Werribee Galaxias

One of my goals on my holiday back to Melbourne was to fish my old local river, the Werribee River. It is a fairly short river which travels down from the Great Dividing Range just south of Daylesford. The river is home to quite a few species of fish. Natives include several species of galaxias, pygmy perch, lampreys, Shortfin Eels, Australian Smelt, Flathead Gudgeon and River Blackfish. There are a large number of introduced species as well including Carp, Goldfish, Tench, Redfin (European Perch), Roach, Mosquitofish and Brown Trout. Estuarine species occur just below the town of Werribee.



Common Galaxias - Galaxias maculatus

I had previously caught many of the above species, but my main targets were going to be the Tupong, Mosquitofish, Flathead Gudgeon and Spotted and Common Galaxias. These occur in the weirpool about a kilometre from where I used to live and are species that I do not have photos of. I collected some earthworms from the garden earlier on and the tactic would be to fish simple rigs, basically two handlines of 2lb mono. One with just a small splitshot, a size 14 hook with about half an earthworm or a grain of corn to target the bottom feeding fish and a waggler setup with an 18 hook and a microscopic piece of worm for the midlevel and surface feeders.



Common Galaxias - Galaxias maculatus

Within seconds of the waggler settling, it got dragged in. It took up to a dozen strikes to hook into a fish, and it was a 1” common galaxias, probably the smallest fish I had ever caught on hook and line. I found that I got more bites by moving the waggler, and caught a second common galaxias about double the length.



Common Galaxias - Galaxias maculatus

I didn’t catch anything on the bottom rig. I did lose baits a few times, but was unable to land anything.

I might have caught more species if I had stayed longer than half an hour but at least got a photo of a common galaxias. I would love to have caught a Spotted Galaxias. I have only ever caught one, but this was at the exact same swim I was fishing when I caught one many years ago. These guys look almost like a brown trout and will take dry flies like a brown trout as well. I will have to target the remaining species again the next time I am home.

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.

Hazelwood – Cichilds in Southern Australia

Ever since I was a quite young, I was fascinated by the fact that there were species of cichlids living in Victoria. I couldn’t believe that such colourful tropical species of fish could live in the temperate waters of Southern Australian. I originally learnt about them when I borrowed a field guide of freshwater fish of Victoria. On closer inspection, I found that they all occur in the same location in Victoria, and that was a cooling pond for the Hazelwood Powerstation in the LaTrobe valley, where the temperature remains around 26 degrees all year round.


They led to years of wanting to fish this water, but I never got around to doing it. Having lived in London for about 7 years now, I had almost forgotten about them. I hadn’t gone back home of about 4 years and planned a trip Melbourne. During the trip planning process, I open up my freshwater fish of Australia book and found them in the introduced fish section at the back, and my mind was set, this time, on this trip, I would target the cichlids.

Hazelwood is about two and a half hours drives from Melbourne towards the east. As I arrived, the sun was out which was lovely but there was a steady wind of about 20kph. The spot I decided to fish had a few little breakwaters which allowed me to fish into a lea bank. I still got splashed a lot from the waves generated by the winds, but it was quite find because the water was a nice 25 degrees. The water was extremely silty so I couldn't see any fish and wasn't even sure they were there.



Red Devil - Amphilophus labiatus #136


Red Devil - Amphilophus labiatus


Red Devil - Amphilophus labiatus


I rigged up a waggler with a size 16 hook baited with sweet corn. I slowly moved around and caught my first fish, a handsome looking yellow fish and jet black eyes. This was a Red Devil [#136]. Apparently all Australian Red Devils are a Hybrid between A. labiatus and A. citrinellus, but I will just count them as A. labiatus as it’s pretty hard to distinguish them anyway. The next few fish were dark fish, with a yellowish body, red breast, ‘tiger’ stripes and a black tail spot. I originally thought these were Tilapia, but found that they are actually naturally coloured red devils. I ended catching these little devils in a whole rainbow of colours from the naturals, greenish, yellow, orange, red and pink with the largest fish about 5”.



