Whilst we haven’t been enjoying the best of weather lately, most days will give you a window of opportunity to have a fish.

The river offers shelter in nooks and crannies all the way along. The mulloway have been co-operating of late; it would seem we have a fresh school that entered early to mid June. The locals had a ball down in the estuary with good numbers boated, with quite a lot got double figure catches.

Size varied from 3-8kg, with blade style lures accounting for a big percentage of the catch. With fast moving tides the choice of larger 3oz blades were more effective in getting the lure down to the strike zone, with the mulloway hanging about 5-6m down in around 6-7m of water.

The retrieve with these blade style lures needs to be quite slow. If you imagine on a clock face 9 o’clock and 11 o’clock, you rise from 9 to 11 with your rod and wind your reel back down to 9 o’clock. Let the lure rest on the bottom for a second or so, in between retrieves. The lift of your rod doesn’t need to be fast or even jerky, as the technology in these new blade style lures creates an awesome vibration action; give them a try.

It was great to see another mulloway angler lose his V plates. Successful racehorse owner Daniel Deppeler caught his first mulloway on his favourite barra lure behind his purpose built trolling canoe, complete with electric motor and fish finder.

After a good long fight on 3.kg line, and being towed around the river, Daniel’s first ‘mully’ went a very healthy 5.5kg. Well done, another angler hooked with ‘mulloway madness’.

The school seems to have spread out and reports are coming in from the usual areas such as Taylors Straight, Dry Creek, Princess Margaret Rose Caves, Hutchessons Landing, McLennan’s Punt and Sapling Creek. Rain will be again the deciding factor to how long these mulloway will stay in the river; consistent rain should see them stay, massive downpours normally pushes them out of the system back into the sea. No one as yet has boated a big mulloway of 15-20kg, but if history is to repeat itself, we are still in for a chance of it happening.

The bream have been OK, not fantastic. They are very well spread out and again I can only suggest moving about and trying different spots. Target banks that have good drop offs and fish deeper water. Over winter a lot of bream are caught from the depth of 4-6m. Deeper diving lures, worm style plastics and good fresh baits such as crab, scrub worm and spew worms are the go.

Estuary perch are still providing excellent sport. The section of the river at present between Donovans Landing through to Sapling creek is the most prominent at the moment. Lures to try are Ecogear SX-40 or 48 or similar, smaller blade styles or minnow style plastics.

Best baits would be live gents, fresh minnow and fresh shrimp. I heard of a 55cm EP caught up around the Sandy Waterhole area mid-June, that’s a once-in-a-lifetime fish.

This year has been the best year I can remember on EP’s, they seem to have flourished over the last decade or so and we are seeing lots of juvenile fish right up to trophy size fish.

If you get onto a few, please think of the future. By all means keep a feed, but catch and release should be practised.

Call us on 08 87384011 for the latest reports, if I’m not available leave your number and I will call you back from the Nelson Pub.

Bream are good without being awesome – the trick is to get down deep enough to find them. Deep-fished hardbodied lures, soft plastics and baits will be the answer.