Fishing Port Phillip Bay With Jack Auld

Plenty of quality snapper over most areas of Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne at the moment. I have been doing most of my snapper fishing out of Newport, Werribee South and fishing everywhere inbetween.

The most productive areas I have fished over the past week have been 5m of water off Rickets point and 10-12m of water from Black rock to Sandringham and along side the transit lane from T10 to T20 on both sides of the lane.

Also fish are starting to show up around Point Cook in 14m and deep off Werribee on the mud. The key to catching these tasty reds is using your electronics and sounding fish up. I won’t start snapper fishing until I at least sound up one arch then anchor and burley using cubes of pilchards. My best baits have been silver whiting, scad (yakka) and pilchards. First and last light has been the best time to fish or on a tide change.

There have also been some excellent catches of good sized flathead out of Portarlington in 12-18m with some 60+cm fish around and should only get better as the water temp in Port Phillip continues to rise. It’s hard to go past beer battered flathead tails after a big day on the water.

I have been using a double paternoster rig with 4/o circle hooks with small baits.

Calamari are also still around in great numbers best areas are Point cook in 4-8m and over all the broken weed grounds from Portarlington right up to Swan bay in the 4-10m artificial squid jigs in size 3 and 3.5 in green, red or orange in colour I’ve found the best. Also sliver whiting under a float has also been working well.

Until next week happy fishing & boating!

Jack Auld