I'm sure most people have noticed that we have had the decade’s most horrible weather recently making any decent fishing reports very scarce.

The problem with South Gippsland other than 100kmh+ winds has been the amount of water around.

All the rain coming down Bruthen Creek has made McLoughlins very dirty for the past three weeks. I don’t need to tell anyone how tough this has made the fishing.

With the dirty water and cold conditions, the water temperature has dropped to a ridiculous temperature. You would think we were in Antarctica.

Now for the positives.

There has been the odd nice day thrown in amongst all the horrible weather, so there has been at least some fishable days. Its tough fishing like I said earlier however there have been lots of small salmon around. They have mostly been pretty small around 20-30cm and it seems all the dirty water have pushed all those huge salmon that were around out wide or at least out of the estuary.

Hopefully, like last year, September will bring the second wave of massive salmon back inside the estuary. Apart from the salmon, there’s been some trevally getting caught in the same areas as the salmon.

Most of the fishing inside has been done with bait, purely because the water has been filthy which makes it extremely hard to fish lures.

There are also a few garfish getting around as well, yet the have been tougher than usual, but again the weather has made fishing for anything tough. Using berley will get you fish, but it has been attracting lots of those small salmon around, making it tough to catch the gars.

On some of those nicer days we had, quite a few anglers managed to escape the dirty water and head out wide for flathead. Most anglers managed to get a good bag of flathead on these better days drifting. Pilchards were as good a bait as any and if you could catch a few of those smaller salmon first, they even better bait.

Around the jetties there have been some calamari caught on evening and at night time.

Sorry about the thin report but I’m sure everyone can understand that it has been a basically unfishable month in South Gippsland.

Over the next few weeks we will start hearing the odd snapper report and certainly the gummies will come in a bit closer and even inside the estuary again.

For more information, contact Will at Allways Angling in Traralgon on 51748544. You will get expert advice and great deals on fishing bait and tackle.

You can still take home a feed even in the coldest of water. With the aid of berley, you can get the fish into feeding mode and take home a mixed bag.