It was late March, 2006 when Ken Hinze and Cameron Order caught a 70kg tuna, which is recognised as signalling the rebirth of the south west SBT fishery.

Ken’s at it again, this time capturing a barrel-sized SBT well out of what would be considered traditional tuna season. Ken and John Aquilina captured a magnificent 100kg fish on 21 September in around 80m of water. It just goes to show if you intend to cover any distance offshore these days it pays to check out any bust ups you see and have some tuna gear on board.

These days many more anglers are spending time covering distances offshore, not just for tuna, but for deep water bottom species. Many local anglers have recently been successful in capturing tasty deep sea targets such as gemfish, blue eye and Tasmanian trumpeter in the past months on those odd days when sea conditions allow for such an excursion to the depths required to target these fish. Despite the distances involved and the speciality gear required, it definitely is a style of angling that is growing in popularity.

Saturday 15 November sees the opening of the southern rock lobster (crayfish) season, a much-anticipated event by all. Hoop netters and divers alike will be hoping for suitable conditions to get among the crays come opening weekend. Remember that the bag limit is 2 per person and the minimum sizes are 11cm carapace length for the male and 10.5cm for the female. All rock lobsters taken by recreational fishers are to be tail-clipped or tail-punched with a hole not less than 10mm in diameter. This must be done within 5 minutes of bringing rock lobsters onto a boat or, if taken from the shore, within 5 minutes of landing and within 50m of the place of landing.

Speaking of openings, the opening of trout season was a little slow this year with rivers already dropping and clearing fast. A few hardy souls managed some good fish mostly around 1.3kg.

Bream have remained schooled up and hard to tempt recently in the Hopkins but come November they will be back on the bank edges and providing some good sport for lures casters.

November was always a time when you might expect to see a run of mulloway in the local rivers so hopefully we’ll see some encountered.