When your favourite fishing time of year comes around, it’s not hard to get excited about it.

September is definitely a favourite on the Tweed River. Things with fins really start to wake up as the warming trend kicks in.

The water tends to warm up slightly and the fish sense this and the urge to feed spurs them to get moving.

The bass in the upper reaches of the river have generally completed the majority of their spawning and need to put on condition as they make their way back up the creeks.

The bream in the river start to move as well; heading away from the river mouths where they aggregated during the colder months for spawning. They are keen for a feed, as are most of the other species in the river.

If you find yourself in the right place on the river then you can experience some awesome fishing. Big flathead, the odd mangrove jack and good numbers of other species are just some of the things we can look forward to this month.

The river has been fishing reasonably well for jewies this year and September is also a cracking tine to target them on the beaches as well as in the river.

The deep rocky holes and the area in front of the Jack Evans Boat Harbour, along with the many bridges on the river are all good spots to target these prized fish.

The tide changes are the optimum times to get a bite. Make sure that you are on your chosen spot when this happens because this is when you will get 90% of your jewie bites.

September is also one of the best months for the Seriola family, with the deeper reefs off the Tweed prime places to target hard pulling kingfish, amberjack and samson.

I try to get most of my clients keen to head out jigging or live baiting for kingies to book around this month simply because the fish are generally around in really good numbers.

You can catch kingfish, samson and amberjack throughout the year in varying numbers but if you really want to catch plenty, this is the month to target them.

On one RU4REEL jigging charter last year we released 42 decent kings and a few more found the reef. The group jigging that day were quite happy when we eventually turned the bow of the big Steber towards the bar.

Kingfish are not the only species that turn it on in September; some of the bigger snapper are also caught this month.

The first of the current starts to kick in and it seems to fire up the quality snapper and they become quite aggressive.

Fishing the bottom in the current can be quite hard at times, and this is when floatlining really comes into its own.

As an example, we did a charter out to the 36-fathom reefs last September and were struggling to get bites on the bottom using normal paternoster rigs because the current was doing 2.5 knots.

After several drifts we changed over two of the rigs to running ball sinkers straight onto three-hook ganged pilchards. On the first drift both drops resulted in good-sized snapper.

After this all the clients fishing changed to floaters and we had a cracking session on the snapper. Even though the current later increased to 3 knots we were still able to fish successfully.

Obviously every year is slightly different and these fish may arrive a bit earlier or even a bit later but I am definitely looking forward to the start of September to head out wide in search of these brawlers.

The continental shelf has been fishing well when the weather has allowed us to get out there, with some good-sized bar cod, blue eye trevalla and bass groper making up the majority of the fish caught.

This should continue this month with the blue marlin and mahi mahi also starting to fire. The warmer mornings should make it easier to get on the water, too!