By Chris Pitman
Last week’s wintery weather did nothing to slow anglers down with trout, tuna and everything in-between on the chew.
Inside Corio Bay anglers had an absolute ball with snapper, whiting, flathead, pinkies, garfish and large numbers of Australian salmon all featuring in anglers’ bags.
Peri Stavropoulos and I put in a few hours Sunday morning casting soft plastics around the Geelong waterfront, where we had no trouble in finding Australian salmon up to 1kg snapping up Berkley Gulp 3” minnows.
We also managed a few trevally and flathead as a by-catch. Long cold winter nights are famous inside Corio Bay for large trophy snapper as this time of year they school over certain marks.
Emily Whitford, along with her father Andrew, put anchor down on one of their favourite marks one night last week. After some time Emily boated an excellent sized snapper of 5.5kg.
They also managed another smaller fish of about 4kg during the night too.
Anglers fishing off land from Limeburners boat ramp banked plenty of garfish along with the odd pinkie snapper over the weekend, with silver fish under a float tempting the former.
Around the corner at Clifton Springs, squid kept anglers entertained with the grass beds in three to four metres of water holding reasonable numbers of fish.
A slow drift casting size 3 white colouration jigs got the job done with bag limit captures possible.
Whiting were still to be had along the Curlewis bank with pippies and tenderised squid working well on fish to 40cm.
The deep water 10 metres or more out from St Leonards produced good-sized gummy shark to 10kg and fresh squid was a great choice for bait.
Not too far away, the entrance to Swan Bay held some large squid to 1kg again drifting slowly worked well.
The Surf beaches again gave anglers chasing salmon plenty of fun. Salmon up to 2.5kg were devouring lures cast from the beach and at night had a liking to blue bait and pilchards.
Recently there has been a few mulloway taken at night by those trying for a gummy shark which are always a welcome by-catch.
Heading west and Port Fairy and Portland both produced tuna although mostly school size.
The 65 to 75 metre mark off Port Fairy was definitely a hot spot when the weather was more settled.
Closer to home those launching out of Apollo Bay and heading south of Cape Otway crossed paths with barrel tuna who were keen on eating large skirted lures.
These fish, which generally take well over an hour to subdue, this week reached just over 100kg.
Freshwater anglers again found Lake Purrumbete hard to go past with trophy trout on the chew.
Slow trolling the East bank at first and last light worked well along with casting lures on calm days into schools of minnow pushed to the surface.
Lake Bullen Merri was a great option for those fishing from the bank with Chinook salmon taking powerbait and Tassie devils.
The lake was kind to Michael Evans, who has put in some serious time over the years working it out.
Michael landed numerous brown trout to 62cm along with a nice rainbow of 46cm using eco gear MW lures.
