School holiday fishing fun

Bryce Nurnaitis with a salmon. (supplied)

School holidays are here and there’s plenty of fishing options available.

Starting off with the local watering hole, St Augustine’s in Belmont has been stocked and topped up with rainbow trout ready to be caught.

Fishing either the bank or jetty with a light running sinker rig to a small hook with powerbait for bait will put you in the best shot at a fish. Bit of burley certainty helps as these fish are very tuned to the sound of pellets hitting the water as when they grew up in a hatchery that meant feeding time.

The Geelong waterfront is another great option to take the family for a fish these holidays as it offers great accessibility and is often sheltered from strong winds.

Can expect to catch pinky snapper, salmon, flathead and whiting and often all on the same rig and bait. You can also expect garfish to rock up in big numbers, so have some pencil floats handy just in case they arrive whilst you’re chasing other species.

The Bellarine Peninsula is still offering some solid whiting fishing to anglers heading out for a feed. St Leonards remains the hotspot for the whiting with lots of reports coming through of bag-limit captures and some solid fish amongst them. Fresh squid is proving yet again to be the standout bait.

The surf beaches have had some big swells this past week which hasn’t made it easy for the salmon, with only a few reports coming through. But with the swell dropping we can expect it to fire up again.

Casting metal lures and working them back with a medium to fast retrieve usually gets the attention of the cruising salmon and results in a few hook-ups.

Lake Bullen Merri has come back onto the radar this week with some improved trout fishing as the tigers come onto the chew. Anglers casting from the bank have been finding some success with spoon style lures working well and also bent minnows.

Anglers at the lake edges have also been picking up plenty of tiger trout with classic Rapalas and Tassie Devils doing the damage.