It’s that time of year again when everything starts to spread out and the good fishing fires up throughout the entire system.

Bait fishermen have been doing well on black bream around the entrance to the backwater and the junction of the Genoa and Wallagaraugh rivers. What these fish lack in size, they make up for in numbers. Fishing the same area with soft plastic lures is a different story. I’ve recently tried every colour and style of lure for an hour without any touches from a bream. It was definitely time to move on.

Plenty of small flathead have been taken in the murky water with the Red Rum Longtail Minnows.

No doubt there are still plenty of big bream in the rivers but many of the quality fish have started to spread out. They’re moving through the top lake and southwest arm making their way through The Narrows and out into the main lake. These fish have been providing local anglers with some great angling with fish of 1kg not uncommon. Mixing in with them have been quality yellowfin bream.

While fishing this section of the system I saw three majestic jewfish in 8ft of water. Each fish looked to be 5 to 6ft long. Ron Brymer was lucky enough to land a 22lb mulloway near Gypsy Point in late October, using a silver fox Squidy Fish soft plastic. The fish dragged him 500m downstream from where he hooked up and took some 40 minutes to land.

A number of big flathead have been caught in The Narrows with one fish, close to 1m long, caught and released on a soft plastic lure. Plenty of quality flathead have spread out through the Goodwin Sands area with anglers doing well on both lures and fresh bait. Yellowfin bream have also been caught over the shallows – dusk and dawn has been best with lures or fresh bait. There are stacks of good-sized silver trevally - one particular fish, around 1kg, grabbed a soft plastic meant for a bream, much to the surprise of one angler.

The fishing offshore for sand flathead has been excellent when weather conditions allow. There have been plenty of windy days so early start’s are important.