It has been a cold month and it seems like we might be in for a cold and wet winter. The water temperature has dropped dramatically inside, so a lot of summer species have well and truly disappeared. This has left mostly the cold-water species such as mullet, salmon and trevally.

The boys from the Latrobe Valley Fly Club have been fishing McLoughlins and Manns beaches frequently recently and getting good results.

Most of their salmon have been between 25 and 35cm but some of the boys were lucky enough to get onto a school of fish around 2kg.

Heavily weighted Clousers, Polar and Kinky Fibre Minnows in blue, green and white have all been working well. These salmon have also been around McLoughlins entrance and the mangroves in the Shoal Channel.

Glengarry boys Steve Wright and Matt Read had an awesome day chasing these fish on soft plastics and metal slugs recently.

Steve uses a great searching method – jigging – when chasing salmon. He drops a metal slug to the bottom while drifting to find the fish. When he gets onto them he drops the anchor and starts casting plastics or flies.

Steve and Matty ended up with about 60 salmon to 30cm before a school of 2 to 3kg fish swam past. They caught 15 of these bigger fish to finish the day off with a bang.

These salmon aren’t just inside the estuaries. The offshore guys have reported being ‘stalked’ by these big fish when chasing gummies.

Outside, the big salmon have been attacking a lot of different baits and metal lures. Lures have been the most effective, finding salmon to 4kg. These fish have also being taken off the surf.

Surprisingly, a few flathead have stuck around in the estuaries for a bit longer than usual. These stragglers have been quite large, around 50cm and up.

However it’s probably a bit late in the season to be specifically targeting flatties because they’re unlikely to be around in huge numbers inside.

Outside is a different story though. Plenty of flathead have been caught in the 10 to 30cm size range but a few to 50cm have also been reported. Hopefully, these better fish will continue throughout the cooler winter months.

Try the hollow squid and strobe light combo for the gummies too. These have been working a treat and we’re still getting some great gummy reports from customers using this product.

For more information, Contact Will at Allways Angling in Traralgon on 5174 8544.

Steve Wright often jigs metal slices for salmon. When he finds a patch, he anchors up and then casts soft plastics and flies to them.