Fishing Port Phillip Bay With Jack Auld

Well it’s that time of year again down in Melbourne where the the days are longer and the sun is shining. This means one thing to Melbourne fishos…. SNAPPER! The annual run of Snapper into Port Phillip Bay is well under way and the snapper schools have spread out through the whole bay. The northern end of the bay is fishing slightly better than down the southern end of the bay. Port Melbourne, Williamstown, Black Rock and Altona are all firing when the conditions are right.

The water temperature has finally hit 16c and that is usually the trigger point where the snapper start to feed aggressively, so between now and Christmas it’s game on! Oh I love this time of year, sleep deprived nights from all the after work fishing trips to all night trips over the weekends – all in search of a big snapper. There have already been some ripper big fish landed. Tony Sacco landed a 9.2kg snapper out off Clifton Springs in Geelong a couple of weeks back and last week Darrin Cini also landed himself a 9.5kg fish off Altona, both trophy size fish. Well done guys.

To me, snapper fishing in Port Phillip Bay is all about the hunt.

Nothing better than getting out on your own away from all the boats and go sounding and hunting the snapper down. Some days I find myself watching my Furuno sounder for hours just to get a good feel of how many fish are in the area. When I find some feeding fish on the bottom, down goes my Lonestar electric anchor winch and berley in the form of chopped up pilchards is thrown into the water closely followed by some fresh baits. When the snapper are feeding, you usually don’t get all your rods in the water before the first one is screaming off with big head shakes and high speed runs. Good luck to everyone this season, we are in for yet another bumper season.