Port Phillip Fires

The 2001-2002 snapper season has been a phenomenon in terms of the quantity of snapper that have come into Port Phillip Bay. It began as a trickle of snapper in late September, but by mid-November the crimson tide was in full flood. Like one long pink ribbon, it ran anti-clockwise from Werribee to Altona, down along the eastern seaboard, past Sorrento and Queenscliff, and then outside Port Phillip Heads as far west as Torquay. Nobody can recall ever seeing a run of fish like it.

An example of this came from the results of the Snapper Point Angling Club's eighteenth annual Tea Tree Snapper Fishing Competition held in early November. A record-breaking 1157 anglers turned up on Melbourne Cup weekend to fish Western Port and Port Phillip Bay in the hope of hooking and weighing an early season red. More than 1000 snapper were weighed in, the highest ever fish-per-angler ratio. And many anglers bagged out, but were unable to weigh in their total catch due to competition restrictions.

During the Tea Tree competition, snapper in excess of 8kg were weighed in, but the vast majority of the fish caught were from 500g to 3kg. This reflects the general snapper fishing in Port Phillip Bay.

Pinkie is the common vernacular used for fish in this size range. Mind you, I can remember a time when anglers classed a pinkie as a snapper of about 500g to 1kg. The increased size range of snapper called pinkies has nothing to do with an increase in bigger snapper being caught. It's more a sort of piscatorial bracket creep.

Whatever you choose to call them, and I prefer snapper regardless of size, pinkies are widely acknowledged as being the optimum size for the table.

The reality of snapper fishing is that if you want big fish, say 5kg-plus, you head for water 18m or deeper. You won't catch as many fish, but then the fishing is more about quality than quantity.

However, if you want a feed, start over the rubble and reef grounds closer inshore. The fishing can be frenetic, like the night I fished in about 12m of water in Altona Bay recently with Chris Palastides, Andy Bounos and Spiros Foscolos. When we arrived about an hour before dark, there was an easterly wind blowing, which created a heavy chop. Conditions worsened later on when the tide changed and the current was running against the wind.

But the snapper were cooperative. We were using garfish, silver whiting and small barracouta baits. The methods were simple; there was no rocket science involved. Our rigs consisted of two 4/0 Suicide pattern hook leaders, one hook sliding to act as a keeper, and a pea-size ball sinker to help get the bait down. The reels were in gear and set horizontally to the water.

When the rod tip bowed over, you picked up the rod and waited. The second take was usually stronger, and at this stage, the hook was set. If you missed the fish, the bait was allowed to sink down again for a few minutes before being checked. Our baits were probably oversize in regards to the snapper we were catching. Most of the fish were about 1.5-3kg, but big baits sometimes translate into big fish. And using the larger baits meant we had a good chance of not losing it on the first bite.

Andy is a fishing nut, and he is the first angler I have come across who likes to comfort lift his snapper, rather than use the net or the gaff. Although I suspect that if the fish were larger and not so plentiful, the net would find a use.

This style of fishing is totally at odds with what I experienced at Queenscliff just a few days before. That time I was fishing with Mark Rushton, who was having a day off from his Bellarine Fishing Charter operation. We were in Mark's "budget boat" and dropped the kellick a couple of kilometres east of Shortland Bluff. It was an uncomfortable morning with a gusty sou-westerly wind pushing in from Bass Strait against a roaring ebb tide.

Conditions were choppy, and this wasn't helped during the first hour by rain showers that were belting through.

Fishing for snapper at Queenscliff is totally at odds with the top of the bay. Light lines and pea sinkers are replaced by heavy handlines, or rods spooled with braid, and snapper leads that start at about 250g and are changed to suit the tempo of the tidal stream during the course of the fishing. A 330g sinker is common in this environment.

On handlines, a 20kg leader of about 6m in length is used with a single 4/0-6/0 long shank pattern hook. This is attached to a swivel on the main line, which acts as a stopper for the sinker leader, which is about 1m long. The bait is thrown out and line is fed into the current for about 30m before the sinker is tossed out the stern. When a snapper is hooked, it is fighting the sinker as much as the angler. Despite this, hooking and landing the fish isn't always easy. The handline has to be held, and you need to feel for bites.

In the case of rods, hook size stays the same, but bait leader length is reduced to about a rod length and the sinker leader to about one-third of that to enable casting. Rods are fished in gear, and braid is used, as this enables the angler to work sinkers of less than half the weight needed with monofilament lines of the same breaking strain. Braid leaders are definitely out. Due in part to its finer diameter, braid has substantially less abrasion resistance than monofilament of similar breaking strain.

Baits at Queenscliff, which is heavy reef with kelp and many pickers, need to be resilient. Squid is favoured, while cuttlefish is also popular if you can get it.

Take the opportunity. In as far as snapper go in Port Phillip Bay, this season is about as good as it gets.