The holiday season is here with us again and it’s shaping up to be a bumper fishing time with good catches of fish being reported all round the area.

I have had very few reports from the surf beaches, as it seems that everyone is out chasing snapper and whiting. Woolamai, Williamson’s and Baxter’s Beach have all been reasonable with salmon up to 2kg being caught on the top of the tide. Bluebait, whitebait and squid strips being the best baits.

Below the bridge, outside The Entrance on the 50m line, the makos have started showing up with several reported captures in the 30-40kg range. There are also some very large barracouta being caught along with arrow squid while drifting for makos. Cleeland’s Bight is fishing well with snapper to 4kg and whiting to 40cm plus.

Well, what can I say? So far it’s been the best season that I can remember for both whiting and snapper in Western Port. The hot spots for snapper have been Lysharts, Hastings, The Corals, Silverleaves, Rhyll, Elisabeth island, Corinella just to name a few. For whiting the hot spots are Dickie’s Bay, Cleeland’s Bight, Tortoise Head, Middle Spit and Tyabb Bank.

Most of the snapper have been in the 2-4kg range, whereas the whiting have been in two basic sizes - small ones of 26-31cm and big ones of 38-44cm.

I have had no trouble catching a bag limit each trip and returning anything smaller that 38cm – that’s how good the season has been so far.

With snapper, I don’t believe in catch and release unless they are lip hooked.

Any fish that is gut hooked should be kept regardless of size as many fishos out there try to size up on their fish, not realizing that most of the gut hooked fish will die which is a waste of a valuable resource.

So just catch your three snapper and go home and then maybe chase something else. This way there will be plenty there to catch next year.

There are still some big squid about off Flinders and Cat Bay, Somers, Flinders and Shoreham areas are producing some reasonable catches of 40cm plus whiting.

And for all the lucky people on holiday looking for a feed of fish remember the golden rule – fish early or fish late, use fresh bait and you will always get a feed.

Eight-year-old Josh Spurrell caught his first snapper on one of his dads rods on an old 8lb line.