This month is an exciting time on the East Coast of Tasmania as spring is well and truly sprung and conditions are prime.

The big activity over this month and into the next will be the bream. October and November is prime time to target the spawning aggregations up many on the east coast river systems; some areas will show some massive numbers of fish.

The Scamander River is probably one of the most popular systems and will see some significant pressure from anglers however it seems to cope year after year and keeps producing fantastic fishing. Here you will expect to see some spectacular surface action and sight fishing opportunities.

Further south, the Swan River system and Little Swanport are also well worth a visit. The Swan is a more open deep system with less chance of sight fishing but much larger bream that is usually encountered on the Scamander. Little Swanport will offer some spectacular shallow water sight fishing, polaroiding and oyster rack fishing.

Georges Bay estuary will be firing hard by this stage and should see some great Australian salmon schools with fish anywhere up to 3kg smashing the thick bait schools throughout the bay. Mixed in with the salmon will often be tailor, mackerel and pike so a mixed bag is always a chance.

There will also be some good numbers of large silver trevally becoming very active and are a great light tackle sport species to target with soft plastic lures.

Offshore will see plenty of good flathead numbers up and down the coast, particularly the tiger flathead, and varying the depths will be the key to finding the schools. Start in shallow water around 15m and work your way out deeper until consistent catches are coming aboard.

Sometimes the fish can be out as deep as 80-90m however at this time of year I would expect somewhere around 20-40m should see numbers of fish.

As the striped trumpeter season is still closed until the end of October it’s a good time to head a little further offshore and target the deeper species such as blue eye trevalla and hapuku.

We should also be seeing a stabilisation in rainfall and the worst should be behind us, this will see the fresh water rivers such as the South Esk and Georges River basins calm down and trout fishing will flourish.

The lowland rivers will be a prime target for some early season dry fly action and caddis moths will be hatching on a regular basis with fish rising to them.