Geelong

GEELONG Neil Slater

slaterfish@gmail.com

We’re well and truly into brass monkey season, with cold winds keeping the beanie and thermos factories in business. July is typically a time for reel, trailer and boat maintenance, but the fishing has been pretty good and it’s hard to take anything in for repairs when the fish are calling.

Smaller brown trout to 45cm have been caught by anglers putting in the time at both Wurdee Boluc and Stony Caiden caught this calamari from St Leonards Pier fishing with his dad Steve.

Jecob with one of the big salmon he and his mates caught fishing Bancoora Beach recently.

Creek reservoirs.

VFA have stocked St Augustines Waterhole with ‘ready to catch’ rainbow trout for the school holidays. The trout are around 30cm, which is a fun size to catch for kids, and will take a bunch of worms or small lure.

Salmon have been the stars so far this winter, with the local beaches and Geelong waterfront producing good numbers of fish.

The Bellarine Peninsula has continued the great run of whiting and now tuna have shown up offshore – things are good!

The Portarlington Boat ramp work is in its second stage, with the construction of a rock groyne to help manage seagrass build-up on the ramp. It’s expected to be complete around August. At Queenscliff the old ramp is gone, and a base has been made for the new ramp. Pre-cast ramps are being delivered soon, with completion estimated to be around August. For more info head to www. betterboatingvic.gov.au.

Whiting have been off their collective heads around the Bellarine, with anglers enjoying bag limit captures of fish up to 43cm, which is a good size for the area. All baits have been working but I do like to take an assortment to hedge my bets, in case the fish are craving something different. Pipis, squid and mussels have you covered for the local whiting. Squid has been great because it has been ‘free’, i.e. captured on a jig on the way to fish for whiting.

Leopold Angling and Aquatic Club hosted their whiting competition in early May. Conditions were terrible with 20+ knot winds, but some anglers still got amongst them. There were 50 entrants and the men’s heaviest bag of fish went to Graeme Norton with 8.215kg (I know – solid!), ladies heaviest bag was Nikki Turner at 5.84kg, the heaviest bag juniors was won by Taylor Hall at 3.07kg, and the longest fish prize went to Clint Lasky for his 41cm fish.

Tony Barkachi drove 1.5 hours from Melbourne to fish the Bellarine for squid. He arrived on the Bellarine and realised he’d forgotten his squid jigs! He decided to bait fish and got chatting to a gent who had been fishing before he arrived and caught nothing. The generous chap offered Tony a used el-cheapo jig of his own to keep. Tony then proceeded to catch eight calamari on the borrowed jig up to midnight!

Then he got the call from a mate to see if he wanted to fish Cunningham pier for snotty trevally, so he drove back to Geelong to meet his mate at around 1am. Tony said there were a few people there catching yakkas, but he decided to wait until sunrise. With the sun about to poke through, he tried for snotties. Tony noticed a few birds circling, so threw out a lure – and that’s when the mayhem started with a marauding school of salmon ripping into

the many long poles meant for snotty trevally. Tony said it was absolute chaos with people yelling, rods going into the water and fish flying in all directions! He managed a few solid salmon to 45cm in a hectic short and sharp session before heading home with a smile on his face.

Ten-year-old Caiden Inglis fished with his dad Shane from St Leonards pier recently. Casting a few jigs about, they both managed to nab a few tasty calamari.

Jecob Jetter fished Bancoora Beach with his mates where they caught some solid salmon around 3kg using pilchards. Jecob said the first hit was a massive bite.

“I pulled my line and bent my rod like a banana!” he said. “I shouted to my mate, ‘it’s a big one’!”

The pair they weren’t disappointed, with three solid salmon up around 3kg on the sand using pilchards and paternoster rigs.

The lads from ‘Reef Thief’ report the school tuna have been biting out off Barwon Heads, with the most of the fish sitting in that 40-65m range. The lads noted that they haven’t been overly hard to spot, with tuna, birds, dolphins and seals all working patches of bait. The tuna are somewhat finicky and moving

Tony had one heck of a fishing session that spanned two days around the Bellarine. He finished with this bucketful of solid Geelong salmon.

Kane Reardon with 136kg of Bass Strait tuna. fairly quickly and not staying on top. The lads have had the most success throwing either their 30g stickbaits or poppers at schools from a distance, so as not to scare them off.

There are also a lot of gummy and school shark around at the moment. By-catch off Barwon Heads has also included jackass morwong and swallow tail/ nannygai, which are most often caught further down the west coast.

Kane Reardon from ‘Reef Thief’ fished with Aaron from Salt Guide and his brother Cameron out off Cape Schanck, where they boated a few massive tuna to 136kg using 10” Reef Thief skirted lures. The lads managed to ‘borrow’ Paddy Dangerfield’s 7.5m tinnie – and they needed it because the swell was big!

The rock platforms along the Great Ocean Road to Lorne have been producing some solid salmon to 3kg for anglers casting lures and baits such as pilchards.

Those fishing off Lorne have caught some solid pinkie snapper to 50cm at the time of writing, plus gummy sharks in the 40-50m range, while good numbers of whiting are being taken in close.

If the rocks aren’t for you, the Lorne pier has continued to produce whiting, salmon, pinkie snapper and calamari. • Catch a few around Geelong, Bellarine Peninsula or Surf Coast to Lorne recently? Send in a report to slaterfish@ gmail.com with ‘FMG’ in the subject field or give me a call on 0408 997 348. Please include where (without giving away your secret spot!), when, what on and who caught the fish. Pictures are always great, but please make sure they are at least 1MB (file size).