Early Morning Lorne Pier

I had been staying with my parents Melbourne, and one evening, I got in contact with my old fishing buddy and he had planned a squid fishing trip in Lorne the following morning. He offered to pick me up at 4am the next morning for a 6am start. There was no way I was going to turn down a fishing trip even though it was now very late in the evening and I had only just got over the jetlag.



Snapper - Pagrus auratus



Snapper - Pagrus auratus

We arrived at the pier at about 6:30am and started fishing. He fished only squid jigs and I fished a squid jig on one rod and half a pilchard on the other. After a little while I caught the first fish, a nice 13" Snapper. I gave up on squid and just had 2 rods with pilchards and pipies. I caught a few more smaller snapper. 28cm is the legal limit here and caught a few just below as well.



Blue Weed-Whiting - Haletta semifasciata



King George Whiting - Sillaginodes punctatus

The next I caught a Smooth Toadfish. These are a pufferfish and have no fight in them at all. Then a Blue Weed Whiting, a close relative of the wrasse. It was a female, without the extreme blue colouring of the male. The final species of the day was a King George Whiting, a nice sized fish that I hadn’t caught for about 10 years.

I finished the day off on a larger snapper, probably about 15". My mate only managed a single female blue-throated wrasse and a smaller but legal snapper but no squid. We left by about 9:30am and returned more jetlagged than before.



Smooth Toadfish - Tetractenos glaber



Blue-throated Wrasse - Notolabrus tetricus
Although no new species were caught, I obtained photos of the two species of whiting, which I had caught before but never had a photo of. The pinkie snapper were quite fun to land, I didn’t remember how strong they were.