By Peri Stavropoulos
The inner harbour of Corio Bay this week continues to be a standout location with both boat and land-based fishing providing some great captures.
Fishing around Royal Geelong Yacht Club has been very productive with pinkie snapper and silver trevally dominating reports.
The fish have been going really well on small soft plastics with Zman Slim Swimz being a standout.
Garfish have also come back onto the radar with Limeburners and St Helens rock walls being the best locations with some cracking gars getting around.
The trick to those guys is a tiny piece of bait under a pencil float with a nice burley trail out.
Clifton Springs is still producing some great calamari fishing at the moment, with bag limit captures being very achievable drifting over the shallow weed beds in 3.5 metres of water, with natural-coloured jigs working a treat.
St Leonards is still fishing very well for King George whiting and fishing a tide change with fresh baits is the key to success.
Local surf beaches have been quite the hot spot as of late with Australian salmon in great numbers terrorizing bait fish along the coast.
Casting metal lures between 25 and 60 grams is ideal, or fishing with baits such as blue bait and squid should also get you stuck into the action.
There are also a few gummy sharks getting around too and fresh salmon is an awesome bait for those guys.
The offshore fishing off Apollo Bay has been pretty good of late with a wide variety of species finding themselves flapping onto angler’s boats.
Kevin Hunter from Trelly’s Geelong managed to get stuck into the action fishing in 70 metres of water landing 39 flathead and eight gummy sharks.
Kevin mentioned that Black Magic Snapper Snack rigs were the key to his success.
The ‘crater lakes’ this week have been fishing quite well for both trout and Chinook salmon.
Lake Bullen Merri has been holding plenty of nice-sized rainbow trout to about 1.5kg and Chinook salmon at about the same size, both bait fishing a trolling hard body lures have been working a treat.
Lake Purrumbete has also been fishing well for trout, in particular brown trout.
Casting lures in the shallows early in the morning is the best way to target them, however they will still swipe at your lures if trolling is more your thing
