This week, the inner harbour of Corio Bay started to really kick into its typical winter fishing traits with salmon covering the bay and quality snapper starting to get caught.
The rocks of St Helens has had some fantastic fishing as of late with flathead, whiting and quality snapper being caught.
The snapper are definitely the highlight for the rocks at the moment with anglers landing fish to 4.5kg.
Garfish has been the preferred bait. The best time to fish off the rocks and chase the snapper is after or during a strong blow as it will push all the food and bait close to shore – the weather stirs up the bottom and will bring the fish in too.
Australian salmon have been in massive numbers across the inner harbour, in particular between Limeburners Boat Ramp through to the Geelong waterfront.
The fish have been sitting on the surface rounding up and terrorising bait fish, which makes it a lot easier to locate them – the obvious giveaway is birds diving in the water and fish busting on the surface.
Casting small minnow-style soft plastics has been super effective however when the fish are feeding as they are now, they should eat just about anything.
The surf beaches along the coast have also been fishing very well for salmon. Just about any beach or rock platform from Jan Juc all the way through to Warrnambool has been holding plenty of fish.
Casting metals and cranking them in has been the preferred method, however soaking baits such as blue bait and squid should still produce plenty of bites.
Wurdiboluc Reservoir has definitely been living up to its name as “the lake of a thousand casts” over the past week but the anglers who are sticking it out and putting in those extra casts are getting fish to make it all worthwhile.
Brown trout have been the hot target for most anglers with a few reports popping up here and there.
Shallow diving minnow hard bodies have been the most successful lures to throw.
Redfin are still chewing quite well, with anglers landing plenty of fish to about 33cm.
A few fish pushing more than 40cm have been thrown into the mix also.
Casting spoon-style lures has been by far the best for redfin, allowing you to get a long cast out and cover as much water as possible.
