Only a few anglers head out to fish the bay areas in their boats over the cooler months, but the estuaries and surf beaches have been fishing well.

There has been no shortage of great reports coming from the Glenelg over the last few weeks with some great catches of mulloway averaging about 4kg with the odd bigger fish about, as well as bream and estuary perch also being taken. A lot of mulloway are being taken just below Nelson on vibes, pilchards and live baits along with some nice bream on plastics.

Nelson up to Taylors Straight and then onto Sandy Waterholes has been turning on some great mulloway and bream; fishing with vibes and cut pilchard is working well. Good estuary perch are being taken at the Sapling Creek area on plastics and vibes fished along the edges. If we get some heavy rains in the catchment the fish will move from the edges out into the deeper cleaner water in the middle of the river.

I fished the Pritchards area with the Horsham Angling Club recently and we caught a few nice bream but the fishing was a bit slow up that way. A mixture of baits such as marine worms, freshwater yabbies and crabs caught fish along with soft plastics also doing well.

At Battersbys I found a nice patch of bream there which were great fun fishing along the edges with Squidgy Bugs; we got a few on bait as well. Other anglers travelled up to Sapling Creek and caught some very nice estuary perch and big bream on vibes and suspending hardbodied lures.

I recently had a trip to Robe hoping to fish the beaches but due to bad weather the beaches were very weedy, making fishing very difficult. When the weed hasn’t been about, locals have been catching a few gummy shark and school mulloway off Long Beach in the evenings on squid and pilchards on the high tide. Back Beach has also been fishing well for Australian salmon as has the Ten Mile and Salmon Hole near Beachport.

I spent some time fishing the bream lakes at Robe and I found the bream fishing excellent at Lake Battye, which is on the town’s outskirts. Early in the morning, unweighted whitebait worked very well as did soft plastics. Most of the bream we caught were in the 30-36cm size range and there were plenty of them along with many small mullet and salmon.

There are three bream lakes here linked together and they are all full of fish. Land-based fishing is most popular but many anglers also fish these lakes from kayaks.

There have been some great catches of mulloway to 8kg being taken lately with the best catches being taken well past the Ti Tree crossing. Fresh salmon fillet has been working well on the mulloway and there have been heaps of salmon about right along the beach. The rising tide after dark has been the best.

From the 32-mile to the 42-mile crossing there have been a few school mulloway and gummy sharks about, along with a lot of big salmon and elephant fish. The track from the 42-mile crossing has been washed out in a few places with big seas, so take care and take the back track if one has been made to get around a washed out area. The best thing to do is drop into the roadhouse at Salt Creek to top up on supplies on your way and they will only be too happy to let you know how the track and fish are going.

In early July there were still southern bluefin tuna being caught offshore at Port MacDonnell but they were starting to get a bit patchy, not to mention the weather and seas being a bit ordinary of late. Trolling large minnows such as Rapala X-Raps, Killer Vibes and assorted skirts is still the most successful method on the tuna here.

A few boats have been having mixed success cubing for tuna this season; perhaps cubing is the answer on the quiet days when the tuna won’t surface for the lures. Many boats are reporting seeing tuna jumping all around them but not being able to get a strike on trolled lures but then other boats will then bag out the next day in record time.

That’s tuna fishing though, red hot one day and stone cold the next. I would think that the tuna will slow right down over this month going by the previous seasons we have enjoyed.

Bottom bashing the deeper waters toward the shelf with electric reels is well worth the effort this time of year on days of good seas with hapuku, Tassie trumpeter, knife jaw, ling and gemfish just some of the excellent table fish on offer out wide.