Fishing Victoria Forum

The winning fish weighed 105 kgs. There were others weighed that were heavier, but the teams were not in the comp. One fish of around 124 kgs. Over the weekend, around 7 barrels were caught on Sat and one on Sunday that was disqualified as it was caught out of Port Fairy near Julia Percy Island.

Sounds like some very nice fish were caught :thumbsup:

Great fish
Well done to the crews that got onto them.

The previous weekend a guy bought a stabi craft the day before and caught a tuna that weighed 107 kg. He was not in the comp. Whilst at the boat wash got talking to another bloke who helped a solo angler catch his fish. He hopped out his boat to drive the other boat for 2 hours this fish weighed around 120 kg. Again he was not in the comp. As well Baggedout fishing charters had a 3 way hook up and lost 2 fairly quickly and the other after a 2 hour battle.


On Sat a group of young fellas had a 4 way hook up and landed 2. Both heavier than 100 kgs. Sadly they were not in the comp. Baggedout weighed a barrel on Sat and the winning fish was caught by a boat that had Peter Pakula on board.

I will post some photos of the fish later on.

Nice. Looking forward to seeing the pics :thumbsup:

Just saw a report of a 140+kg fish caught by a 12yr old, pending record too.
Looks like another bumper tuna season coming up.

So is portland better or portfairy?

Bayrock wrote:Just saw a report of a 140+kg fish caught by a 12yr old, pending record too.
Looks like another bumper tuna season coming up.

That was out of Warranabool.

smile0784 wrote:So is portland better or portfairy?

It would appear that the majority of the barrels were caught towards Julia Percy Island, so launching at Port Fairy is a possibility.

There as some bait activity about 5-10 ks west of Julia Percy, but every time it rose and the birds were on it, about 6 or more boats would descend like seagulls to chips.

One technique was to motor up and then drift casting lures into the bait ball, but as soon as you got too close it would go down.

Peter Pakula reckons that turning off the sounder helps as leaving the sounder on drives the fish down. The theory is that because fish have very an sensitive lateral lines, they detect the pulse from the sounder.

An example he gave is that the Horse shoe use to fire on a regular basis, but hasn't done so for a number of years, as boat operators were using like 2 kilowatt transducers. He also said that up north in the game fishing scene there are reefs now devoid of bait fish, as they were very regularly sounded over.

Wolly Bugger wrote:

Bayrock wrote:Just saw a report of a 140+kg fish caught by a 12yr old, pending record too.
Looks like another bumper tuna season coming up.

That was out of Warranabool.

That's right, I mean over that area of the coast looks like another great season coming up