I love it when I can start on a positive note and that's easy when September rolls around each year.

Firstly the days are slowly getting longer and that means more fishing time. More hours of sunshine also brings a pleasant rise in daytime temperatures but best of all the first weekend of the month is trout opening. That's right, the rivers are again open and there is no better time to target trout then right now.

In recent weeks I've been restricted to the Aire and Ford rivers which are classed as sea-run trout fisheries and remain open year round below the Great Ocean Road bridges. The fish have been few and far between but the rewards are there if you put in the time. My last trip produced a fit trout of around 1kg while fishing with my 3-year-old daughter.

Walking the grassy banks casting a small hardbodied lure close to the stream edges was what brought the trout undone. Trout move upstream to spawn but now spawning is over and the trout are on the move the fishing should improve dramatically as September comes and goes. Rivers worth having a flick in when the season opens include Aire, Ford, Barham, Skenes, Wild Dog, Smythes and Kennett.

A general rule is the bigger the river, the bigger the trout it will hold. The other side to this is that the smaller streams seem to have more plentiful supplies of fish. If you want plenty of action stick to Wild Dog or Skenes Creek but if you want something to brag about or to take home for a feed give the Aire or Kennet rivers a run.

I must admit this winter has been a rough one on the ocean front: not many days worthy of putting the boat on the sea but this should improve as the weather does too. The only reports from the saltwater are of plentiful numbers of Australian salmon from Wild Dog Beach or good numbers of calamari squid inside the boat harbour.

Australian salmon have been taken on bait late in the day or early morning but once the sun is up they are best targeted by casting metal lures. For a feed of calamari try using a 2.5 size squid jig from off the pier. The sea grass beds inside the harbour hold good numbers of small to medium sized squid which hang around in schools. Keep moving around the pier until you located a patch of squid and concentrate on extracting as many as you can, remembering that the bag limit is ten.

This is a great visual form of fishing and fun for the whole family just remember to watch out for that unexpected inking. As I said earlier there's not much else to report as people just haven't been getting out for a fish. This should all turn around this month, so get out there and get me something to write about

Trout season opens this month and with captures already coming from the lower sea-run sections of the rivers, everything looks set for another bumper season.