# Corio Bay - Limeburners Bay - 12 March



## Garfish (Jun 2, 2006)

Poor conditions presented themselves on Monday but with the promise of winds easing off in the arvo - I headed out to Geelong for a yak and a fish. Well, the easing off that was promised didn't eventuate so I opted for the sheltered conditions of Limeburners Bay. The result was 15 undersize whiting from 20cm to 25cm and a decent size mullet that also went back to fight another day. 3 hours in the cold wind wearing shorts was enough for me though, so I headed in.

I didn't see another boat on the bay all afternoon.

Question - as I'm new to this, do most people anchor and fish, or drift and fish ? Also, how do you fish the soft plastics on the drift, and from anchor? I'm interested in these unweighted sandworm plastics that everyone seems to be casting out and letting sit.

I'm keen to start as it's a hell of a lot easier than holding the bait container between your knees as your bait's stripped every 5 seconds. I'm also keen to drift so I can cover some ground, as I really don't know where the spots are having fished from jetties all my life.


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## RedPhoenix (Jun 13, 2006)

Unfortunately, due to the change in ownership of this web site and the lack of response by the owners to my requests to remove my email address from all administrative-level notifications and functionality, I have decided to remove my posts on AKFF. Thank you for the great times, the fantastic learning experiences and the many many fish. If you are desperate for the old content of this particular post, it is available below base64 encoded and bzip2 compressed.

Red.

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## DiveYak (Feb 5, 2007)

Garfish,

I am new to the whole yak fishing thing as well. HAd my best day 1st time out and I trolled. Have done so most of the time since and all my fish have come from this. I should give the old bottom bounce a go again I suppose!

Good luck out there.


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## PeterJ (Aug 29, 2005)

Garfish with the worms and drifting it's texas rigging i use for that. 
Texas Rig. 
The other is the Carolina Rig which is my favored rig for presenting and unweighted bait. It's more weed resistant.Carolina Rig

problem with both is the speed of the drift to fast and it's useless , to slow it's the same.
Using a drift or drogue anchor works in that instance, although i'm toying with a lighter weight that drags the bottom and puffs up the bottom to arouse fish, dunno if it will work or not.


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## AdrianK (May 30, 2006)

drift, though sometimes with a drift chute to slow down, but not stop the drift.


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## Y-Knot (Sep 26, 2006)

G'day Garfish...good effort on all the whiting, you must be working your way up to the bigger fellas sometime soon.

As for SP's of which im fairly new too, my experience has been if they are in the water and your drifting thats quite often been all thats needed to hook up. when its quiet i do the cast, let it sink then couple of jigs,wind in a bit (trying to keep pressure on line to feel bites) and so forth. BUT when the fish are biting its common for SP to take a hit while its simple drifting and im concertrating on another line...i have had good success both jigging and drifting.I try to keep drift as slow as possible using drag-net and if thats not enough i toss in the 3Kg dumbell as well.

another thing, i just got onto google earth and had a peak at the couple of place i like to frequent and it is full on amazing.you can actually see the reef system, how far it extends etc. So if you are able to get onto this, check out your areas you fish and you may be pleasently surprised. 
I dont have fishfinders or anything but i had a couple of decent AKFF'ers :wink: 8) put me onto a couple of reefs and the rest was really up to me.

Good luck mate and would like to hook up sometime out your way, havent caught a whiting ever and would like to have a go.


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## PeterJ (Aug 29, 2005)

Garfish , do you mean limeburners near the grammar school or the place thats called the limeburners boat ramp is near alcoa.


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## Garfish (Jun 2, 2006)

Cheers everyone - some great advice there! Members on this forum must be sick of SP questions by now.

Y-Knot: I joined a mate of mine on his boat out at Phillip Island on Saturday last weekend where we took 6 whiting from 35 to 40cm. They are just complete muscle, and put up an awesome fight. Obviously the fish from the yak were more satisfying though  If you're after a decent size whiting this time of year, I would try off Rhyll or San Remo. I'm far from an expert on exact locations though.

I'm hooked on google earth for fishing. I'm yet to coordinate it with my GPS, but I certainly will when going out in to deeper water, looking for a patch of reef.


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## PeterJ (Aug 29, 2005)

What side of the bay was it alcoa side or grammar school side :?:


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## Garfish (Jun 2, 2006)

Fishing in the channel, not far from the refinery pier, in the grammar school lagoon.

Usually a good spot for the odd big flathead, and snotty trevally. Garfish and pinkies are also a common catch.


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## PeterJ (Aug 29, 2005)

Yeah nice spot. I wasn't trying to get your spot outa you , just picture where you were. 
Don't forget about the 6+ kilo snapper that frequent the area in winter, they seemed to love the warm water in the area coming from the refinery.

I used to drift in the boat over there and pull grass whiting for something to do when things got boring, over near the sand spit.
There are so many good big snapper spots around there it won't be long till you get a monster. I may have to join you.

Just my Corio map, notice there is no oyster beds on it.


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## Y-Knot (Sep 26, 2006)

Gee thats a lot of snapper marks for the small bay. fair dinkum 6Kg fish over winter...i'll keep that in mind.


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## Garfish (Jun 2, 2006)

I'm always hoping for the big snapper in grammar school lagoon, but it's yet to happen for me. I remember going to a presentation from geoff wilson at the ballarat fishing club where he spoke extensively about the big snapper he used to catch from the spit, casting out. Pictures showed these fish to be 6kg plus.

Going back to the late 90s, i think there was a push for the lagoon to become a marine park. It's a beautiful little spot though, which sees very little fishing.

I caught my biggest flathead (55cm) there a couple of years back from an inflatable boat that my brother and I took out. I threw it in to the boat (6 lbs line, no leader) and it's spines popped it... so here we were motoring back in a sinking boat much to the amusement of fisherman from the bank.


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## PeterJ (Aug 29, 2005)

yep, 6 kilo+.
It's a great place to fish.

Places like the school lagoon channel is about 20 mtrs from shore, easy to anchor up near the sand spit with the yak and launching is 20 mtrs away. It was once the place you were most likely to bag a 12 kilo fish. The sizes have gotten smaller though over the years.

The nth shore rocks can be fished from shore and the is a beach right next to it , easy again to launch the yak. This is right next to Corio Quay , another big snapper spot.
Seriously, the good spots are everywhere and within very easy yak reach.

When you look at the bay in Google there are really two deepwater entrances to the inner bay. Main sth channel and the area up near the old nth channel and bird rock. They are the highways and once they get in there they swim around in circles for a while then have to go back out the same way they came in.

Every spot marked on the map at some stage we have fished in the few years before getting into yak fishing.We got fish at all of the spots, some bigger than others.


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## Clarkos (Oct 11, 2006)

Thanks for posting up the map Pete. I've had to visit our salt business down there a few times, and have wondered what the fishing was like. last time I went (when victoria was on fire) I took a little travel rod down, but couldn't find anything out of the galeforce winds that were blowing.

I'll be prepared next time.


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