Now the Pedro column has itself “gone fishing”. 

Pedro, also known as Maurice Menhennet, will sign off on Friday.

Every Friday for about 40 years, Pedro advised Ballarat anglers where to go, what bait to use and what was biting. He told tales (tall and true) about who was catching what, and helped introduce a new generation to adopt the sport he has loved for so long.

No one would know for sure just how many columns Pedro wrote, but it was probably about 2000.

Curiously, he never typed one out himself.

“I’d write out some notes,” he said.

“We had many people coming in and helping type it up. I don’t type. I don’t even know how to use a computer. 

“And I make it my business not to know.

“I never kept any information (about the best fishing spots) back. 

“You have to give with your heart.

“What I can say is, if you see someone in a spot for a long time, it’s fair to assume they’re there because they’re getting some fish.”

Now that the Pedro ship has been moored safely away, now is a good time for a “Pedro’s Basket” of facts which regular readers may not know.

For example, why “Pedro”?

“My father was a very religious man,” Mr Menhennet said.

“’Pedro’ is from St Peter, who was a fisherman (before he became an apostle). We changed it to the Spanish (version).”

How did he start?

“I’ve been fishing a long time,” Mr Menhennet said. 

“I came off a dairy farm where all the time was taken with it. 

“I really hated cows because come the weekend you had to milk.

“I took up fishing to get away from the cows once a week. 

“My brother Jeffrey took me out to Burrumbeet. We were together in the boat and I seemed to be the only one getting the fish.”

What’s the best eating fish? 

“Whiting,” he declared. “You go out into Port Phillip Bay but you don’t go too far out. You fish at night about a couple of hundred metres out.”

And the best catching fish?

“Mulloway. It’s a clever fish.”

While the newspaper column may be in the process of being retired, Mr Menhennet has no intention of slowing down. 

He is considering whether to continue “blogging” Pedro on the internet, while continuing to run Mentay Steel Fab Constructions from his factory in Ballarat’s west, where his company builds some of the world’s most highly regarded turf management machines.

“I never played cricket, yet I’ve made the best cricket pitch rollers in the world,” Mr Menhennet said. “I’ve named my house Con Amore. It is a musical term which means ‘to play it with love’. That’s how I do everything in life.”