ON THE BITE with Peri Stavropoulos
Some hot fishing is certainty on offer at the moment with Corio and Port Phillip Bays both producing some great reports.
Snapper have been back on the chew with the outer harbour offering some nice fish to anglers.
Fishing around the quarries has been quite productive with reports of anglers landing fish to 5kg, tide changes have been critical to having better success. Towards the south end of the channel more so between Leopold and Portarlington there has been a true mixed bag on offer.
In the shallow water anglers have been coming across King George whiting, flathead, salmon and garfish. Some anglers have just been anchoring in depths between 1.5 to 3.5 metres with a solid burley trail and been targeting everything with some good success for all species.
The best thing about this style of fishing is that the fish will take pretty much the same rig and baits. Not so much the gars – you’re much better off with a pencil float rig with a tiny piece of bait.
Around the peninsula towards St Leonards has seen some great whiting on offer. The area known as Bourke Street has been a hot location with anglers landing lots of fish in this area.
Fishing the strong tides is ideal. Most fish have been averaging in size between 32cm to 40cm with a couple of much better models kicking about too. Calamari have also been in good numbers close on the grass beds with natural and red coloured jigs the standouts this past week.
At the moment there seems to be a lot of small squid getting about but there are certainly some better sized ones amongst the little ones. Sempai Aston got out over the weekend and fished these areas, landing himself a bag of both squid and whiting fishing in the areas just mentioned.
The local tuna bite is still on the go but reports have slowed up a bit but can be a case of the weather and the fish are sitting out pretty deep (65 metres plus).
If you’re chasing a tuna over the next week or so it’s well worth heading deeper straight away. The fish have been responding to hardbody lures on the troll and also small stick baits when sighted on top busting on whitebait.
