The entrance closed in early February, having stayed open a lot longer than in previous years. The fishing has been excellent with quality bream, luderick and flathead being caught in both the lake and the channel.

With the lake closed there is a bit more water over some of the sandbanks and these have been great areas to fish. You don’t have to go far from the ramp to catch fish and the area out in front of the pub has been a popular spot to target bream in particular. The luderick have been spread throughout the system but the better areas have been Bobs Bay and out the front of Mud Lake. Sandworm and local prawn have been the best baits.

The flathead have started to fire down in the channel with several big fish between 80-90cm caught in the past month or so. Hard-bodied lures and plastics have worked well, with live prawns accounting for a few fish as well. For some reason the flatties are really affected by water temperature and on the colder days they have been quiet. A couple of warm days seem to really crank them up again.

The big story to come out of the Bemm in the past few weeks has been the capture of a couple of small mulloway down in the channel. These fish have been around 3kg and have been caught on fresh prawn. There have been some big marks showing up on the sounder in the channel, so it would definitely be worth spending a night down in the channel fishing either live mullet, live prawns or fish fillets in the hope of catching a big jewie.

Last edition we weren’t sure if there would be any prawns this year and I’m pleased to report that they were pretty good over the new moon in February. With plenty of little ones locked in the system, if we don’t get too much rain in the coming months and the weather stays warm, we should still have reasonable prawning for the next couple of months.

For the surf fishers there has been some top action as well, with some good quality tailor and salmon caught at Pearl Point. Once again blue surf poppers have worked a treat, with a few fish also taking bluebait and pilchards. Last year, February and March were the hot months for gummy shark fishing, so I’m sure there will be plenty of people on the beach over the full moon in the coming months.

Don Cunningham with a great dusky flathead from the channel at Bemm River. The flatties seem to fire up after a spell of hot weather.