June really kicks of our winter offshore fishing with the cooler westerlies bringing brass monkey weather and big snapper on our inshore reefs.

Night fishing is the best way to get into the better specimens and timing your trip to get a tide change while you’re on your spot will also help. At night I fish a combination of bait and plastics - usually big squid and pilchards, and the Berkley Gulp squid as my main plastic.

If you’re looking for spots there are plenty of GPS marks available through books and tackle stores and despite some of these spots not fishing well during the day most fire up during the cover of darkness.

June also gets the big Spanish on the chew and live baiting with pike and large scads is a great way to tangle with these line burners. Land based options for chasing Spanish are now fairly rare thanks to some ill-conceived green zone placements but you can still find a few spots, just check with the zoning maps first.

The Burnett has been hot and cold but is still producing a good run of bream. Mostly taken on fresh baits in the upper section of the river there have been some big bream caught.

Surprisingly some big grunter have shown up of late. They are not in big numbers but the quality is there. The deeper drop offs around the north wall have produced a few good fish and it is well worth a quick stop just to see if you can snare one for yourself.

There has been constant pelagic action around the mouth of the river for the past couple of months and this should remain for as long as the prolific bait schools keep moving in and out of the system. If you’re looking for a spot to catch pike the rocks at the base of the lighthouse are usually crawling with them over winter a small steel slug or a large bait jig will get catch them and if you berley first you can almost guarantee a feeding frenzy.

There have been mixed reports from the Baffle. Some guys have been struggling to get a feed and some guys are getting good feeds of whiting and flathead. June usually sees the flathead fire up and this is a great time to get out the soft plastics, flathead will eat most plastics that are fished on the bottom so as long as you keep the plastic in the zone you’re in with a good shot.

The mouth is the place to fish over winter as the cool water temps tend to push most fish down to the lower reaches. The islands weed beds on the dropping tide is a great place to start, again small plastics like the 3 inch gulp swimming mullet in the pumpkinseed colour is a great choice.