishing the slack tide is the key time to be in the area with either big artificial jigs like a size 4.0 or baits like small salmon, silver whiting or if you’re willing to sacrifice a King George whiting, they are amazing baits.
Offshore Barwon Heads has seen a pretty hot run of barrel tuna come through and hold out the front of the heads. Anglers trolling skirted lures have been finding the best success and also dropping pilchards on bait balls has been working well too.
Stefan Uzur from Trellys Geelong landed a nice fish last week weighing in at 140kg.
The Barwon Estuary has had a good bite of silver trevally this weekend with land-based anglers actually having the best success, in particular the Sheepwash area and the Barwon Heads boat ramp.
A bit of burley in the water helps with small baits or soft plastics should result in a few fish.
