Fresh south-westerlies and cool mornings are the norm at the moment but some good fishing is still available to those who brave the elements.

This time last year Pambula Lake was fishing extremely well with an abundance of salmon, trevally, bream and tailor. These guys had a chew for most of the winter so let’s hope this season will be the same.

All indications point to this happening. The last session I had at Pambula, only a few weeks back, yielded 40-odd fish. Bream, trevally snapper and tailor made up the bag. All were taken on soft plastics in the faster water. Berkley Bass Minnows rigged on a 1g Darter finesse jighead was the gun method. Fish them slowly in the shallower water and I guarantee some action won’t be far away.

Merimbula Lake has slowed down somewhat but good trevally and the odd bream are being caught in the main channel from the bridge to the entrance. There are still some ripper tailor up the back lake – fish early in the morning with small shiners for best results.

The flatties have gone quiet with the cool water but try fishing the shallower water with medium hard-bodied lures if you’re still keen to catch one. This method has produced in the past.

The Bega River, just north of Tathra, will still hold good yellowfin bream from Thompsons to the road bridge. Expect a few estuary perch in the same water as they head down stream. Fish the rock walls and the pylons of the road bridge using soft plastics with light jigheads and a lot of finesse.

You really want the lure in the strike zone for as long as possible so once the softie is a few metres away from the structure, wind it in – don’t waste time fishing dead water – and cast again. You will certainly get more fish by doing this.

The beaches down this way always produce during winter. Expect bigger salmon in the colder water with fish over 3kg quite common. All the beaches will hold fish but Tura has been a standout lately with some deeper gutters up the north end.

Some good bream have been caught here, too, with pipis and beachworms doing the damage. The salmon have responded well to lures, pillies and bluebait.

The rocks have yielded quality drummer of late and this will continue for some months yet. Pigs up to 4kg are common with cunjevoi, red crabs and bread the best baits.

There are some nice bream and blackfish in the washes with lightly weighted tuna cubes fooling the bream. Schools of salmon are patrolling the outer edges of the wash zones and ganged pilchards or lures will get the desired results.

The offshore fishing will be slow this month with the cooler water but spasmodic catches of snapper can be expected on the inshore reefs. With the cuttlefish run in full swing, a big red is always a possibility. Horseshoe Reef and Lennards Island are worth a look. Fresh cuttlefish or squid would be the choice of baits.

The game fishing scene will be almost non-existent due to the water conditions with the only real possibility southern bluefin tuna. Over the past few winters some good SBT have been caught.

If the conditions were a little more stable maybe more boaties could get out there and target these guys. Trolled skirted lures have worked well in the past; you cover a lot of ground, which is needed when chasing these speedsters of the deep.