Phillip Island

Looking for another challenge

PHILLIP ISLAND Craig Edmonds

It has certainly been a winter to remember, firstly because we’ve actually been able to get out and have a fish, and secondly because the offshore fishing has been like never before. I am mostly speaking about the tuna. The great school and if the tuna are in big numbers again I think some anglers will be looking for another challenge. Personally, I think I would prefer a few kilograms of kingfish than tuna in the freezer.

There are plenty of kings around offshore, judging from the reports we have been getting from divers. However, seeing the kingfish is one thing, and catching them on of perfection. In late winter and early spring it seemed as though everything was going to fire early, then we had a month or more of rain and wind. Wind in spring is nothing new, but the air temperature was a little ordinary which, with the lack of sun, made for a longer stretch of colder water temperatures. However, despite this, we did see some bad thing (the smaller fish are a much better feed), it’s just a little unusual for this early in the season. Although we are getting more regular reports the fish haven’t really fired yet, and I would expect it will be a bit later into November. It will be interesting to see just what the mix of snapper are.

The reports are mostly concentrated around the top end of the bay, Elizabeth Island to Lang Lang, but I think by the time this is printed they will be spread across the corals. November and the start of daylight savings is the perfect time to target the tide change on dark across the mud, especially after a warm day.

Whiting have been consistent over the last few

Quality snapper are expected at this time of the year.

fish season we had last summer was backed up by an equally great barrel season through the winter, and everybody is now waiting to see what turns up this summer.

Over the last few years the local kingfish have been left alone with so many tuna around, but from conversations with customers I think the kingfish might be a bit of a target this summer. A lot of people are now geared up to handle the bigger fish, rod and reel is a very different story. The best advice I can give is to forget everything you know about catching kingfish, and be prepared to do things a little differently. I could take up the whole page trying to explain; it’s easier for you to just drop in and see us or have a talk to one of the many locals that chase them.

It has taken what seems like forever for the water to warm up this year, and the fishing has been very much like the weather, i.e. very poor at times with patches early fish. There is always the opportunity to catch fish, the trick is being able to take advantage of it.

Snapper reports started typical of a normal season, with low numbers and large sizes, as you would expect. Then something changed once the weather started improving in late September, and the reports were of the odd big snapper but plenty around the 2-4kg mark. The bigger fish were still showing on the sounders, they weren’t getting to the baits. While this isn’t a

From page 86 Albert Park, Werribee River. This has quickly become one of my favourite forms of fishing. Light gear and those crazy surface strikes are amazing.

Finally, without a doubt I will be walking the banks of the Maribyrnong and Yarra rivers targeting bream this month. At this time of year, they will start sitting high and holding the edges, so I’ll target them with shallowdiving hardbody lures. You can also get good results sight casting to them in stealth mode, and flicking plastics and crab or yabby imitations along the shallows and any visible structure, and working them slowly with ultra-light spin gear.

As you can see, there are so many options for anglers at this time of the year. Whether you fish with bait or lures and whether you fish saltwater of freshwater, get excited because the fishing gets very good from here.

Until next time, good fishing everyone. Feel free to contact me directly to share your fishing experiences, photos and catches around Melbourne, Port Phillip Bay and beyond which we can feature in next month’s article. You can contact me by email at alan@fishingmad. com.au. Please consider becoming a FishingMad member at www.fishingmad. com.au/member for fishing workshops, podcasts, detailed reports and exciting monthly giveaways.

Also, don’t forget to follow my fishing adventures on the FishingMad YouTube channel www.youtube. com/c/fishingmad and on social media on Facebook page www.facebook. com/fishingmad.com. au, Instagram page www. instagram.com/fishingmad. com.au and on Channel 31 Tuesday evenings at 9:30pm and Saturday afternoons at 3:00pm.Reds are great fun on soft plastics.

Steve took the kids out for an evening fish, and the girls managed to find some great pinkies for the table.

A nice brace of pinkie snapper.

months, when the weather allowed you to get to where you needed to be. We had a lot of side-on to the tide winds, which makes whiting fishing difficult unless you take the time to bridle up on the anchor or use two anchors. Like the snapper, the whiting were initially all big and low in numbers, but towards the end of September plenty of smaller fish came into the bay. Now you can get your bag but the sizes will be all over the place.

With pipi prices going up again and supply for the season still unknown, almost everybody is changing up to squid and pilchard fillet. It does take some time to get used to the alternate baits, but they do catch fish. Many anglers, when they are having a bad day, will blame their lack of whiting on not having any pipis. In reality, the problem probably isn’t the bait – it’s just that the fish weren’t hungry.

In any case, you can get as much bait out of $6 of pilchards or squid as $30 of pipis, so with fuel as expensive as it is the difference can actually be your fuel cost for a whiting session. Those anglers who have been using pilchards or squid for years, and have it worked out, don’t have any problem catching their bag. They also find at times the alternate baits attract fewer rubbish fish.

We have already seen plenty of whiting around the 50cm mark, and the only reason they’re under the 1kg mark is because they are a little light in condition. However, once they have been in the bay for a while they will fatten up and weigh what we would expect.

The Rhyll boat ramp is back open, and while there seem to be some obvious problems that need to be sorted out I guess it’s going to need a little time for people to get used to it. By the end of the season we will have a much better idea of whether it’s going to work.

They tell us that Newhaven is next on the list, and it’s important that you have your say to ensure that the end result is practical and functional. People who design a lot of these things don’t actually use them, and so have no idea how it will work best – just like the people who will use it have no idea of the engineering involved. The best approach for projects like these is when they call for submissions. Get together with a group or your fishing club and form your ideas to then submit as a group. This way it narrows the field of information, is more consistent in what is needed, and we might get closer to a design that will work. 500 submissions, all different, will be an overload of information and could lead to most heading for the too hard basket. It’s also pointless complaining after it is done if you haven’t bothered to have a say at the beginning.