Here come the salmon and perch

PORT ALBERT

Brett Geddes b.geddes@bigpond.com

It’s that time of year again to get ready for the salmon and perch, which have both arrived early this season. However, first up for this report I’m starting off with some tips on where and how to fish the jetties as winter begins.

PORT ALBERT JETTIES

Even if it’s too windy and cold for boating, keen anglers can always rug up and catch a wide variety of fish from the safety of the top-quality jetties in the area. The jetties are kid friendly, suitable for wheelchairs and there’s room for dozens of anglers. They often have permanent rod holders and cleaning tables, and at Port Albert you have a fish and chip shop on the jetty right next to you.

Just recently I saw a couple of anglers set up for a big afternoon, with plans to fish well into the night with bluebait and squid. They ended up catching trevally, good tailor, nice flathead to 36cm and heaps of small salmon, all from the same spot and working the changing tides.

My best tip is to cast one bait out wide and drop another one down beside the pylons, and eventually the fish will ‘tell you’ where to cast. The new Port Welshpool jetty is an impressive structure at 800m long, and flathead, salmon, garfish, whiting, leatherjackets, and squid are a regular catch. The jetty extends right out into deeper water, where you also have a chance of catching a kingfish or a nice snapper.

Quite a few anglers fish the jetties well into the night, and target squid with a whole range of coloured jigs. If you can find ink-stained areas on a jetty as you walk its, length you can bet the locals have been busy, and it will be one of their hotspots.

SALMON ON LURES

The early run of salmon has been a nice surprise this winter, and although the big fish have yet to arrive, the schools of smaller fish have been bigger than usual. The real hotspots for salmon are the entrance areas of McLaughlins and Manns, especially two hours each side of high tide.

The interesting thing I’ve found just recently is that these salmon have pushed deep into the estuary, and can be caught almost anywhere you have deeper channels. You will at times locate the schools while busting up on bait, however I also find that allowing your lure to sink to the bottom before you begin your retrieve can be even more effective. Salmon can often school up very deep, and won’t always rise to faster lures near the surface. Besides, by fishing deep and slow you can also jag a few flatties, too.

THUMPER EP back with the flow to make sure you cover the whole water column. At dead low tide, find the deepest holes you can and work your jigs in a teabag method, and vary the retrieve from super slow to a few fast rips and a pause.

Estuary perch are, for the most part, fairly easy to trick when lures are cast accurately along weed beds or deep into structure. However, they are a hard species to locate. They are incredibly mobile, and just when you think you’ve worked them out and found them in big numbers, they will disappear overnight. Sometimes never to return for years!

At other times perch can do the reverse and turn up in huge numbers where you have never caught them before. It was a total surprise to me while fishing one of the many creeks and rivers of South Gippy that I bumped into an absolute trophy perch after hours of finding nothing. I was about to call an end to my perch search for that morning, and go and chase flathead, when I nearly had the rod pulled out of my hands. I eventually netted one of the best EP I’ve ever caught.

The best-known trick when catching squid is to cast another jig in behind the squid you’re about to land. More often than not, there will be one or more squid following behind. It even pays to leave your catch in the water until someone else can cast behind you. Check with the locals before heading out because the best squid locations can vary from week to week, and pay attention to which channels other boats are drifting along. fairly brisk rate. When you detect a few bumps or knocks, just slow the lure right down and let the bream eat it. You cover vast areas of water and often stumble across small, tight schools of bream or get a by-catch of flathead and even whiting.

TAILOR

One very noticeable difference this year are the prodigious numbers of big tailor that are found almost everywhere across the whole Gippy Lakes. There have been countless numbers busting up on bait at Hollands, and it’s nothing to hook 20 or more if you target them. They range from 35-50cm, and make for top sport if the bream and flathead are shut down. I seem to hook at least four or five every trip to that area while I’m really only chasing the big bream.

I have kept a few tailor to eat, and I’ve discovered they are excellent eating as sashimi with sesame oil, chilli jam and honey soy. Toothy tailor will always remain a pesky and costly lure thief, but I will now look forward to keeping a couple for some raw fish dining.

At 54cm and a whopping 2.61kg, she swam away strongly after a few quick pictures. For the record, that EP ate a Hurricane Sprat 65 in the Tomahawk pattern on a lightly weighted size 2 jighead.

The cooler months can be prime time for chasing EP, as they often push far up into the rivers, so that’s where I’ll concentrate my efforts next.

The best time to target squid is about two hours each side of the high tide. Size 3.0 and 3.5 jigs are your best bet, and if the tide is flowing fast, cast upstream into the current and retrieve your jig