Well it’s finally got hard to get up in the mornings, with the temperatures plummeting into single figures and frost over everything.

Only hard-core fishos get out and ignore the weather, to do battle with the fish that are thankfully taking baits once again after a shocking 2-month period. The beaches and offshore have been the spots to be.

The beaches, with the westerly at your back making for calm seas, are fishing quite well. Bream, school mulloway, flathead and flounder have all been turning up in catches through the day, and at night bigger mulloway have been taken in the gutters along Stockton Beach.

A few tailor have been around, but not in the numbers that we saw last year and not the quality size either. There are a lot of undersize tailor schools moving through at the moment, so hopefully by the time you’re reading this the tailor will be bigger and in better numbers.

Salmon are around once again and getting thicker by the year, making them the most caught fish at the moment. At least they take the boredom out of waiting for good schools of fish to come past and grab a bait.

Worms and pipis have been slaying the bream, as have fillets of mullet cut into cubes. Fresh squid have been fooling the bigger mulloway, along with some very big flathead that were washed out of the estuaries a while back. The wild weather over the past months has chewed up the beach and created gutters within walking distance of the Stockton Surf Club. Heading north is the best option, or try the hole behind Stockton Soccer Fields, as it gives up some nice fish during the day and on the rising tide.

Offshore has been a wildcard, with massive swells battering the coast, so picking a day of calm weather will be the number 1 problem. Hopefully the wind from the west will calm the close offshore waters and it should be easy to fish the close reefs. Groper, big leatherjackets, the odd drummer and morwong have been taken, along with some really nice green-eyed squid. Use the head after dark for a chance at mulloway, or through the day for snapper and kingfish.

My favourite spot for the squid is Pines Reef and North Reef. The Marbles has been good for just legal squire — great for the table — the Dumping Grounds out from the sea baths have been giving up leatherjackets, and more squire mainly on the drift.

The rocks should be firing now the cold water has gripped our region. Drummer and bream will be around the washes, and on rough days if you can find a safe spot, snapper should be there too. If it’s calm, try the small bays for squid, while leatherjackets are searching through the kelp beds, so a small prawn on light gear with no lead could get you a feed of these for the barbecue. Garfish are also holding over the kelp, so take a small float; they are great bait, or tasty when rolled in flour and deep-fried.

The estuary is reviving after the severe floods, and the fish are slowly but surely moving back upstream. Ash Island and around Hexham have been fishing well at night for bream. Baits have been the best, and the fresher the better.

The harbour itself is full of small undersize tailor, and the odd salmon. Try drifting the sand and mud flats along the Northern side of Kooragang Island for the flathead that are still working their way into the river. They will remain there as the water cools further, then they’ll shut down as it gets really cold.

I think I can predict we are going to have very cold water this winter, as it’s cooling a lot faster than usual. Finding fish may become a problem, especially offshore. A mate of mine carries a thermometer at all times and actually stops and reads this instead of just relying on the gauge on his sounder unit. He has proven to me that there can be some insignificant differences in the readings that can make a real difference.