October Reds

Dad and I finally managed to align the schedules and leave passes and hit Corinella in the boat yesterday afternoon. After dispensing with the obligatory family commitments like swimming, I got to Coronet Bay and we packed the boat and headed out of a packed Corinella ramp at about 2.30. We headed to French Island and went north about 500m before sounding up some promising looking arches. We dropped the pick and sent out an array of nice baits - Calamari, garfish (Both caught a few weeks prior) and some pilchards.

About 2km north of us (Spit Point area) there was an armada of boats - It was almost Port Phillip Bay like in the how tightly they were all packed together so obviously someone had been catching some fish! As it turns out nobody for the entire trip anchored anywhere near us, although we were in the middle of the highway of boats heading up and back to the ramp. We didn't have to wait long after out baits were in for Dad to hook up - A nice 52cm red which was just shy of his PB of 54cm. Shortly after I was on and a 53cm red came aboard. Although we had put in all this effort to catch bait the only things that were getting a look in was the humble old pilchard! Dad hooked up again to a good fish, which came in at 62cm after an initial massive run then just letting itself be led to the boat, nevertheless it became his new PB.


Dad then got another mid-fifties red and it was 3 fish to 1 - A very sad state of affairs! I missed a good run then had a slower bite, which resulted in a monster port jackson shark, one of two that I managed for the afternoon.


After about an hour of nothing I went to pull in my rod and found a healthy 44cm red attached to the end of it. Only down 2-3 I was mounting a comeback of sorts, however about 10 minutes later Dad hooked up and as I was netting his 45cm red my rod went off. I managed to land another mid fifties and so Dad had to throw his back as we now had 6 over 40cm. Dad managed 2 more reds in the mid fifties, and in all his years has never done well anough on them to have to release these great size fish and was almost in tears as he released another 55cm red.

We went back in on dusk and didn't bother to stay to fish the start of the runout tide as we were ready for tea. Back at the ramp people had had mixed success - Some had none, some had a few. The guy next to us on the cleaning table had managed 3 nice fish and mentioned that a couple of blokes had brought in 15 between the two of them earlier in the day and gotten their boat confiscated, so it's really good to see the laws being enforced and also made Dad far happier that he had in fact released all of the others!

Dad has gone back out this morning (I'm back on home duties) and managed 2 so far, with the best 64cm which again is his new PB!

Saving daylight

An early season trip was in order after hearing of quite a few snapper pulled in recently. I had Sunday off so called a mate who has just gotten a new boat and we organised to meet at 6.30 at his house. Turns out daylight saving started so 6.30 was actually what had been 5.30 for the past couple of months. Neither of us realised but my phone (Which is my alarm) automatically switched to daylight savings time and his didn't, consequently when I arrived at his house there was no movement at the station and I had to wait a while for him to grace me with his presence.

When he finally arose and we went to hook his boat up it was a beautiful sight -A 5m Whittley with massive snapper racks, a 90hp e-tec and a lowrance HDS5 with the chartplotter. After getting over how great the boat was we went to Warneet and launched pretty hassle-free (Most other boats had remembered daylight savings and launched by then!).

We plugged in a few marks but on a very fast outgoing tide stopped near Joe's Island in about 4m of water for some bait catching. While the tide was still running I managed 2 nice salmon on my 2 hook rigs (Hoping for a snapper) and he managed 4, much to his amusement. As it slowed I dropped in my trusty 2 hook paternoster on my whiting outfit and caught about 15 salmon in the next 20 minutes, including 2 double headers.

With the salmon packed away for bait and the tide stopped we moved out into the channel in about 7-8m of water where we saw some promising marks. As the tide started running we had a few tentative bites on salmon fillets and the squid I had brought from a previous trip but that was it, so when the wind got up going opposite to the tide we decided to head in.

Not a productive day on the reds but he now has a freezer full of salmon to use as bait!