With Easter now behind us the Apollo Bay area will be experiencing a decrease in tourist anglers. This is when the locals thrive on the area’s great fishing.
A reduction in anglers mean the most productive areas are copping less pressure, and more fish are there for those in the know. Recently I fished with good mate Ashley Cook out from the lighthouse in 50m of water at a well-known location. We were the only boat in the area and were pulling up snapper on frequent occasions until the tide changed and the gummy sharks started to bite. A short time later we had our two gummies each and an icebox loaded with fresh fish.
On the way home we only saw one other boat on the water, another local who we later found out had a good bag of King George whiting from the edges of the Bumbry Reef. Apollo Bay is really worth the extra drive at this time of year as the fishing of late has been sensational.
Max Cole from Colac also reports some great gummy captures from Cape Otway, along with Craig Rippon who tells me the King George whiting have been thick down around Blanket Bay.
It’s not just the boats getting in on the action either as large schools of Australian salmon are cruising the beaches from Wild Dog Beach to Mounts Bay. Beach anglers casting metal lures or baits of blue bait are landing plenty of hard fighting salmon up to 3kg. If you can find the time to fish on a day where high tide peaks around dusk you will be in with a better then average chance of landing some salmon from the beach.
The Barham River has been producing plenty of quality black bream in the upper estuary system. Small hardbodied lures and soft plastics have been working when cast around the sunken timber or under the willow trees that line the rivers banks.
I also landed a brown trout of around 700g while casting lures for bream in the Barham, and Mark Shortis was lucky enough to land a beauty of over 1.5kg recently from this same stretch of water.
The trout are also biting in the Aire and Ford River system as local angler Ian Newcombe informs me he landed a fish of 2.5kg recently on a Celta lure. This system holds some big wild trout but they are hard to come by. Patience and persistence will eventually pay dividends; so don’t be put off if you land nothing for the first few trips. A big one is only ever a cast away!
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Ashley Cook with a gummy shark taken from 50m of water off Cape Otway.
The deep reefs of Cape Otway are good places to search for late season snapper. This was just one of many landed on a recent trip. The key to success was fishing the slack water period of the tide.
