Tuna catches show no sign of slowing

Bobby Griffiths and Josh Speechley with a barrel tuna. (Supplied)

Peri Stavropoulos

Local fishing continues to keep anglers busy with plenty of action on offer across the inner harbour of Corio Bay.

Garfish are still holding in good numbers around the Geelong waterfront, with anglers not quite finding tonnes of fish but enough to make the effort worthwhile.

Casting soft plastics in the same area, both land-based and off a boat, have been accounting for a variety of species including snapper, salmon, trevally and flathead.

Four-inch soft plastics with a curl tail have definitely been the go, as of late.

The outer harbour and around the Bellarine Peninsula has been a little slow, still there are a few decent squid reports rolling through, along with whiting still chewing at St Leonards. Gummy sharks have also been biting reasonably well out in the deeper water off St Leonards, the average fish has been about the 8kg mark – which is a great eating size.

The gummies have also been biting very well offshore Ocean Grove, once again the 30-metre-mark proves to be the best location to find them, with fish getting over 15kg, with some solid pinkie snapper mixed among them.

The barrel tuna bite is still showing no sign of slowing down off Cape Otway, with plenty of boats getting stuck into the hot action.

Bobby Griffiths and Josh Speechley have been landing fish up to 100kg on pilchards and even managed to get a bite on top water, unfortunately the fish won that battle.

Stoney Creek Reservoir has been fishing very well as of late with redfin biting well.

Anglers casting yabby-style soft plastics off the main rock wall have been finding some cracker fish to over 40cm and in good numbers.

Brown and rainbow trout should also be hanging around at the moment and casting Tassie devils is a great method to target them.

Now that it’s the school holidays some of the local lakes have recently been stocked with rainbow trout.

St Augustines in Highton is one of the many locations and has been stocked with 750 pan-size rainbow trout, perfect target species and location for the kids.

Using a lightly-weighted running sinker rig with powerbait should provide plenty of action.

The best part of fishing there is you don’t need to wait too long for it to happen.