A hot topic among anglers over the past eight months is if all this rain, and the good flush all the rivers have had, will be good for angling prospects?

Well, it’s getting to the stage of fishers being sick of waiting for that to happen and for the rivers and inshore areas to clear.

Heavy inland flooding in central Victoria during January flowed into the Mt Emu Creek and Hopkins River basins producing water levels not seen since the 1940s. Nevertheless, despite the dirty plumes of water extending along the coast from the majority of local river systems, there has been plenty of interesting captures to keep anglers happy.

The Hopkins has provided bait anglers with some good captures of bream, which have appeared in some unusual places. Good fish have been taken from beaches either side of the Hopkins mouth as well as the Warrnambool Harbour area.

The dirty water has also attracted a couple of good-sized snapper around 3-4kg for some lucky anglers fishing the Warrnambool breakwater. The breakwater is generally good for pinkies to 40cm at this time of year, but rarely anything bigger.

The Moyne River has produced some good bream along the rock walls that have moved down from the lake upstream.

Given the fairly ordinary summer so far, it has been good to see and hear many yellowtail kingfish encounters and captures along the coast. Kings have been taken from a number of usual locations, such as the Killarney/Basin area and the Crags west of Port Fairy, as well as popping up in unexpected places surprising unsuspecting anglers who were not prepared for such a vigorous encounter.

Most of the fish have been at the smaller end of the scale from 3-6kg, but they are still great fun. March is still usually a good time to target kingfish locally and hopefully the fish stay around and we get some favourable conditions to target these hard fighting, and fine tasting fish.

On the other local game species, game sharks have been fairly quiet as much due to poor weather conditions than anything else. A few makos have been captured ranging from small 10kg specimens’ to some serious beasts that should only be tangled with by well-prepared crews.

Come March hopefully we will have some extended periods of good weather essential for spending the time offshore needed to ensure a shark finds your berley trail.

With little opportunity for anglers to head out deep with any degree of frequency there has been no tuna reports yet.

The end of March should hopefully see the first captures of these fantastic sportsfish coming to local ports.