Ray Long Fishing Report
On The Bite 14 Jul 2010
LIFES A BEACH
After three weeks of heavy ground swells pounding our surf beaches all changed last weekend when fine settled weather fired up the salmon all along the coast.
No area was better than Fairhaven, here huge numbers of fish were on offer to lure casters, with clean flat water you needed to move consistently to follow the shoals but most were rewarded with large bags. Fishing here last Saturday John Mole and I had a three hour red hot session hooking a fish a cast on our braid marauder lures, while most fish were just under a kilo we did land fish to 2kg. The following day we sort our luck again on lures and with the company of Danny Clapinski, Andrew Dellaca and Brendan Sheedy over one hundred fish were caught and released in just a few hours of fishing, more would have been caught if it wasn’t for the persistence of a large seal that obviously liked the salmon as much as we did.
Eastern View produced fair numbers of fish on both bait and lure with the best captures coming this week from the afternoon high tides, this will continue this weekend if conditions allow.
Jan Juc and Bancoora beaches also rewarded anglers with salmon, some of the better fish here were over the 2kg mark. Surf poppers and bait worked but once again the better numbers of fish were had by lure casters something that generally will be the case on this species.
John Holt fished just near Stony Creek at Lorne on two occasions this week here he found any number of salmon to 1.5kg, taking bait and surf snatchers he changed to lure and found a hook up every cast while the tide was running up to high.
Further afield salmon were also in numbers at Wye River Tony and Andrew Gordon found fish to 2kg, using blue bait and surf poppers there combined bag added up to sixteen fish, all were landed in just a two hour session.
Queenscliff cut saw silver trevally still in fair numbers with soft plastic anglers landing fish to 1.2kg on turtle back worms, bait anglers did not fair so well but the use of berley will certainly improve your captures.
Whiting continue to reward those prepared to put in the hours at Queenscliff, the fish seem to be well spread out and many moves are generally required to in order to locate fish, most anglers are reporting only a couple of fish are to be had at each location ensuring a lot of anchor retrieving per session.
Swan Bay once again produced gummy shark the best sighted at 6kg and taken after dark from the jetty on cured eel. Seems there are numbers of small gummys biting with most only around the 2kg mark. Jonathan Carmichael has been anchoring up in the channel just off Duck Island here he has found the gummys love his freshly caught squid, of which there are any number on offer to a well presented jig.
St Leonards has been the most reliable destination for those on the whiting, anglers are generally finding good pockets of fish on the shallow grass beds, here pippies and fresh squid are all you will need.
While snapper reports have been down so far this winter there are still fish to be had with all the best reports coming from the Wilson Spit. This week fishing after dark Terry Thomas landed two fish both identical in weight at 6kg, these were taken on silver whiting.
Fishing the inner harbour Justin Jenkins has found plenty of small snapper picking his baits clean that was until he switched over to a whole squid bait, it was only in the water for a few minutes when the reel screamed and a 7.2kg snapper was boated. Justin has been fishing the stick marking the end of the old Yarra Street Pier.
Soft plastics anglers working the Geelong waterfront have found fishing slow this week with mainly small snapper to show for there efforts, but Harry Richmond found a nice shoal of snotty trevalla holding up near Cunningham Pier and that were climbing all over his squidgy critter lures.
Freshwater has once again seen Lake Bullen Merri the destination to head to, while land based anglers fishing Powerbait are catch the majority of fish most are under the kilo mark. Those trolling have generally had the more opportunities of catching a better fish with Darren Shilling of Bendigo landing a nice brown of 3.3kg this week while trolling a Merlin deep diver, other lures doing well have been the gold colored tassie devils.
Ideal conditions have made for fantastic captures of Bluefin tuna again this week, while most fish are still running between 8 and 15kg it is always nice to hear of the odd huge fish that is landed and one of the best this week was taken by visiting Canadian angler Paul St Peter at 104kg and taken on 15kg line class I’m sure he will be back to sample more of Australia’s class fishing opportunities.
I can’t stress enough just how good our surf fishing is at present, while bait is working there is no doubt that lures are the MOST PRODUCTIVE method, any of our major beaches are working but so are all the deeper rock platforms along the Great Ocean Road.
I have been asked what lures we are using on the salmon, well we are using exclusively the BRAID MARAUDER 1OZ metal baitfish pattern, this lure has a single heavy duty hook but swims totally different to any other on the market, do check them out.
Brendan has told me he needs to clear 1 ONLY SHIMANO FIREBLOOD 4000FA normally $759 but to move it fast, first in can have it for just $475.
We also have INSTINCT surf flasher rigs, these work well on salmon and save the hassle of using baits normally $8.95 but for this week JUST $5.
Hopefully we will see you all down the coast this weekend Brian, Brendan, Jeanette, Hudson & Ray.