This year the fishing has been out of the box. Nature conspired with the elements to curate perfect fishing conditions for the fish to flourish in big numbers and move throughout the whole system. Prawns as they mature are still moving down on to the sand flats that run from the Marlo Jetty all the way down to Frenchs Narrows.

With the warm weather, it is an ideal time for anglers to either gather some prawn for bait or gather some for eating. The most popular way of gathering the prawns is wading with a pawning light and scooping them with a prawn net. When wading with the prawn light, it makes anglers aware of the many fish that are in the shallows also attracted by the schooling prawns.

With perfect conditions, it is little wonder big schools of bream have moved upriver past the highway bridge at Orbost making it an exciting time for the locals, as they are able to fish below the township. Visitors using the local camping park are able to just cross the Marlo Road and fish in the Snowy River with the expectation of catching some decent bream. As you would imagine, anglers have reported good catches of most species throughout the whole system, on a variety of bait.

The surf beaches are still producing plenty of good captures of salmon, tailor, flathead, mullet during the day and decent gummy sharks in the evening. The fishing offshore has been amazing. Plenty of flathead, gurnard, barracouta, morwong, squid and gummy sharks are around. This season the squid are here in huge numbers and anglers are having no trouble getting their bag on most outings.

I should also mention anglers have reported seeing several big schools of baitfish on their fishing excursions. With all the baitfish and squid offshore, it’s little wonder there are plenty of great kingfish on the prowl. Anglers have reported capturing kings over a metre in length and many just under. Anglers have been getting the kings using knife jigs, flutter jigs, trolling deep diving lures, trolling casting big poppers, live baiting with salmon and squid and trolling live squid on a downrigger, so I would suggest trying a lot of different methods.