That period between seasons is an awesome time to fish. It’s warm enough to still yield barra and jacks in the estuaries, and cool enough at night and early in the morning for winter species like blue salmon. Larger numbers of blues are showing up the harbour, which is great. The best time to target them is on bigger tides late in the afternoon and into the night, and early in the morning. Most fish are being taken on fresh gar, live herring, yorkies and the like.

If you’re after jacks and barra you’re best off trying to sound out warmer water. On smaller tides you’ll want to fish the deeper water throughout the harbour and local estuaries. On building tides either side of the moon is when you find the fish more up on the flats, or over the gravel banks that break the surface at low tide. Lots of lures work but the ones I’ve had most success on recently are the 78mm Lucky Craft Pointer, ZMan SwimmerZ and Zerek Fish Traps. And of course, these fish will always eat a live bait at the right time of the tide.

There are reports of big bream being caught around the river mouths and rock walls. The cooler months are a good time to get into bigger specimens on small hardbodies, soft vibes and soft plastics. Good baits include mullet fillets, prawns and any fresh bait caught in the area such as yabbies.

Offshore we’ve had some great weather and the fishing has been unreal. Over the past few weeks we’ve had plenty of reports of good Spaniards being trolled up with big Halco Laser Pros, Yo-Zuri Hydro Magnums, Samaki Pacemakers and the like. Plenty of Spaniards have also been caught on trolled wolf herring, gar and doggie mackerel. There’s the odd monster getting around; recently at the Boyne Tannum hook-up one Spaniard weighed in at 24kg cleaned, so it was potentially a 26-27kg fish. Lately we’ve been seeing some good catches at Rundle Island.

The bottom fishing is good at the moment, with plenty of reports of big bags of coral trout, red emperor, red-throat and tuskies. Good spots to try include Rock Cod Shoals, North West Island, Masthead and Douglas Shoals. The shallows are fishing quite well for red-throat and trout, and GTs as well. Anglers have been getting some good GTs on both poppers and stickbaits, and trout and red-throat have been hitting a few lures as well. However, the most consistent method for trout and red-throat is still a well presented pilchard with minimal weight.

The wrecks been fishing quite well also. People jigging the wrecks have been catching a mixture of nannygai, tea-leaf trevally, golden trevally, doggy mackerel, grunter and black jew. Black jew been going quite well; the average size is 10-20kg with a few larger specimens mixed in.