Cray season is here; with heavy frosts the crays come on.

I’ve had some reports of anglers bagging out in 3-4 pulls then the next day nothing. This is very typical of crayfish, on and off very quickly. The main advice is you have to be in it to win it.

A couple of other pointers are to use good baits, carp would be one of my favourites, as they are very smelly and oily. On each pull, score your bait with a knife and change it every second pull. Look for some depth on your sounder, a slight back eddy with structure will be the better areas.

On the fish front, yellas are still moving in the river with a few guys pulling 8-10 in a session. Any bibbless, crank or small spinnerbait will do the trick. One guy I saw asked me if I could tell him what sort of bibbless he was using, as it was catching most of their fish.

He cast it over to me and on close inspection it had been in the sun too long and had bubbled to twice its normal size and had bent like a banana, swimming on a 10 angle in the water. My advice was don’t lose it as it will be hard to replace!

Like most areas the cod have been a little slow, a few good reports snuck in amongst them. Brent Eales scored a nice 72cm cod.

I like this time of the year for river fishing as the big cod start to move and feed up, you will get less fish but is you do get one it is usually at the upper end of the scale.

Big lures with lots of noise and bling are the preference. Fish them in the bigger snag piles that you just know are fish holding. Don’t be afraid to pass over a snag three or four times. One method I have used is to bang on the logs and branches with an oar as you go past waking the cod up and hopefully getting a few hits.

Redfin are still on the chew in Moodemere, but a bit of work will be needed to find them, once found some good catches have been reported. With the river at winter levels yellas and cod are hard to find, so it is best to look in the river