With fewer people around, less fish are being caught at the moment but this is no indication as to the quality of fishing available. Some good trevally and flathead are being caught around the foreshore and the main jetty. The best bait is either bluebait or prawns.

The main sandbank near the entrance has been fishing well for yellowfin bream, trevally and flathead with the pick of the baits being nippers. These can be pumped from the surrounding sandbanks at low tide.

Some good catches are coming in around Goodwin Sands. For best results, fish in 1ft of water at sunrise or dusk using nippers and sandworms. The main targets are yellowfin bream, King George whiting, sand whiting and the odd black bream.

The Narrows are fishing well for pinkie snapper to 35cm with a few flathead also being caught. One group of holidaying anglers had consistent success on bream and flathead trolling The Narrows with pink Lively Lures Micro Mullet.

An 8kg jewfish was landed during the local fishing competition in the front lake. This seems to be a common size at the moment.

The Betka River has been fishing a bit slow of late, with only the odd big flathead to report.

Off the beaches, salmon to 2.5kg are turning up with most fish being caught on poppers and bluebait. When the weather allows, those venturing offshore have been catching flathead and gummy shark with the odd kingfish grabbing the bottom baits.

Of particular interest is the way lurefishing has exploded in popularity in the last two years. Lurefishing the estuaries for flathead is nothing new. Flathead have been caught on lures, such as Mr Twisters, for decades. More recently, bream have been targeted with great success on lures. These days, the market is flooded with a multitude of soft plastics, jigheads, hard-bodied lures and more! It’s enough to make you wonder whether you need a university degree. Not withstanding the massive range of options though, fishing is only as complicated and technical as you want to make it.

A recent session fishing Mallacoota for bream really demonstrated this. Starting with 1/16oz jigheads and Firebait Longtail Minnows, a few fish were caught. Changing to resin head jigheads resulted in still more fish. Then we switched to 1/24oz jigheads, which seemed to be the pick of the three weights. Persistence with this technique would have rattled up a few fish by the end of the day.

While many anglers might be happy with these results, they didn’t compare to the effectiveness of an older, more traditional approach. Given the right set of circumstances, like shallow water and willing fish, it’s very hard to beat the 5cm Rapala Floating Minnow. Some days, the casting and retrieving a hard-bodied lure absolutely dominates and should not be under estimated!

So to all you anglers out there who are confused by the ever increasing range of soft plastics on the market, don’t forget your box of hard-bodied minnow lures.

Good fishin’.