It’s all finally kicking off in the top end of Westernport and the fishing over the last month has been clearly better than what we have been used to over the cooler months. The weather is slowly getting better with more frequent calm days and there is a beautiful mildness in the air, which is reminding us that summer isn’t far away.

The snapper have started to show up in good numbers, the calamari are in abundance and a lovely big black bream also feature in this month’s report!

All of the action has been through the top end of the port, which is typical for this time of year. The snapper head up here in search of shallower water that is heated by the beautiful spring sun and the calamari swarm to the shallow weed beds to feed up before spawning.

Joes Island is a consistent producer of snapper and this month will be no different. We start to see the snapper switching to harder baits as the water slowly heats up and Chris Bowden found this out first hand. He put in a couple of hours at Joes and managed a nice sized snapper on a nice chunky King George Whiting head. Whiting heads have taken a lot of big snapper over the years and are a very under rated bait, so the next time you score a few whiting for the table, don’t forget to chuck the heads in the freezer for your next snapper trip.

Some really nice fish have been taken out of Tooradin recently as well. Lachie and Cam of the ‘Bent Rod Squad’ launched the kayaks in the Tooradin Channel and had a paddle around in search of a few fish. Lachie managed a beast of a snapper, which I’m sure would have been loads of fun in yak. It would be worth spending an hour on the way back in to have a poke around the shallows of the Tooradin Channel as well, I know it’s a little bit early but I wouldn’t be surprised if a few nice whiting turn up from here in the coming weeks.

Now, here is a report from Tooradin that you don’t hear every day. Chris Slevison was having a flick around Sawtells Inlet for mullet when a horse of a bream measuring 42cm took his offering of chicken intended for the mullet. You will all be pleased to know that this huge bream was released after a couple of photos!

Warneet has been the land-based fisher’s location of choice with a heap of nice calamari coming off the pier there. Most captures have been on darker jigs in sizes 3.0 and 3.5, so make sure you have a few black jigs in your collection.

The Quail Bank is where most of the squid seem to be stacked up and there is some really nice sized models amongst them as well. John Macleod put in a couple of solid sessions up on the bank. John went for a quick fish on dusk and into the night and landed 4 really tasty models before backing it up again a couple of days later by boating 12 calamari between himself and good mate Chris Preston. John tells us that white jigs did all of the damage on their 12 fish day. White and clear-based jigs are a deadly option, particularly when the water is really clear.

It’s hard to talk about calamari without mentioning the Tyabb Bank. Stinga and Andrew, a couple for members of the ‘Bent Rod Squad’ went for a drift along the Tyabb Bank and picked off a few tasty calamari. They also managed to pick up some big snook on the troll for gummy baits in a later session. Chris Gilham took a couple of good mates in Drew Wilson and his young son Michael and they absolutely slammed the calamari in shallow water. As it normally turns out, young Michael comprehensively out fished everyone else on the boat and they left with 29 good squid between them. They found that any jig with a gold foil produced the goods on that particular day. Well done boys!

You can really gauge just how much the fishing has improved by how many reports I have unfortunately had to leave out of this report! As well as the above information we have had reports of plenty more snapper and I could really write this whole piece on just calamari if I needed to! I know I have focused a lot on the Top End ,but please don’t discount the North Arm itself either. As we move further into October the snapper will school up along Lysaughts and it will be chaos on the water once again! As always, good luck and keep those reports coming!