Melbourne Update
March in the Melbourne Fishcare group has been super-busy, with many kilometres travelled, but most importantly, lots of happy faces at our sessions! We managed to do 12 School/Community Clinics, 5 FishAbility Clinics locally. Ian Whiteside, the Melbourne Facilitator Joined forces with Mitch from Geelong and East Gippsland volunteers Rinie and Dearne at the Hooked-on Lake’s event where he spent the day showing hundreds of people how to rig their fishing rods to increase their luck on the water. Ian, only a few weeks later followed up doing the same thing at the Casey Fields Vicfish Kids events where he was the star of the show again reaching over one hundred people.
We have seen a variety of species caught – Australian Salmon, Yellowtail Scad (Yakka’s), Flathead, Southern Calamari, Silver Trevally, Fiddler Rays (Banjo Sharks), Skates, & Port Jackson Sharks, plus the inevitable but wonderful Toadfish, and LOTS of Pinky Snapper, with quite a few of those between 30cm and 40cm
One of the highlights was working alongside some of our wonderful WIRF Leaders on International Women’s Day on Wednesday the 8th of March. This which saw Ian travelling to Rye Pier for a 6am start, then off to an afternoon beach session in Bass, near Coronet Bay in Westernport. It was an amazing day and incredibly inspiring.
Looking forward, with Autumn well set in now, the oncoming colder weather will slow things up a little in the fishing department. This means the group will look inwards and start to focus on administrative tasks and incursions. With lots of planning, we are sure spring will be remarkably busy, with lots of enquiries for our services right across our region. We have some incredibly extraordinary events planned, including our first time at the fabulous Tidal Festival in San Remo in September. Ian has also been scoping out lots of Fishing Spots on his journeys, with future opportunities at Rye, Flinders, Hastings, Tooradin and more in the pipeline. Please stay tuned for details.
