Phillip Island

PHILLIP ISLAND Craig Edmonds

Another month without restrictions! With luck, we’ll be able to get through winter without restrictions, and we will compound once things normalize, as the last two years catches up. COVID assistance will dry up, and the reality of no help will set in for many business owners, left to fend for themselves in what could be a very

Kev with one of the numerous tuna caught this season.

can go into the spring like a normal season. Regardless, it’s important over the next 3-4 months to check on your mates and even local business owners, regardless of what type of business. Much of people’s stress quiet winter period. Your quick 5-minute visit or call could be all they need to help get them through.

Easter is that last chance for an extra-long weekend before everybody gets heads down and works through the winter period, waiting for the next season to start. Unfortunately, those who put their boats away for the winter can miss out on some very good fishing on chilly but productive days. Many people have had their fix of tuna for this year, and have moved back into the bay looking for table fish in the form of whiting and snapper. While bigger snapper have been a little hard to find, there have been plenty of pinkies around of all sizes. We have been plagued again this year by very small undersized pinkies, and it has been very frustrating at times trying to catch anything of size. Still, when you found the trick there was some quality to be had. Seb and Archer headed out with dad for a quick fish, and managed to take a feed home for mum.

Thomas was very happy with his catch.

For some reason, whiting have been moving almost weekly from the deep to the shallows then back to the deep, all season. Very rarely did we get reports from both in the same week. Normally their patterns are more settled and they stay in one place for a while.

Whiting reports have been reasonable from the land as well this season, with Ventnor and Cleeland Bight being the best spots. There were a couple of reports from the jetties but very few, and more of an accidental catch, whereas those caught from the beaches were actually targeted. You won’t find them all the time from the beaches though, and you need the tides to be right. High tide late in the evening is ideal, or even a high tide very early in the morning. I can’t remember ever having them reported from during the middle of the day. The size from the land has been good also, with several around the 40cm mark.

Back in the boats and it’s just a matter of searching a bit of ground to find them because they are there, they haven’t all disappeared out to sea. The sizes are very mixed, and the reports from now are almost what you would expect during the early part of January – very mixed, from undersized to almost 50cm. With the size of the whiting in the bay being so good over the last couple of years, we haven’t had a report from anybody chasing them in the boats offshore, around Smiths Beach. I guess when you are getting bags of 40cm+ from in the bay there is no need to go out and look.

Apart from the tuna offshore this season, there are flathead to 55cm, salmon to 3.5kg, 1m long couta and pike, kingfish to 1.2m and gummies to 15kg with some very big bronze whalers, hammerheads and whites being spotted. You would have to say it’s been a very good season that should still continue for some time yet, with the perfect autumn and early winter days that will now show up. I haven’t even mentioned the bait that’s been around – yakkas, mackerel, redbait, arrow squid and even pilchards.

You would think marlin or albacore are only a few years away, with some very strong, warm currents finding their way down to our area more and more often. Those who travel out past Cody Banks will know what I am talking about, where at times it seems as if you are 100km north. I am told wind patterns at the right times of the year, which send bait our way, has a lot to do with what happens, as well as a shifting water flow. I don’t understand a lot of how it all works, but when it is explained by experts in this field it all seems possible. I guess time will tell, but one thing is certain: it is working so far. The baitfish are bringing the bigger fish, but windows will be short. You have to be lucky enough to be at in the right place at the right time.

While there will still be plenty of opportunity for boating, many anglers will soon concentrate on beach fishing and bait collecting for the upcoming season.

I’m not sure if it has anything at all to do with what’s happening offshore, but the bigger snapper are showing up much earlier. Maybe it’s just a cycle we are going through, like the tuna. Only time will tell, but I remember fishing when I was much younger and catching plenty of 20lb snapper through late July and August, which is what we have seen over the last five years or so. You don’t see huge numbers that early, but we definitely see new season fish, and what we do see is lots of small schools, not a handful of big schools of fish. This always comes later, once the snapper are in the bay and settle.

We have a few weeks under our belt in the new shop now, and we are getting things sorted and will soon be looking to the future. Once we get into winter, we will start to look at next season and how we are going to add and improve what we do. We will be looking at increasing some of the stock lines we have now, as well as adding more, and are taking direction from the requests of our customers to supply what they want.