Red Devil - Amphilophus labiatus



Red Devil - Amphilophus labiatus



Red Devil - Amphilophus labiatus


Whilst fishing for the devils, decided to fish tight into the margin to see if I could catch anything different and it worked, I hooked into a more cylindrically shaped fish, with a ‘roman’ nose and electric blue stripes. To me, it was a typical shape Psuedotrpheus, also known as Mbuna. I caught several of these, and each had a slightly different shaped nose and body even tending towards the genus Labeotropheus. I’ve decided that it is going to be impossible to identify this fish and to assign in my books as a Psuedotrpheus hybrid [#137]. What I will do with hybrids is that they count as a different species until I catch one of the parents.




Zebra Mbuna hybrid - Pseudotropheus zebra x 'Hazelwood' #137



Zebra Mbuna hybrid - Pseudotropheus zebra x 'Hazelwood'



Zebra Mbuna hybrid - Pseudotropheus zebra x 'Hazelwood'



Zebra Mbuna hybrid - Pseudotropheus zebra x 'Hazelwood'



Zebra Mbuna hybrid - Pseudotropheus zebra x 'Hazelwood'


It was a joy to fish here but the plan was to drive up to Mount Baw Baw for a late lunch so I had to pack up. It was hard to leave even though the fish were not of any size, they so colourful, it felt like a dream. If you had just stumbled on this page and you would have thought that I was fishing in the tropics some where, or even the Rift Valley. I was hoping for a few more species, Tilapia, Convicts and maybe Firemouths, but maybe next time.

San Francisco Surfperch deja vu

I had fished the Municipal Pier for the past few days and so far, the best bait had been prawns, so I went down to chinatown and got some more prawns and headed to the pier. The first drop resulted in a Walleye Surfperch. It was slightly larger the than previous one, but as with a few days before was the only Walleye Surfperch for the day.




Walleye Surfperch - Hyperprosopon argenteum




Walleye Surfperch - Hyperprosopon argenteum




Walleye Surfperch - Hyperprosopon argenteum


Just like the previous time, I fished a few hours trying to catch something different through the numerous Shiner Perch. I even had a few double headers.




Shiner Perch - Cymatogaster aggregata




Shiner Perch - Cymatogaster aggregata




Shiner Perch - Cymatogaster aggregata




Shiner Perch - Cymatogaster aggregata

I had lost the will to fish and as the light dimmed, I caught something different. It least it wasn't a Kelp Greenling. In fact, I had no idea what it was. It was like a goby or a blenny, but it had teeth and kept trying to sink them into my hand. This was later identified as a Onespot Fringehead [#135].




Onespot Fringehead - Neoclinus uninotatus #135




Onespot Fringehead - Neoclinus uninotatus




Onespot Fringehead - Neoclinus uninotatus

This concludes my fishing for 2011. I had brought my total up to 135 species with 37 species for the year and 20 of them being new species. Couldn't beat last years record of 54 species with 34 new species. There's always next year.

San Francisco Surfperches and a Greenling

After a whole session catching pretty much nothing but Rockfish, I decided to change the bait in the hope of getting something different. I was staying quite close to chinatown and was able to get a whole pack of prawns quite cheaply and headed straight to the Pier.

On the very first drop, and I really hooked into a decent fish and after a short battle, I landed a nice Surfperch. It was pretty much a bar of silver and with the light certain at angles, there we about a dozen black bars across the top of the body. It also had pretty prominent black tips to the pelvic fins and big eyes. These led me to identify this species as a Walleye Surfperch [#132]. My first surfperch. Although they don't look like wrasse or cichlids, these are the Surfperches nearest relatives.




