There are plenty of light line options for family anglers fishing from the shoreline and piers over the Christmas break, not all fishing needs to be done out of an expensive boat. For anglers wanting to head out somewhere close to home, most of the piers along the Eastern side of Port Phillip have been producing a few different species. Provided you take some light outfits and berley along, you can have a bit of fun.

The main species on offer using these methods will be; squid, bream, trevally, salmon, yakkas, garfish and couta. The bream fishing in the Patterson and Maribyrnong Rivers has been good over the last week with some nice fish being caught. Customer Peter fished the Patto using yabbies and scrubworms to catch a few bream to 32cm. Small 'shiner' style hooks fished on 4lb fluorocarbon and a split shot have been a very effective way to catch these fish.

Down at Mornington pier there have been a few light line options for anglers, with mullet, salmon, yakkas and couta all on the go. A slow release berley mix like the pier and jetty mix is vital for targeting these fish, if you want to catch more that just the odd one. Staff member Dylan fished from the pier during the week to collect some baits and caught yakkas, garfish, tommy rough and couta using this berley mixture, along with delicately weighted float set ups.

 

One thing most anglers have noticed over the last year or so has been the lack of garfish being caught from the piers and rockwalls. A lot of regular pier fisherman have pretty much given up on fishing for them, as numbers just didn't seem to be around. Good news though, as the last month has seen some reasonable numbers of gars starting to come back. While they are not thick around the piers yet, many snapper anglers have reported catching large gars in their berley trails while targeting snapper - with some of the gars have been 40cm or bigger. Fine grit berley and size 12 - 14 narrow gaped hooks have been their undoing, with small pieces of squid or pilchard.

 

Staff member Kozi has been out giving the gars and other bait species a hiding from the shore between Frankston and Mornington. Kozi has caught garfish, tommy rough, salmon, scad and couta recently using a fine berley trail and small baits of pilchard, squid, silverfish and whitebait. The most effective berley has been the 'Pier and Jetty mix' from Zealcol - which is fine enough to attract all species but not feed them, so that they are still attracted to your baits. The rocks at Mornington and Mt Eliza have been good for Kozi.

 

For anglers fishing the Southern end of Port Phillip Bay there have been a few different species on offer, with squid, whiting, salmon, tommy rough, barracouta and garfish available at the moment. The squid, couta and tommy rough have been the best this week though for the land based anglers fishing from Portsea and Sorrento piers.

James from Unreel Fishing Charters has also been fishing the area with customers and has found the fishing to be good for squid and whiting, with loads of couta around for anglers chasing fresh snapper baits. James has found that the couta have been thick enough in some spots that they are attacking his squid jigs, with Haramitsu in AK colour attracting both squid and couta.