You know the conjured-up images of bright sunshine, no wind, no crowds and fish jumping all over your lure that you get just before heading off on your next adventure?

Well, as we all know things don’t always work out the way we visualize them and it’s a rare day when the fishing actually exceeds all expectations. When I headed off for a day’s bream fishing at the Aire River recently I would have been happy with two or three fish and a couple of missed strikes. After all, that’s an average day’s fishing in this part of the world. Little did I know that after half an hour’s fishing, I would have seven bream to 37cm in the boat and many more missed hits on my Ecogear lure.

It didn’t matter whether I cast to the banks or right into the middle of the river, after a couple of twitches with the rod tip, the lure would get slammed and line would crackle from my reel at an amazing pace. The only thing that brought me back to reality was the annoying ring tone on my mobile phone. It so happened that my Dad was fishing just up the river from me and had noticed my car back at the boat ramp. He was bank fishing and hadn’t had a bite when he rang to see if I was having any luck.

After dragging myself away from the hungry school of bream, I picked him up then headed straight back to where I had last hooked a fish. He too tied on an Ecogear lure and again it wasn’t long before the fish were slamming our lures with gusto. I took another nine fish to Dad’s three – which wasn’t a bad effort considering he had never caught a bream on a lure before. All fish were released and we both went home with smiles from ear to ear.

The key to our success was that the river mouth had opened a couple of days prior to our arrival. The water level had dropped by a metre or more and the shrimp and minnow that normally hide in the grassy bank had nowhere left to hide. Needless to say the bream were having a field day gorging themselves on all the available food. With heavier rainfalls due this April the river mouth should be opening on a more regular basis, which hopefully means even better fishing this month!

April marks the start of the annual salmon run, which should continue right through the winter. Beach fishers have reported better captures recently but the big fish still haven’t arrived.

Shark fishermen are having a ball out in 70m of water with blue sharks responding to berley in great numbers. Some boats are seeing up to ten sharks a trip. Remember that there is a bag limit of one shark per species per day. Take along the heavy trace too, just in case a mako turns up.