Peri Stavropolous
Over the past week, the fishing in Port Phillip Bay has really heated up.
The snapper have come on the chew between Werribee and Williamstown with some massive fish getting boated and looks like they are in good numbers too!
Bait fishing has been working best with plenty of burley, just be sure to use your sounder to sound up those schools of fish.
George and Georgia got stuck into the hot bite landing multiple snapper to 8kg and some massive flathead out from Werribee.
If you’re just land-based then St Helens rocks is a great option at the moment, as mentioned in previous weeks there has been mainly smaller pinkies getting around however this week most of the reports are of better quality fish between 29cm and 37cm.
Australian salmon have come into the bay recently and are in very close to shore, terrorising baitfish and both accessible by land and boat, however being in a boat is handy as it’s easy to chase the moving schools.
The schools have been easy to spot on the surface as they are turning the water to foam in a feeding frenzy.
The Rip and offshore has still got some great kingfish and tuna in at the moment.
The Rip has been holding great numbers of kingfish with fish exceeding 90cm in length. Jigging has been the most popular and effective method with jigs weighing between 150 and 250 grams working best, but some fresh or live calamari is very good as well.
The local tuna have seemed to be pushing a bit deeper to the 70 metre mark and although we aren’t seeing heaps of reports there are still plenty of fish out there, the average size has also seemed to increase with fishing getting caught to 40kg.
The metro Melbourne bream continue to bite well throughout all the systems with fish reaching over 40cm and with the recent rain could see a Mulloway pop up.
Casting hardbody lures along the edges has proved deadly with Ecogear SX40s being a standout however soft plastics will work also.
The average weather over the past week has made the Otways a great fishing option to escape the blowy conditions.
Just about every system will be holding bream towards the front of the systems and brown trout higher up.
Chris from Trellys made the drive down on Monday landing himself brown trout on hard bodies and bream to 35cm on scrubworms.
