The cold and the rain over the last month would not have left anyone in doubt that we are in the midst of winter!

With that said, bread and butter species have kept many anglers content and able to come home with a solid meal. Squid and Australian salmon have been hot targets, and in abundance, while gummies and whiting have also been fishing well. Let’s do a quick run around the peninsula and see what’s been happening.

The last month saw some huge schools of salmon busting on the surface out around the mussel farm. It was a great opportunity to either tow or cast lures, whatever your preference, for a good bit of light tackle action. The size of the fish in the schools varied but we heard of salmon to 1.5kg being plucked from the water.

Right from the start of autumn we saw vary good numbers of smaller squid right along the peninsula. As we moved into winter the average size increased, producing plenty of squid with hoods between 20-30cm, with an occasional bigger model thrown in. The shallow weed beds around Rye have all produced, as have the moorings around the Marina and just around the corner at the Sisters.

It’s been great to see a good return of squid this year through the cooler months, as many anglers were a bit disappointed at this time last year where they all but disappeared.

One of our staff Jules Frank had a few ripping sessions with mates Morne and Ryan, bagging out and taking nice squid to 1kg.

Over the last month or so we have been starting to see some nice garfish taken inshore at Sorrento. The main pier and the yacht squadron pier both produced some reasonable numbers of these fish. We seemed to miss the summer run of gars this year, so it has been good to see a few show up for those who are land-based or want to fish really close to shore to keep out of the weather.

The South Channel also produced fairly consistent numbers of mid-size gummy sharks off Sorrento in recent weeks. Customer found good success, even managing to put his sister on to her first ever gummy around the 8kg mark.

It’s pretty hard not to mention Gunnamatta at this time of year with plenty of crowds still showing up each weekend to fish for Australian salmon. Fishing has been good but it is interesting to see that the size of the fish is quite varied at the moment. Some days customers are catching fish in the 400-600g range and two days later they are all 800g to 1.2kg. As always, the hole directly in front of the second car park has being seeing plenty of action.

For those who don’t mind donning the woollies and fishing at night we still have had good reports of gummies to about 8kg over the last full moon being taken land-based at Merricks. Fresh bay squid accounting for a number of fish taken by anglers such as Travis Wood who caught a 4kg and 7kg gummy during this period.

There have been some absolute hooters of squid taken from around Hastings, and importantly just north at the Tyabb Bank. Mick Mizzi, of Mr Fisho fame, sent us some great photos of two ripping sessions he had recently where he nailed some fantastic calamari to about 2kg. Mick had good success fishing the Shimano Sephia jigs in white. This jig range is now being updated so if you have any favourite colours from the current range you might want to get your hands on them because they will be gone before long.

August will be here in no time! This time of year can sometimes produces some of the biggest squid for the year but in my mind can also produce some of the biggest salmon. Fingers crossed we get some good weather, and we’ll be into them!