Winter has arrived and the weather has turned bleak and cold, making us all feel very glum and start wishing for better times to come.

It won’t be long until the winter solstice has been and gone and the days start to lengthen out with a little more sunlight every day. While we wait for the spring to arrive, we should make the most of the fishing opportunities available.

As all keen anglers know, you can only service and repair equipment for so long before the desire to go fishing surfaces, forcing us to venture out into all conditions. For those anglers that venture offshore it is even harder; we have to wait for the right weather conditions to enable us to launch our boats. But by the reports coming, we can suggest you get out there and experience some very good fishing. Plenty of flathead, gurnard, squid, pinkie snapper and gummy shark about.

With all the rain we have had this year the entrance at Marlo is still deep giving us an option to access Cape Conran to the ocean. By using the Marlo entrance it gives anglers quick access to their favourite gummy shark fishing grounds off Corringle Beach, as well as easy access to Marlo reef, another favourite fishing spot. Best results are coming from using blue bait, squid and pilchards.

This time of year the shop is quiet, giving me a chance to go fishing. With the weather permitting I will be offshore with some of my fishing friends this week, having a practice for my annual fishing trip to NZ to fish in a 6kg kingfish tournament in the Bay of Islands. As you can see some of us don’t mind the winter months at all.

The surf beaches are all fishing well, with big schools of salmon and tailor on the move patrolling all along the coast, from Corringle Beach to the Yeerung River. At the present time the Corringle Beach has long gutters as far as you can see making it ideal for surf fishing. The estuary and rivers are also fishing very well with plenty of bream, luderick, trevally, mullet, tailor and estuary perch on the chew.

Luderick can be found feeding along the rock groins that surround the islands and along the river banks. Schools of bream are throughout the whole system, biting on frozen prawn, sandworm and pipis. Big schools of estuary perch have entered the system and biting on live prawns sandworm and taking both hardbodied lures and soft plastic lures.

Peter Jung snares a great yellowfin bream near the mouth of the Snowy River while chasing big flathead.