The Christmas holidays has definitely given us some fantastic fishing this season, with just about all target species chewing really well from around the local area.
The biggest talk of the town has got to be the tuna off Barwon Heads, they have rocked up in massive numbers right along the coast from Port Phillip Heads through to Apollo Bay and in a variety of depths from 20m right through to 60m.
Trolling small skirted lures with spreader bars or teasers has been a very popular method to get stuck into the action, with diving lures also producing the goods.
More often than not, on an average day out there you will find the tuna sitting on the surface which gives us a great opportunity to cast surface lures into them.
Although they are very tricky to tempt, the surface strike and bite off the top makes all the work well worth it.
Yellowtail kingfish seem to be in ridiculous numbers at the moment off Barwon Heads.
In 30 to 40 metres of water, there are heaps of fish ranging in size from just legal to about 90cm. Marking up fish on the sounder and dropping jigs on their heads should result in plenty of hook-ups. Trolling occy skirts has also been very productive in landing plenty of fish.
Queenscliff has still got some fantastic fishing on offer with the harbour continuing to produce some quality fish.
Pinkie snapper, salmon, trevally and even kingfish are all showing up in good numbers and are more than willing to snatch up just about any soft plastic that swims past their nose.
The whiting are still biting well off the grassbeds around Queenscliff all the way up to St Leonards.
Bag limit captures are quite frequent across boats, with fish reaching over 40cm.
The local estuaries have been fishing quite well for black bream over the past few weeks with good reports coming from most systems.
Casting small soft plastic or hard body lures have been working a treat, as well as baits such as worms and prawns.
Adam Van Der Lugt from Trellys Fishing World got stuck into some of the local bream fishing during the Christmas break, landing some absolute chunks to just over 48cm with most trips finding plenty of fish.
