Fishing

Any keen anglers in here?

Picked up a cheap tinny last weekend despite having no idea how to actually fish! Any recommendations on quite boat ramps to launch from? I’ve driven plenty of boats before but never a solo launch.

Anyone got any good offshore spots in Port Phillip and Western Port they can suggest to head off to first?

Any good island lakes and river spots good to fish at?

Just don’t back your trailer off the end of the ramp! Have seen it happen, car went with it. Can’t help you with locations as I’m in Qld. Hope your thread goes better than the boat thread I started years ago, sunk in record time :laughing:

Love my fishing. But in SA
I’m very much a “hate metro, give me a nice quiet beach and I’m a happy man” type of fisher person
Hate busy, overcrowded. Too many d1ckheads

I have a nice spot here in SA, that is relatively quiet and can easily beach launch a small tinny

Where do you live?

If you don’t know much about fishing then possibly the easiest thing which will pretty much guarantee catching a few fish would be drifting for flatties.

If you launched at Werribee South and headed north towards Pt Cook, or from Altona and went south towards point cook, you can drift almost anywhere. (Free launching nowadays). If there’s a breeze that’s more than light, you will want to put a small conical drogue ($20 from BCF at a guess) out the side. Hang the drogue say 4 m out on rope attached off whatever attachment you have about the middle of the side of the boat, on the side you want to fish from. Have two rods set up with two hook paternoster rigs (you can look up how to tie your own or use bought whiting snatchers or snapper snatchers), with the hook tipped with a small squid strip. One calamari tube will keep you in small strips drifting for hours, and for this stuff can be refrozen if not used. Don’t try thread the squid all over the hook. You just nip the hook point through one end of a strip that’s about 6 mm wide and 4 cm long (remove skin before cutting into strips), and it hangs straight off the hook-bend and wafts around as you drift. This works off the snatcher rigs or off a bare semi-circle hook. I just use gamakatsu size 6 or black magic KL size 1/0 semi circles. They are small enough to get whiting, but because they almost always hook fish right in the corner of the mouth are also fine for flathead of any size.

Just lower these until the sinker hits bottom and let out a few more m and put them in a rod holder and watch.

Some use very thin line but 12 lb is fine for flathead and whiting. Very thin line can twist etc - and loses gear on light weed.

Try a few drift areas but you should get a feed of flathead if you persist anywhere from a few hundred m to a km or so offshore. If there’s even the lightest weed you can also get squid. You can either cast and retrieve a squid jig or even easier, tie a single hook paternoster rig on another rod with a short (4-8 inch) dropper and instead of a normal fish hook, just tie on a squid jig with the sinker below so that when the sinker hits the bottom the jig is about 50 cm above the sea floor and always drifts at that depth.

Don’t drift over reef patches or you will just bust off.

With the bought snatcher rigs which have semi-circle hooks (or the bare semi circle hooks mentioned), you don’t need to hold the rod, just wait till they load up and reel in your flat head or whatever… same with the ‘sleeper’ squid jig paternoster.

You can but fancy gear but honestly a $40 combo from Kmart with 12 lb line will work just as well.

Flush your engine with fresh water every time you get home it it will rot out!

Only go out on the bay if there is very light wind and preferably off shore direction (W, NW or N for that part of the Bay). Any white caps/chop visible - you should not be out.

In western port where the tides are fast any wind-against-tide can make it very treacherous, and can happen in minutes as the tide turns from wind-with-tide.

At the ramp, get everything ready before you occupy a lane. People get ■■■■■■ off if you hold everyone up by undoing straps, putting bung in etc which you can do out of the immediate launch area.

Good luck.

These were from the Werribee side near Point Cook almost exactly a year ago. It’s sand bottom with some areas of very light weed - got one squid as shown. If you get a few squid you can eat most and keep one for bait - and never buy bait for this simple flatty drifting!

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My eliza for squid is always a fun trip

The cheapest and best entertainment one can have is going to down to a popular boat ramp on a hot summers day, set up a deck chair and watch the chaos unfold. It’s glorious.

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I have learnt more in your post than 10 years of fishing with my Dad! Thank you.

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Try this.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&mid=13DjvKTismbLSkfUKLz3a5sHhRS0&ll=-38.22161706638905%2C144.95180750000003&z=10

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Haha

If it is not too much trouble, can you send a pic of the squid hook setup you are talking about. You just hook one small part through and just let it dangle?

It’s called a hang bait. Don’t thread it around the hook. You want a fish to see this wormy thing, come up behind and suck it in. With the semi circle hooks you DON’T strike. You let the fish turn and hook themselves. A strike might pull the hook clear at a nibble, but the hook up rate is excellent if you just wait until the rod is bucking.

When drifting or in current the dropper will hang back off the main line. In heavy current (western port) whiting guys use a very long dropper and usually a single only to avoid tangles - a 1 m dropper about 50 cm off the heavy sinker. The bait will be up off the sea floor despite the dropper being longer than the main line to the sinker, in strong enough current. For slow current or slow drifting, 20-30 cm droppers about 40 cm apart and with the lower dropper 40 cm above the sinker works for me.

Snapper/whiting snatchers have shorter droppers than that (2 dressed hooks in each rig, each hook on maybe a 3-4 inch dropper). But they are expensive compared to tying your own rigs.

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PS A lot of whiting guys put on half a pipi and then a squid strip to lock it on, on a semi circle.

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Awesome thank you