After a long spell of poor offshore conditions, things calmed down again late July and, guess what, there were still tuna everywhere. Around 50m of water off Point Fairy/Warrnambool was the hotspot with school sized fish eagerly taking both trolled and cast lures.

September would be one of the few months where you would expect the tuna not to be present, but the way each season seems to get longer each year, who knows?

The excellent bottom fishing should still on call in September with snapper catches becoming more prevalent amongst the gummy and school shark that are being caught in good numbers recently.

The Hopkins River has continued to be a productive location. Some seriously big bream have been turning up for anglers who are well versed in the techniques required to produce consistent numbers of quality fish. Fish 1kg+ are showing up amongst some good bags of bream with the odd exceptional fish approaching 1.6kg.

At the moment, bream are mainly in the lower regions around the Ski Lane but come September they may have begun moving upstream depending on water conditions. Deep-water techniques, such as blading and heavily weighted soft plastics have been the main technique on the bream as well as some perch and mulloway. Even in the dirty water, light leaders have made the difference between quality bags and just a few fish.

So far there haven’t been as many big perch that often encountered downstream at this time of year. However mulloway around 55-63cm are still being caught in the Hopkins – so much so that if you’ve had a big day on the bream and perch, it’s almost a disappointment not to have had a mulloway encounter. This is a far cry from a couple of years ago when a mulloway from the Hopkins was a distinct rarity.

Trout fishing has been okay without being outstanding. In September the opening of all the trout waters will give anglers, who have been restricted hammering a few of the prime locations open over winter, the chance to spread out in pursuit of their speckled quarry.

But it wasn’t the continuing tuna run or the big bream that was the recent major talking point angling wise locally. Geoff and Barry Hose were minding their own business fishing at anchor in 50m water 6km off the coast when suddenly their boat, usually only capable of 8km/h, was suddenly doing 20-30km/h as a whale became entangled in their anchor rope! The subsequent drama became front page news locally as the whale dragged them along for some time before they could sever the rope and set themselves free.