are travellys a top water species?

[Lecterfan]

From personal experience with both golden and giant trevors as well as silver trevs in Vic, I don't think the comparison is particularly useful (other than taxonomically). Silvers are not the same type of fish in terms of size and what not…as above, I've found many, many soft plastic patterns on an erratic soft-medium retrieve have been good on silvers… can't see them coming to the surface for poppers like the bigger relatives to…even in skinny water. Just my opinion. Can't help but agree with CarlG above though.

[rixter]

if this is the case why do people recommend float fishing for them?

I'm one of these people who have targeted them in the past with floats with good results ..but ...

I used to always target docklands around a few hundred meters away from the sports stadium, back before all the build up around there.

The current around there was pretty much always ziltch, and I would fish around the moored boats for bream also.

Only because of the boats and being close to the pier structures that I wouldn't fish the bottom , as most fish were always hanging around the bottom of the boats feeding of stuff stuck to the hulls of the boats ( usually around 1.5 m deep as I have mentioned before / for a lot of the larger boats ).
Keep an eye out for big old "dirty " looking moored boats , if the top is filthy and old looking , then good chance that so is the bottom of the boat, which will also be covered in crap that attracts fish to feed on.
Clean new boats will usually have nice clean bottom hulls and no fish hanging around them feeding, although there maybe just a few fish hanging around for some shaded shelter, but not really feeders .

If I was fishing a pier in the bay, or even around docklands/but not near any boats/or casting a fair way out, then I would probably just fish the bottom as there would be more structure and food down there. But when fishing close to moored boats there is a lot more fish hanging around mid depths feeding off the barnicles and stuff on the bottom of the boats, rather than them feeding of the bottom which they can anytime.

That's just my findings over the years, and has worked good for me. Just a bit of friendly advice, hope it may help you out a bit, GL

Cheers , Rick.

[cobby]

Caught hundreds on all sorts of soft and hard lures. Absolutely zero from the surface. It has to be possible. Them and pinkies are the only fish other than sharks in Westernport I haven't caught on surface