The water has remained dirty for a long time in the Barwon due to healthy rains late October. Big carp and eels have been caught by anglers bank fishing the Barwon River.

The carp are all over most baits but the eels have bitten best on worms after dark.

Despite the dirty water, redfin to 600g have been caught on lures around Queens Park close to dusk. Brightly coloured minnow lures have been best as well as soft plastics in 2” grubs and minnow profiles.

The snapper have been absolutely stunning again and I keep thinking it will stop one season but it hasn’t. Corio Bay has coughed up yet another stellar season with plenty of anglers getting amongst some great fish.

Ross Winstanley had three dry outings where he’s struggled to rake up a feed of flatties, until he decided on a different strategy. Using 5/0 and 1/0 hooks, Ross headed around to the outer edge of the spoil grounds east of Point Henry and caught 10 pinkie snapper all in the 29-35cm range. Ross said he had that whole bay (and all of its banjos) to himself in perfect conditions last week.

Ross spoke to a bloke at the ramp who caught 12 good King George whiting off Alcoa at the end of Point Henry recently, which is encouraging news for whiting fishos.

Brendan Jones had a cracking session out off Clifton Springs with his cousin Alan recently. The lads were feeding the anchor out at 4.30am and had their first fish before the last rod had been cast out! Brendan said they had their best bite around 5am and things tapered off after that.

Fishing near channel markers 13 and 14 with silver whiting as bait, they caught their bag limit of snapper from 4-9kg in three hours. Alan caught the first fish of the day, which weighed in at a very respectable 5.5kg. But the best fish was to go to Brendan who boated a 90cm+ fish that weighed in at a hefty 8.74kg. Brendan noted that a mate of his fished the same spot within a few days and did not lose a bait. It just goes to show you, sometimes you land right on top of hungry fish! Brendan said his method to locate fish was to motor along at about 5 knots and watch for arches on his sounder, which really hit the jackpot this time around!

Point Wilson has been the place to be for big snapper as well with quality fish coming over the side in excess of 5kg by anglers fishing in around 5m of water off Mountain View Quarries.

Rod Ludlow from Beachlea Boat Hire at Indented Head says the wait for the wind to ease is worth it if you like calamari, as they are fairly thick off the Bellarine Peninsula at the moment. Rod says he had several boats return with bag limit captures of calamari fishing Grassy Point through to Indented Head producing best numbers.

Rod noted that there are a few good whiting reports coming in. St Leonards is producing some larger fish while Portarlington and Grassy Point have been producing bag limit captures, which is early for whiting.

Rod says that Steels Rocks has been producing snapper after dark and there seems to be a lot of mackerel and barracouta kicking about as well.

Mick Allardyce from Allyweld Group fished Painkalac Creek at Aireys Inlet with his daughter Maddy and says that the river was very dirty due to recent rains. Maddy landed some undersize bream using scrub worms, which she thought was great fun. They came back to fish the Anglesea River where they persisted for a while but did not even lose a bait.

We had a weekend at Moggs Creek for my brother-in-law 50th recently. With cracking weather on the Saturday, we all hit the beach to run those kids like kelpies and flick a line in the water. There were plenty of people fishing in ideal conditions with offshore breeze and low to moderate surf but we did not get any bites at all. There were close to 10 anglers in around 100m and I did not see any of them catch anything either, which was unusual.

Quality snapper, gummy and school sharks have also been reported along the Surf Coast from Barwon Heads to Anglesea with first and last light being best for snapper in the shallower water. During the day it is best to fish deep and drift in 40m for snapper and flake.

Fish hard – die happy!