Around the Bay - Wednesday, April 12, 2023

with Jim’s Bait and Tackle

A FEW things are guaranteed to occur, life will always come with death and taxes. And a long weekend on Phillip Island will always come with wind or rain or if you’re really lucky, both! 

For those who aren’t into fishing or the competitive nature of a fishing competition then you may not be aware of another occurrence that happens. 

The weeks even the days that lead up to a fishing competition the reports are so fruitful you would think we are reading the menu at a fish market.

The numbers are plentiful, the species are varied and the sizes, well let’s just say they aren’t exaggerated. But around comes the weekend, everyone is excited for the fishing competition. 

This weekend just gone we ran our seventh annual Easter fishing Comp for the Good Friday appeal, which was run over the four days of Easter. 

Although the weather wasn’t favourable and the ramps for most of the weekend remained partially empty, the window for fishing, Friday was wide open. 

A lot of the fish we weighed for the weekend came from Good Friday which as usual turned out to be much better than expected. 

Light winds, a little drizzly, overcast and flat water, the good cocktail for fishing, but as per previously stated the larger fish we were seeing the week before had disappeared. 

The comp began at 6am Good Friday and up until about 3pm that day, the largest fish we had weighed was a 190g whiting. 

The good thing about running a fishing comp is that there is a larger amount of people on the water covering a larger area. 

A lot of the entrants went out the front chasing the tuna/kingfish to win the major prize, but we only saw two all weekend, yes two! 

The majority of reports from the comp were whiting, which dominated, only a very small handful were over the 500g size though, a lot falling in the 300g category. 

This year due to some extra generous donations we were able to offer the open category of heaviest snapper, which brought in a nice early red weighing over the 3kg mark from the top of the bay. 

One of the main things from the weekend was the majority of fish weighed were by our junior and small fry categories… it’s always good to see the kids coming up to weigh their fish and grabbing their catch out of the esky themselves without mum and dads help. 

Not as many calamari as we would normally see in our competition being weighed, but the largest, going just over 1kg was one of the few caught. 

Overall, the number of fish that were weighed for the quality of the fishing days was still positive. As murphies law states, we will be back to seeing the big fish next week. 

Despite the above, we had record entries and because of the generosity of everyone involved, those fishing and especially  sponsors, donated a record amount for the weekend of $3675, taking our total to over $20,000 since we started the comp. 

With the school holidays the next two weeks, we are hoping the weather improves slightly so more people can get out and get some fish. 

The water temperature is dropping so we will start to see a changeover in the fish that are around and hopefully the larger 3kg plus salmon the guys are seeing offshore start moving in as the reports from the beaches have been very slow. 

We will of course see some of the rubbish fish move in but the pay off is the table species that will be caught are generally very healthy and in good condition with their winter fat layers making them well worth the effort of heading out for a fish. 

Mel has now finished up in preparation for the impending birth of her first child and the next stages in her family’s life, but she won’t be far and no doubt will show up on our Facebook posts from time to time and we will wait and see what the spring brings if she is to return. 

I will continue the normal shop hours until the end of April then I will go into our reduced winter hours and closing during the week. 

For news on shop hours, competitions and auctions just keep an eye on our Facebook page and fishing reports.