jayneandmarty.com

At the weekend our neighbour told me the reason Matt and I didn’t catch any fish the other week is because they’re all out in the open ocean. Something to do with water temperatures. "Give it another few weeks", he said, "and you’ll be right.".

With that in mind, and given that I was bored today (off work sick), I’ve done some research and hereby present the fruits of my labours. I will follow this knowledge over spring, summer and autumn. Will I catch any fish? I doubt it, but I’ll try.

First of all, I had to have some sort of idea about type of fish I intend to catch, which in turn is mostly governed by where I’m going to fish.

Saltwater

Every now and again I’ll head out in the ski boat with Matt  to Corio Bay and the Outer Harbour. According to fishvictoria.com, there we can expect to catch snapper, flathead, and whiting.

Futurefish.com.au reckons good all-round tackle for those fish off a boat is a 2m snapper rod with 4-6kg line on a threadline or baitcaster reel and suicide or long shank 2 to 6/0 hooks.

Flathead are found on the bottom close to shore or at a drop-off and they are often caught on pilchards, pippies or squid. Drifting in the boat works well and the best rigs are simple round or barrel running sinkers that let the bait move along the seabed.

Snapper are a midwater fish, so a paternoster rig often works well (where the sinker sits on the bottom and the bait is 1-2m above it). They love pilchards, squid and flathead pieces and swim around over reefs rather than weed beds or sand. Berley helps attract them to an area and the best times are early evening and early morning on a tide change.

A snapper, yesterday

Whiting prefer weeds and sand. (A futurefish hot tip tip is to anchor your boat over the weeds and cast to the sand.) They also like their squid and pippies, mussels also work well. Early morning and evening is best and they like a bit of berley.

Freshwater

When I grew up in England I used to love freshwater fishing. In my early teens I’d often load my (ridiculous amount of) gear onto my racing bike and ride the five miles or so to Sonning for chub, barbel, bream and perch, or to the BBC lake to try for a tench.

Imagine my disappointment, then, that here in Australia, in our big brown sunburnt land of high fish stocks, I’ve only caught one freshwater fish - a carp. The carp took a worm on a tributary of the Edward river near Deniliquin, and would have been a highly prized catch in the UK: it was about 60cm long and weighed about 3kg. In Australia it’s against the law to release carp, so that worm was its last. Jayne had to kill it. The pathetic knock on the head that I gave it only stunned it and I couldn’t bring myself to finish the job off. I was brought up releasing everything in the UK.

Anyway. Every now and again I’ll have the opportunity to try for trout in the Eildon pondage, the Mt Beauty pondage or the Goulburn River, and maybe yellowbelly and redfin (perch) at Lake Mulwala or Lake Eildon.

The crafty troutses likes their yabbies, wormses and mudeyes (little creepy-crawlies), and they’ll also take a lure, yes, they will. Use size 4-8 baitholder hooks, light gear (2kg line) and go early morning or late evening.

A fat rainbow trout

If baitfishing a lake or pond for trout, a running sinker rig that allows the bait to sit on the bottom works well. For running water you might not need a sinker if you put enough worms on, and if you see surface activity try a mudeye about 50-100cm under a bubble float. If lurefishing, Fishnet reckons you can’t go past a Tassie Devil trolled behind a boat.

The Tassie Devil

Yellowbelly gobble up yabbies, worms and shrimp and might also go for a deep-diving lure. Stick a baitholder hook on in size 4 to 1/0 and fish around structure early morning and evening. There’s a nice story about fishing around Mulwala for yellowbelly here.

Redfin (English perch) are similar to yellowbelly but smaller, so use lighter gear.

A redfin

Summary

A 1.8-2.0m spin rod with a fairly light threadline reel should handle all that. Then I need two sets of gear: for saltwater I’ll load a spool with 100m of 6kg line and take out decent sinkers and a bunch of 4/0 hooks. For freshwater I’ll load a second spool wth 2kg line and have a lighter set of sinkers and some size 6 hooks, except if I’m going for yellowbelly, when I’ll use the saltwater gear.

Should cost me about $100.

Please please please let me catch you, o fishies.

Oh … I almost forgot. I called this post "Jayne and Marty’s fishing tips". Those tips you just read are all mine (well, I collated them anyway). Jayne’s fishing tip is simple. Buy a $4 handline, borrow a hook, get Marty to put a worm on and you’re all set.