Walleye Surfperch - Hyperprosopon argenteum #132




Walleye Surfperch - Hyperprosopon argenteum




Walleye Surfperch - Hyperprosopon argenteum


Next I had a smaller fish on, but again, pretty much a non-descript perch like silver fish. This time, with the right light, it had yellowish marks on the front part of its body. It had yellowish fins. A Shiner Perch [#133], another species of surfperch. These were what I saw the anglers were catching a few days earlier. They became a nuisance. I kept catching them and a lot of them were very small down to about 2". A few of them had parasitic isopods in their gills. I also started catching a few Dungeness Crabs as well.




Shiner Perch - Cymatogaster aggregata #133




Shiner Perch - Cymatogaster aggregata




Elthusa californica





Dungeness Crab - Metacarcinus magister

Later on, I got bored of catching shiners so I walked further up the pier and caught a really colourful female Kelp Greenling [#134]. The males are black and were thought to be of a different species when first discovered. This is the second species of Greenling I had caught, the other being the Fat Greenling caught in Japan. A few of the anglers had watched me land this and they were extremely disappointed that I released it to fight another day! The thing was that they weren't catching anything at all.




Kelp Greenling - Hexagrammos decagrammus #134




Kelp Greenling - Hexagrammos decagrammus


The next day, I can down to the pier in the evening with some squid from a wet fish market in chinatown. This bait didn't go down very well all I caught a boat load of dungeness crab.




Dungeness Crab - Metacarcinus magister




Dungeness Crab - Metacarcinus magister

San Francisco Rockfish

I knew that I was going to be in San Francisco for about a week but hadn't done enough preparation for the trip. I thought that I'd end up fishing on a charter boat but when I got there, it seemed that it was the end of the season and it was very difficult for me to book any of the trips. Whenever I go to anywhere new to fish, I usually check out the piers, jetties or beaches to see if people fish and how. On my first day, I walked up and down the Embarcadero and found the Municipal Pier. A few people were fishing here, and only saw a few smaller silver fish being caught, suspecting that they were surf perch of some sort. On the way back, I stumbled upon Pier 7 as well, but didn't see anybody catching anything here.




Brown Rockfish - Sebastes auriculatus #130




The Bait - Californian Anchovy - Engraulis mordax


The next day, a found a tackle shop to try and get a permit, bait and some tackle and found that you don't need a permit to fish the Municipal Pier, so I bought my bait and headed down to the Pier on a tram. The pier is quite a long curved pier. I notice that most of the fish caught were on the first few pegs on the right side so I settled on one of those. I had bought some Anchovies and some Shrimp (they looked like the Brown Shrimp of British waters). I put on some anchovies and within a few minutes had a nice and spiky rockfish on the end of my line. Whenever I see rockfish, I think of a Grouper or a Perch and not a scorpionfish. In fact, I read studies based on DNA that may prove that Scorpionfish, Groupers and Perch are more closely related to each other than other Perciformes, eg Wrasses or Gobies etc. I identified these as Brown Rockfish, species [#130], when I got back to the hotel. The most prominent feature is the black mark on its cheek




Brown Rockfish - Sebastes auriculatus




Brown Rockfish - Sebastes auriculatus

They came out in an array of colours and sizes, but all had the same black marking on its opercule. I caught loads of Rockfish and they were a lot of fun to catch.




Brown Rockfish - Sebastes auriculatus

Brown Rockfish - Sebastes auriculatus

A few times, I hooked into some dead weight but had nothing on the end of the line when it came to the surface. This happened a few times before I landed a nice little Dungeness Crab. Soon after, I hooked into another species of crab which I later identified as a Pacific Rock Crab.




Dungeness Crab - Metacarcinus magister





Pacific Rock Crab - Romaleon antennarium


I caught a few more Rockfish after that and on the very last cast of the day, after the light had started to fade, I caught a little goby which I identified as a blackeye goby bringing my life list up to [#131]. I was quite suprised that all I caught were Rockfish after seeing so many silver fish being caught the previous day but I still had a few days to target them.




Brown Rockfish - Sebastes auriculatus




Blackeye Goby - Rhinogobiops nicholsii #131




Blackeye Goby - Rhinogobiops nicholsii




Blackeye Goby - Rhinogobiops nicholsii