The garfish are here and anglers are excited! These tasty and fun-to-catch fish are a great target species for all levels of fishing experience, and best of all they are easily found from most of the Eastern side of the bay. While rougher and rainy days over the weekend aren’t ideal for the gars, you will still be able to find them in the small sheltered coves out of the rougher water.

Customer Angelo has been catching some nice gars from the piers at Mordialloc and Beaumaris. A sure sign that the gars are about are the crowds and sea of floats and slick water from the berley trails. Speaking of berley, fine grain berley mixtures like the Stimulate fine mix are the best form of berley for the gars, especially when made into the consistency of wet sand. Maggots and silverfish have been the best baits for Angelo.

Staff member Don has been catching garfish with his son down at Frankston. Frankston pier has been busy with anglers after the gars but they take a bit of trial and error to really get the pattern right. One of these small parts is modifying your bait depth. On this occasion Don found that deep set baits about 1.5m were the most effective. Small pieces of squashed banana prawn was his bait of choice.

Staff member Dylan has also been making the most of the prolific garfish action around the bay. With great weather conditions earlier in the week, the piers were packed so a shuffle on to the rocks near Mornington provided some casting room. With a berley mix consisting of Stimulate fine grit and freeze-dried pilchard the gars soon turned up. With a stronger than expected onshore wind the berley wasn’t going out far and the fish were right in shallow. Fishing shallow around the rocks meant a short bait depth was the key, with maggots doing the job before the sun dropped and the bigger predators like pinkies came through.