Global warming or climate change? That’s the question I keep asking myself. After the crazy weather that we’ve just gone through over the past few months, who knows?

We go through dry and stable periods and then wet unstable periods, so I guess it’s a see-saw type climate change that Mother Nature likes to give us.

Every 30 years or so, the rains are good for our inland fisheries, but the wind makes it hard to get on the water to get a fish. That’s enough of my whinging about the weather, now back to fishing reports.

The Snapper Point Angling Club has just had its annual Tea Tree Snapper Competition. About 1500 anglers fished the competition and approximately 1200 fish were weighed in. This year the majority, approximately 800 fish, came from Western Port Bay and about 400 from Port Phillip. The heaviest fish caught was a ripper of 11.86kg, and it came out of Western Port.

Salmon are still about in good numbers on all of the local beaches and once the weather settles and it starts to warm up, it’ll be a good time to start targeting gummies. I have found that an excellent bait for gummies is parrotfish and grass whiting fillets. You just need to find a nice gutter and fish a rising tide after dark, then you should be in business.

The Cleeland’s Bight area is producing some nice pinkies, whiting and calamari. Fishing early morning or late evening will get you the best results.

It’s all about snapper at the moment, and around Western Port reports of fish up to 11kg coming in from Corinella, The Corals, Silverleaves, Hastings, Lyshardts, Joes Island and the Boulton Channel just to name a few.

Whiting are starting to show up, but not in any great numbers. Once the weather warms up, they should start to fire up.

Calamari have been a bit harder to find, but the best reports have been coming in from the Tyabb Bank and off Quail Island.

The local anglers have been doing really well on the calamari off the Flinders Pier after dark. Whiting reports from the Flinders Shoreham area have been pretty dismal, with only the odd fish being caught.