Summer holiday time is always popular at Tathra, which offers families great beach activities and some of the most diverse fishing anywhere.

Tathra Wharf is always well worth a visit. Schools of slimy mackerel are regular visitors and when they arrive everyone on the platform can be hooked up to these little speedsters.

Yellowtail, silver trevally, salmon and bonito are also available and kingfish and the occasional shark also turn up. At night tailor are partial to a fillet of mackerel or yellowtail acquired earlier in the day.

The rocks around from the wharf produce similarly and more kingfish on live bait or lures. Drummer, groper, wrasse and bream will eat cunjevoi in a bread berley trail.

From the shore or a boat, estuary opportunities abound with lure or bait.

Flathead are plentiful, as are bream, trevally, blackfish, whiting and mullet. The deeper waters of the Bega River also produce the occasional jewfish and some tailor.

The rock walls upstream are habitat for estuary perch that love hard and soft lures.

The best baits are fresh nippers, worms, live millet and definitely the prawns that can be caught at night in the Bega River or nearby Wallagoot Lake.

Upstream in the freshwater snags are plenty of bass willing to hit a lure or fly early mornings or late afternoons.

Brogo Dam, 40 minutes’ drive from Tathra, is regularly stocked with bass and is fishing extremely well.

Kianinny Bay is the launching ramp for offshore trips for reef, sport and game fish.

Flathead are prolific in 30m to 40m with the odd gummy shark or red gurnard. Out in 60m to 70m are a lot of the larger tiger flathead.

The reefs have snapper, morwong, perch, nannygai and leatherjackets with increasing numbers of kingfish.

For the game fishos striped tuna and albacore are still available on the troll with the chance of a yellowfin.

Most of these fish are likely to be taken on smaller lures trolled in a pattern with larger marlin lures.

Striped marlin are most common but blacks and big blues are taken in January.