VIC
Bream and whiting are dominating bags COBDEN
Rod Shepherd
When the winds allow, boaters are getting offshore and getting stuck into some serious fishing. King George whiting have really made their presence felt of late with the odd fish measuring a whopping 55cm. In depths from 4-10m, many boaters are drifting with long shank but sturdy baitholder hooks with a strip of squid topped off with pipi meat. Once a fish has taken the bait, the anchor is dropped and the berley bucket is lowered over the side to sit just off the bottom. Placing the berley bucket off the boat’s nose rather than off the stern allows the berley to flow under the boat and reduces possible tangles with set baits if lowered off the stern. Apparently, there are plenty of undersize pinkie snapper about when chasing the whiting and can be a
Plenty of Hopkins bream about in all sizes taking almost anything on offer at the right time and place on the river.
nuisance but sooner or later the bigger ones will move in closer to shore so it pays to have a sturdy hook when chasing whiting as you never know what might come along and steal your bait. From 35-70m depth over a rubbly bottom or actual reef sees the bigger snapper at the moment along with school and gummy sharks. Again, fresh squid is the number one bait. Speaking of squid there are a few about so don’t forget the jigs. Flathead, morwong, nannygai and leatherjackets are the quality by-catch here. Yellowtail kingfish have made their presence felt with fish to 14kg responding to trolled lures over inshore reefs. Slimy mackerel baits rigged and towed behind a slow moving boat are also taking fish. Often where there is one, the rest of the school won’t be far away so others on the boat can consider casting to following fish once the original fish is boatside of course.
Boaters are launching off Boat Bay at Peterborough, Warrnambool and Port Fairy. The Hopkins continues to produce bream, perch and the odd mulloway as the waters continue to calm down after the rains and the fish remain on the bite. Plenty of bream are up for grabs with most fish averaging from size up to 34cm with the odd fish weighing in over a kilo. Bait remains the number one option, and don’t the bream love it! A recent trip with good mate Bruce Roberts saw us catch at least 30 legal bream in a session and if you want to count the just undersize fish, over 50. All fish released. It was a great day as no matter where we went, we caught fish; as long as it was upstream as these fish want to spawn. Bait such as brown shell, Port Fairy shrimp preserved in sawdust and even packet frozen prawn and pipi worked on the day. So too did scented shrimp patterned soft plastics but to a lesser extent.
Flathead are biting deep all along the coast APOLLO BAY
Craig Rippon
Fishing in Apollo Bay has been red hot over the last few weeks with all species being on the bite right along the coast. There have been some really nice flathead caught, some fish reaching 60cm. The larger fish have been caught in deeper water between the 55-65m mark.
There have been some arrow squid out there also and some small couta as well. Close along the beaches have been some nice schools of salmon with decent sizes averaging around 3lb. There have been a lot of boats trolling for them but they have also been caught off the beaches on bait and casting lures. Whiting have been on the go mainly on the morning change of tide or late arvo tide. I have found it better fishing
the stronger tides with the fish biting really well on fresh squid and pipis. The cost of the pipis is getting up there now, around $17 a kilo – so I cut them in half and put a bit of squid on as well. Moving your bait a bit helps if the whiting are a bit tentative but once they get going, they have been biting fairly hard. I have been using berley to start off with but when they get going, take the berley out of the water. There are a lot
of small pinkies about which love berley, so I put the berley back in if the bite slows down as it usually doesn’t take long for them to get going again. Kingfish are normally around this time of year but so far not many reports of any action. There have been fish caught along the coast a bit, but they are still slow here. The out reefs have been firing with great reports of bag limit catches of snapper with some fish pushing 6kg. Fresh
bait is the go with plenty of squid about and fresh salmon. The fish are well spread, in depths of 30m out to 65m of water. Gummys have been caught in the same areas. For best results, try anchoring either side of the tide change and use fresh salmon fillet on a 8/0circle hook. The new pontoons in the harbour are working well. There is a lot of squid ink on them and it gives you good access to a bit deeper water
down there. It’s been good seeing so many people using them as it also gives us so much more room to launch and retreive the boat. The parking is still a bit of an issue in the busy times of the year but I’m not sure what can be done. Overall the fishing is going strong here at the moment with all species on the go. The weather has been good despite a few eastly winds.
Late summer blooms big WARRNAMBOOL
Mark Gercovich mgercovich@hotmail.com
Things have just started heating up finally in the South West recently, and hopefully the good fishing will continue into March, which is still a great month to target the
summer species locally. The summer run of tuna is back again with fish present right along the coast. It is amazing how close these fish come to the shore, and it’s now common to encounter schools of fish in anything from 5-14m of water. It is a great opportunity for anglers in smaller boats to be able
The Killarney quadrella: tuna, king, salmon and squid.
to target hard fighting game species without the need for long runs out to sea. As always, some days tuna can be very difficult to entice, but keeping moving from school to school is the best option, rather than continually hassling the same school trying to entice a bite. We’ve found smallish poppers that throw plenty of splash to work the best. Occasionally we have caught fish by tossing a soft plastic in behind the popper when there are fish tailing it but not striking it. Kingfish have been a little inconsistent this summer, here one day gone the next. But what they have made up for is their size with plenty of metreplus fish being taken from all the regular locations. As well as the kingfish and tuna, there have been schools of decent sized salmon cruising the coast with both boat anglers, as well as landbased anglers at Killarney, hooking in. Overall it seems a
pretty bad time to be a baitfish at present. For those targeting bottom fish the gummies have been regular captures for those in closer, whilst those journeying towards the shelf on the all too rare super flat days have been taking all manner of tasty critters like blue-eye, gemfish and hapuka. Bream fishing has been okay without being exceptional recently. March can be a great time to chase estuary perch in both the fresh and saltwater sections of the Hopkins River. A warm calm evening can produce some exciting surface action whether using lure, fly or floated cricket baits. The attraction of this style of fishing has an extra incentive with the possibility of tangling with a bass. Bass have never been officially stocked in the Hopkins and don’t occur naturally but a number of fish in a variety of size ranges have been turning up in the past
Will Versace with a quality shorebased Killarney salmon. few seasons. If you are lucky enough to hook a good one you’ll be amazed how hard they go. On an unfortunate note there have been a few
carp encountered throughout the system. If you do catch one of these make sure it doesn’t go back and is disposed of away from the water. MARCH 2023 79
