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Late season fishing looks up
  |  First Published: July 2017



It was a mild autumn with relatively stable weather patterns throughout May. South Gippsland fishing remained consistent for species such as pinkie snapper, flathead and even yellowtail kingfish.

I’m amazed that every year a lot of anglers throw in the towel by April, but again May showed us that this is when we get the most stable weather patterns and the water temperature is still good enough to catch our favourite summer species.

OFFSHORE

The biggest surprise for everyone has been the amount of kingfish offshore recently. The fish aren’t very big with most of them being undersized to around 65cm. There have been stacks out there and at certain parts of the tide they have been feeding like mad, taking all sorts of lures from jigs to poppers and also squid baits or trolled skirted lures.

The reefs have been amazing with plenty of pinkies out on the Ovals and various reefs off the Prom in anywhere from 24-32m. Squid and pilchards have been successful and the fish seem to be going better closer to the tide changes. For a gummy, do a drift with a big bait or anchor up and berley.

There are good-sized gummies out there to around 10kg and plenty of sevengill sharks mixed in now as well. Over the next month expect to get some massive gummy sharks to 20kg as the water cools, then we will be left with mainly large flathead on the 30-40m line.

INSIDE

With a big water temperature drop in early May, most of the good fishing has been offshore. The whiting went very quiet and only a handful of anglers have been catching them. Even the Welshpool anglers have been coming over to fish Port Albert for the whiting, as the numbers seem better here than in Corner Inlet for some reason.

Anglers finding the whiting aren’t bagging out, but they are getting up to a dozen big whiting each session on the run-out tide using pipis and squid. The whiting have been up to 46cm and averaging 41cm. There are still good numbers of calamari inside Port Albert and they’re biting best on the slack tide. There are garfish everywhere and these are pretty great, averaging 35cm. Gars can be caught during both tides. You’ll need berley to get them behind the boat.

There are still good numbers of sand flathead inside but you’ll need to berley to catch them now with the cold water. You can still get a bag of 30-45cm flathead inside with the aid of berley, and don’t be surprised if you snag a good-sized gummy shark, at least until that water temperature drops below 13°C.

Towards McLoughlins Beach the salmon have been hit and miss, with some weeks producing big salmon up to 2kg, while other times they are only up to around 0.75-1kg. Soft plastics and metal slugs have been the go-to lures.

The good locations have been both McLoughlins and the Manns entrance. The odd school of salmon has been coming back into the mangroves as well.

For more information, contact Will at Allways Angling in Traralgon on 5174 8544 or check the website on www.allwaysangling.com.au.

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