Last month didn’t even feel like winter was really looming, with plenty of warmer days and lots of fishable weather that allowed anglers to get out on the water.

Needless to say when the weather is good it generally means that the fishing isn’t too far behind and this has certainly been the case over the past weeks with heaps and heaps (and heaps) of squid found all along the reef areas; not to mention pinkies, snook and still some quality flathead.

Then just to really spice things up there has even been the odd really solid snapper to be found in amongst the pinkies.

The creek has started to see the annual mullet run begin with the local anglers starting to do some real damage on their long poles, small floats and tiny baits of dough or pieces of peeled prawn and best of all this will only get better as this month rolls on.

Out on the pier the squid are leaving their mark, quite literally as they make black ink stains all over the pier as anglers lift them out of the water and onto the timber. This is also a great sign of what areas of the pier have been fishing well with the more black marks meaning the more squid in that location.

Off the end of the pier in the rougher conditions and at night the pinkies have been keeping anglers busy and while most are only in the 30-35cm size they are in fairly good numbers and there is the odd larger fish to 40cm kicking around. Best baits have been the good old pilly tail or baby bottle squid, both of which are fished on a paternoster rig.

For boatiees, the reef running along from Mordialloc all the way up to the Parkdale Pinnacles and including the Beaumaris Motor Yacht Squadron Pier have all been fishing very well for squid up to 1kg in weight.

Customer Ru has been smashing the calamari from a variety of land-based locations with the Evergreen 3.5XS pattern in pink head shrimp and the brown/gold proving deadly. Ru said that that the best fishing is definitely when you get away from the crowds.

Up off Ricketts Point the pinkie brigade have been getting stuck into the small snapper with plenty of fish to be found in the 35-45cm size. As a bit of a bonus however, there has been the odd big snapper being caught in along the edge of the reef with several reports of snapper to 3kg on trolled hardbody lures and a pair of snapper in the 5-6kg size making a few anglers very happy indeed. Some of the better fish have been taken during early afternoon, well before the prime time.

Squid and more squid is the name of the game in this area with both boat and land-based anglers getting more than just the odd calamari all along this part of the bay.

Starting up on the shallow Yorkies Reef system it seems to have an endless supply of squid to be found there on a daily basis, and while most of them are only small if you work the deeper edges of the reef in the 6-8m area with 3.5 sized jugs there are some much better sized squid to be found.

Further along the Sandringham Breakwall and the Hampton Rock Groynes are producing pinkies of an evening for the bait anglers and plenty of squid for the jig chuckers.

Over the past weeks I have also seen several boats fishing close to shore at night along here in the area known as the gully. And seeing as we are into July it’s also the perfect time to get into here as it often produces some much better sized pinkies.

Off Green Point, along Brighton and down to North Road the reports are heavily leaning towards squid as anglers are having a ball loading up on the calamari for food and bait for the fast approaching snapper season.

What has been great to see however has been that anglers are now taking to the larger sized 3.5 jigs and working deeper reef areas where they are finding some good numbers of squid to 1kg+.

Just when you think this area is on the wind down for winter it pulls out a bit of a surprise packet with the past few weeks producing some great fishing on the pinkies with fish to 2kg being taken on a regular basis, especially by those anglers who are willing to fish some larger baits of whole pilchards or bigger sized squid strips.

Moving along the shoreline towards the piers, the land-based fishing has been very good for those anglers on Station Pier, with plenty of bream around the pylons. Along with a bunch of solid trevally that are working their way up and down the pier making a mess of unwary anglers who are fishing their baits close to the structure.

If you’re in a boat it’s also worth heading over towards Princess Pier as it has been fishing very well over the past weeks, with good numbers of school mulloway in the area and some solid snapper among them too. Best method seems to be to anchor up on the up tide side of the pier then berley with mashed up pillies and fish unweighted baits of pilchards or squid strips back towards the pylons.

It’s also worth keeping your eyes peeled over the coming weeks as there are sure to be a few schools of salmon also kicking around.

There you have it, we are into July but don’t let the winter blues get you down because the fishing is just too good to be cooped up inside.