by Peri Stavropoulos
Fishing around the Bellarine Peninsula is really starting to heat up and once we see that water temperature increase a little more we should see snapper really come on the chew.
Inner Corio Bay is still fishing really well for the land-based guys, with bait and soft plastics finding a wide variety of fish.
Before work Wednesday morning I managed to have a quick flick around Fisherman’s Pier casting 4 inch Turtleback worms in and around the structure resulting in some flathead and snotty trevalla.
Other anglers were also catching silver trevally, mullet and pinkie snapper, mainly using baits such as pilchard and chicken.
Another species I noticed plenty of was silver whiting.
With snapper season just around the corner this is a good opportunity to stock up on some quality bait.
Boat fishing is going well for similar species with the exact same tactics.
Chris from Trellys and Trelly himself snuck out during the week and the pair caught similar fish plus some black bream whilst casting soft plastics.
Whiting continued to bite over the past week with Clifton Springs being the standout location, fishing one hour before and after dark is the prime time and producing some cracker fish to over 40cm.
A little bit of berley doesn’t hurt but if you go too hard it can attract a few unwanted guests.
Moving around to St Leonards, whiting are still on the go there and usually a more consistent bite in size and numbers.
Squid are still biting well in the same area; moving closer to the heads will produce a much better average size.
David Le went out for a cast off St Leonards Pier and managed a nice haul of squid. He said 3.0 and 3.5 size jigs were worked best.
Portland is still producing plenty of barrel tuna, as mentioned in nearly every report, from Cape Bridgewater to the back of ‘The Rock’ with 55m water holding most of the fish.
Fish have exceeded 100kg in weight and the Tornado Sniper in Redbait is still a hot lure to troll around.
Lake Bolac has had some reports starting to roll back in with rainbow trout to 1.5kg.
Bait fishing from the bank with glassies, whitebait, pilchard and powerbait is the best tactic. However it’s well worth throwing some spoons around if the fishing is a bit slow to mix up your options.
