Land-based fishing a perfect holiday activity

A snapper caught off Barwon Heads. (Supplied)

Peri Stavropoulos

Inside Corio Bay continues to have plenty of fishing options at the moment for all land-based anglers with the waterfront and St Helens Rocks both giving up some nice fish.

Over the holidays in Geelong pretty much every land-based platform across the waterfront is going to be a fantastic area to take the kids and family for a fish.

With pinky snapper, flathead, salmon, trevally and whiting all holding in the area it keeps the fishing options open.

Fishing with baits such as pipies and bluebait is going to be the best method to getting some fish on the board and soft plastics are well worth throwing around too for the more aggressive fish.

Clifton Springs has still been fishing alright for calamari and whiting, towards Hermsley has been the more productive area.

For the whiting fishing the tide changes have been the go with pipies as bait, when chasing the squid anywhere from two to four metres of water with size 2.5 or 3.0 jigs.

Offshore Barwon Heads has still had a few tuna reports come in, they aren’t going crazy just yet but the fish are definitely out there and in decent numbers.

Anglers trolling small skirted lures have been having some good success and so too are fishos casting lures into the schools of fish.

Maria pop queens are a favourite for the local tuna.

Snapper are still going berserk offshore and they’re everywhere.

The 50 metre line seems to be the most productive depth if you’re chasing a feed of pan sized fish and in shallower producing the better quality fish with some reaching over 9kg.

Drifting with paternoster rigs and fresh squid has been by far the standout rig and bait.

There has also been quite a bit of by-catch whilst chasing the snapper including nannygai, gummy shark and even some rat kingfish.

Wurdi Buloc Reservoir has still continued to produce some nice fish or anglers casting off the rock walls with redfin and trout both in good numbers and hungry.

Casting spoon style lures to cover more water has been very productive, especially for the redfin.