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The Silver Unicorn
  |  First Published: December 2015



December already and the snapper are going completely berserk, but the snapper aren’t the cause of greatest excitement. The whiting are starting to show up in relatively good numbers, the gummies have been a pleasant by-catch, and the mighty mulloway have decided to chew hard with some massive results!

MULLOWAY

Mulloway are one special fish, and the excitement levels go through the roof whenever one is caught. As always, the details are a bit scarce when it comes to the unicorns of the port, but I will do my best to point you in the right direction. It was only going to be a matter of time before a local kayak angler would get one of these magical creatures from Lang Lang and that’s exactly what Richard Linowsi has managed to do. Richard fished some epic hours in only 2m of water with fresh calamari and was rewarded with a sensational 10kg mulloway which made the massive effort all worth it. Congratulations Rich!

Local legends Shaun Furtiere and Warren Carter also went on the hunt for a big mulloway somewhere in the top of the port during the last full moon period and they wrestled with one of the biggest mulloway I have ever seen! Some quick thinking by the boys resulted in them having to up anchor and chase down the fish in order to get a little bit of line back on the reel before netting a massive 31kg mulloway!

SNAPPER

Where do I start with the snapper? The snapper season in Westernport has been unreal so far, with the size of some of these fish the best we have seen in years! Joes Island has plenty of fish stacked up at the moment as Ash McMillan recently found out. After sounding a couple of solid fish on the bottom Ash sent down a couple of fresh salmon fillets and ended up with two solid snapper to 4.8kg.

Ryan Wassink also found a couple of nice fish on fresh squid and also crossed paths with a 2kg local Westernport ling – an ugly, but awesome eating fish. Various locations throughout the top end like Crawfish Rock, Lysaughts and right along Long Reef are all firing at the moment. Billy Papageorgiou was sitting in only 6m of water when a monster 7kg snapper took the squid tube he caught earlier in the session. Gaven Methers had the family out on the port and got his young bloke Brodie, sorted out with a couple of nice big reds. Brodie pencilled in another personal best with a whopping 7.1kg snapper.

Hastings is the place to be if you want to secure a nice big red for the middle of the table at Christmas lunch. I could write this report purely on Hastings snapper if I wanted to – there are that many reports! Keith Diprose from Big Time Charters has been dominating snapper out from Hastings, fishing around Buoy 29. Keith reports a lot of table-sized fish in the area with fresh squid easily performing as the best bait. Brett Jackson put in a few hours out from Hastings and returned home with a true trophy snapper in a recent trip. The details were a little bit hard to get but we do know that this beast tipped the scales at 9.8kg. Local legend Magoo, is another keen local that has been getting it done around Hastings and in a recent trip boated 7 snapper with the biggest going 8kg. Magoo reported that the run in tide was easily the best and matched with fresh squid, the fish simply couldn’t resist!

GUMMIES AND WHITING

The gummies have been a welcome by-catch for a lot of snapper fisherman and you would never argue with one of these beauties for the table. Shaun Furtiere of Think Big Charters has come across a few nice gummies in recent trips with most of them averaging between 5-10kg. You will generally come across the bigger models in the deeper parts of the channel and they are a sucker for fresh bait. The whiting reports are slowly starting to filter through with some reasonable bags making a welcome capture for those that have retired the snapper rods. A few fish have been showing up around Tooradin, and the Middle Spit is starting to fill up with a few nice sized schools of fish. Pipi, laced with a little bit of fresh calamari is the way to go here, and don’t forget to berley!

Thank you to everyone who continues to support this fine publication every month, and a massive shout out to the editor of this magazine, Jacqui Thomas. Jacqui not only does a great job every month, but also continually puts up with me submitting this report extremely late every time!

Merry Christmas everybody and may your holidays be filled with epic fishing adventures!

See you all in 2016!

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