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Variety the key to the city
  |  First Published: April 2016



Around six months ago, I was lucky enough to land a part time job that working on a charter as a deck hand – and I absolutely love it! This job is right up my alley because I just love fishing.

We berth and launch from the end of St Kilda pier, right in the heart of the CBD. Every morning we depart to catch fish with our customers, and we get to watch the sensational sunrise and buildings of Melbourne.

Lately we have caught good numbers of King George whiting, pike, Australian salmon, flathead and pinkies. There has been a great variety of species to keep us busy. There’s no better feeling for me than seeing customers with happy smiles when they leave after a good day of fishing.

I always make sure to bring a rod with me so I can have a little bit of a fish. As I work down the pier, I cast 2.5” soft plastics. I’m anticipating some interest from flathead or pinkies. I use a very simple retrieve. I let my lure of choice hit the bottom (you’ll know when the line stops coming off you spool), then it’s as easy as two twitches to bounce it off the bottom. I then wind in the slack and let it hit the bottom again. I always make sure to continue this procedure the whole way.

Another very simple but effective retrieve style that would have to be the most popular is the slow wind. Often your lure will have its own action that doesn’t need tweaking.

Last session I was walking down from the pier to go home, and I caught two flatties (the biggest was a great 44cm) and three pinkies – all in 20 minutes. Boy, that was great fun!

Land-based metro fishing has gone well. My mates and I continue to fish Albert Park Lake for golden perch, and the Yarra River for bream with good success. However, we have definitely noticed the consistency of the fishing is declining at a slow pace as we approach the cooler months.

However, while it’s fishing hot, we are taking advantage as much as we can by catching public transport every week to get into the action. Every possible Saturday and Sunday we get among the bream in the Yarra River. I have found the the light version of the Cranka Crab (3.9g) is an absolute winner on bream. It keeps your Crab in the strike zone for a lot longer, and as it falls and moves in the current realistically.No matter where I’m fishing, if I’m not catching I like to mix things up. For example try to make something out of nothing. It might only take down-classing your line a strength, changing colour or weight of lure to get that reaction bite. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

Now that we are getting more frequent days of rain, places such as St Kilda and the Docklands, have been quite dirty, especially with strong southerly winds. Although, there is one good thing about this – mulloway! In the next month or two, I will start to suss out my options to target mulloway, as there is only a short window when they will be on the bite in particular spots. So I like to take advantage when they are feeding.

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