On the Bite, by Peri Stavropoulos
Cold, windy and wet conditions over the past week didn’t make it easy for anglers to get out for their fix but the ones who did still managed to avoid coming home empty handed.
Starting in the outer harbour of Corio Bay, the snapper bite definitely slowed a bit from the previous week but there were still plenty of fish to be caught.
Casting soft plastics has still been by far the most productive way to target the bay’s snapper while drifting to cover ground. The fish have been ranging between 1kg and 5kg, with plenty of table-sized flathead and bulk monster pike also taken.
Anyone keen to chase bigger fish will find that Portarlington is the way to go. Anglers anchoring along the channel and drowning a few baits like pilchards, squid and silver whiting have been getting onto some nice fish, with most of them between 4kg and 7kg.
Angers fishing this and other areas in the bay for the bigger snapper should remember that it pays to fish the tide changes and keep plenty of burley in the water.
Squid were a little tough to find around the Bellarine Peninsula recently, purely because of the weather causing the water to be quite dirty. The further down to Port Phillip Heads the better the clarity becomes, and hopefully the squid angling too as a consequence.
Whiting don’t mind the dirty water, so these conditions should be productive for anglers wanting to get out and target this prime table fish.
The entrance to Swan Bay has been holding a wide variety of species including pinkie snapper, pike, salmon, whiting, trevally and squid. Fishing the incoming tide with either baits or soft plastics should help anglers get onto some mixed bags of some of the bay’s finest, with the chance of a gummy shark in there as well.
The Surf Coast has produced a few reports of anglers getting onto some large schools of Australian salmon. Fishing from either the beach or rocks has been by far the most-productive, especially when casting metal lures ranging in size from 20g to 60g.
Coming into summer, the warmer weather also presents chances of bumping into a kingfish off the rocks as well.
On the fresh water scene, Wurdi Buloc Reservoir has fired back up again for anglers casting lures from the main rock wall. Josh and Andrew Whitford snuck down to the reservoir over the weekend, with the pair landing multiple rainbow trout and redfin on Pegron minnows and Tassie Devils.
