This is a time when I really love to get out on the water. There are considerably fewer people, especially on those early morning starts, and some good fishing can be on offer.

Those braving the elements on the beaches and rocks this month will be rewarded with some bumper-size bream and hopefully some good tailor. Reports recently have been of good fish already showing up and with favourable conditions they should continue.

The best beaches will be the North Shore and Light House Beach.

If you want to find the best spots on Lighthouse, take a drive to the Tacking Point Lighthouse and have a look for gutters along the beach. This time of year the best gutters seem to form closer to Lake Cathie but the lighthouse is a good starting point and will give you a good feel for how the beach is working.

Worms will be the gun bait and don’t be surprised if a few mulloway turn up and suck them down. They’ll be looking to take advantage of the mullet cruising around and shouldn’t be too shy.

On the rocks, the Pyramid at Light House will be worth a try along with any of the usual spots around Point Plomer. Good bags of tailor having been coming from the northern points and the fish have been very willing to take lures as well as baits.

Offshore action should be good this month. With the winds tending to the west over coming months, snapper should be the go with a few quality fish already showing up.

The mackerel have been around, with Nick Parsons tangling with a nice 16kg Spaniard recently off Port Macquarie. Hopefully they’ll stick around a little longer, along with the few cobia that have been showing up.

Leatherjackets have been causing havoc but those who have used wire traces have found they are of good quality.

The flathead grounds off Port and Lake Cathie have been going gangbusters with Paul Burke and Mark Stortenbeker enjoying some excellent fishing lately. I’m a bit disappointed in the boys, though, who both landed some cod but failed to take any pictures.

With some cod showing up this close to shore I’m sure some anglers will be rigging up and heading out to the cod grounds to tangle with some of the good fish off Laurieton.

The rivers have been producing good numbers of bream, flathead and whiting. The weed-soakers have also enjoying some good action of late and this month the luderick sessions should really hot up with spots on the walls at a premium.

Flathead have been starting to get very active and are feeding up in the shallows. Lures and live baits should get some excellent results this month with the edges of drop-offs well worth a try.

There have been plenty of baitfish in the river and if they continue, the fishing should really hot up.

Regular readers will know I’m very fond of bream fishing and if you haven’t been on the water lately then you’ve been missing some sensational sessions. The fish are throughout the system and it’s a matter of finding them in the right spots.

Look for obvious fish-holding structure with a bit of flow and you should enjoy some good sport.

Recently I had the pleasure of having a session with AFC angler and Taree young gun Kris Hickson. It was a real buzz to fish with Kris and show him around the Hastings, although he is pretty familiar with the waterway because he and his father, Jim, often make the drive up from Taree.

Fishing with Kris was a real eye-opener; he has come a long way since I first met him when he was just getting into the sport at age 16. On our outing Kris was always looking for something different and showed that keeping a keen eye open at all times is a key to getting results.

Moving along from spot from spot, Kris eyed a prawn skipping in open water and quickly fired cast, expecting a trevally to be chasing the prawn. The result was a lovely bream which went to join a few of his mates in the Stratos’ livewell. It was a great session and a lot of fun and I’d like to thank Kris and Jim.

I ventured down to Lake Cathie recently with the boat, hoping to tangle with some good bream and a few huge flathead.

The flathead didn’t come but the bream showed up after a little perseverance around good-sized snags and some of the deeper sections of this very shallow waterway.

But what really blew away my mate Burky and me were the two guys we found set up on this little island in the middle of the creek! They’d been dropped off by some mates and certainly had a lot of confidence that they would return and pick them up.

It was a bizarre sight but they told us they do it regularly. It just goes to show that fishing draws different people from all walks of life and we all share the same passion, simply going about it in different ways.

So make the most of it this month and try something new.