On my recent trip to Portland, I did 250km in two days on the water chasing bluefin tuna and never turned a reel. That’s gamefishing for you, hot one day and dead the next.

I did have one good surprise from my new fishing rig: I did 160km on day one and only used 31L of fuel. I can’t speak too highly of four strokes, especially my 60hp Yamaha. The way fuel prices are these days, it’s the only way to go. Even better, why not spend some time checking out your local patch instead?

I fished a surf competition the other week. The weather was terrible and under normal conditions I would have stayed in bed. I was determined to give it a go though, and assumed I would be the only idiot on the beach. How wrong I was – when I turned into the Williamsons Beach carpark I found it full of cars and even two buses!

Then I went to Baxters instead but there were 50 people there too. Who says that surf fishing isn’t popular? Anyway, I put up with the wind, the wild surf and the weed for a couple of hours for three fish, each about 500g, then packed up and went home. It was still better than staying in bed.

All the surf beaches have a lot of small salmon about, ranging from ‘just size’ to about 500g. These fish seem to be more prevalent when weather conditions are bad. When conditions improve and you get good clean water running through the gutters, free of all the stirred up sand, then the bigger fish start moving in close - and there have been some big salmon caught.

Gunnamatta has had salmon up to 2.8kg. Portsea Back Beach has seen fish to 4.5kg, and Williamsons, Baxters and Woolamai Beaches have had fish from 2-2.5kg. If you are lucky enough to strike the right weather pattern, then the odds are in your favour of landing some good fish.

There are not many reports coming from around San Remo. A few salmon and trevally have been caught in the Cleeland Bight area.

There are also some good reports of reasonable bags of whiting in the 35-40cm bracket in the Tortoise Head area. Fishing in 4m of water with pipis and squid strips has been the go.

There are still some whiting being caught off Somers and Ventnor, and quite a few snook are about between Somers and Flinders over the reefy areas. Some big calamari have started showing up at Flinders which means that we could be in for an early season.

Chloe Cornford at Baxters Beach with a 500g salmon. The surf is still the best bet in the Phillip Island area.