The entrance is currently closed, but the fishing is anything but.

The Bernie Stewart and Ken Syphers group of ten anglers did their regular annual trip to the Bemm for a week recently. They have been visiting East Gippsland and the Bemm for more than 20 years.

This was the group’s best season ever with good bags of flathead caught early morning on soft plastics in shallow water at the mouth of the river.

The boys also reported good catches of bream and a few perch in the river with the best coming in at just over 1.2kg.

Fishing in the channel has been patchy with quality tailor coming on board, while Australian salmon were few and far between, although Edward Lee and his son, Martin found a spot where they bagged out on bream. The luderick are also starting to sneak around the weed beds usually in the shallows.

Will Chadwick and Dave Thompson also had a successful fishing trip recently.

They were able to obtain live prawn and this was certainly too good for the fish to resist. They arrived home with their bag of quality luderick, flathead, trevally and bream, with the preferred location being the channel.

Dollys Garden fishing platform has also been a successful location and ideal for those who don’t have access to a boat. Bream have been caught there on frozen prawn.

The river has been producing good quality bream on prawn. One weighed in recently was 1.16kg and actually caught on a prawn tail.

Please note the recreational size limits have changed for dusky flathead:-

The minimum legal size is now 30 cm, the maximum legal size limit is now 55cm. The daily bag limit remains unchanged at five per person per day. No fish over 55cm may be retained.

With the entrance currently closed it will pay to bring your prawning gear and enjoy the warm calm nights in the water.

The warm summer nights are ideal to spend at the surf beaches and you will more than likely be rewarded with a nice gummy.

Good-sized bream over a kilo continue to be caught in good numbers at Bemm.