The end of summer has arrived and in comes a new season, but no one should be upset or depressed as there is still plenty of great fishing to be had.

Over the past month, the flathead have been around in great numbers and will stay around until the end of June and perhaps even well into May, depending on water temperature.

Like last month, the sand flats around St Margarets Island fished really well with soft plastics, such as Berkley Minnows and Squidgy fish. The size of the flatties seemed to drop a bit this month; however plenty of anglers were still getting good bags up to a healthy eating size of 45cm.

What has really surprised me has been how year round the trevally fishing as been. It seems that nearly every angler that goes to Mcloughlins at the moment catches a least one really big trevally, 45cm+, whether they’re using bait or plastics. Pippi’s and blue bait are doing great if you’re bait fishing and all good flathead plastics are working equally as well for the trevally.

In the shoal channel stretching from the entrance though to the snapper hole has been great for pike or snook. The snook are getting caught by anyone throwing around a lure whether it’s a softy or metal; however, make sure you’re on the bottom if you want to catch one of these predators.

The estuary perch have been very hard to catch this month, and I think it could have something to do with the pressure they’re getting. The perch that are there seem very shy and you really have to persist if you want to catch one of these great sports fish.

The salmon have had another run inside the entrance as well, just recently and they have been of mixed sizes between 30-50cm.

What can I say, we have had some very windy days of late and, even though it is autumn, it is still windy. Perhaps we will have to wait another month until we get the classic calm autumn weather that we have all been waiting for.

However, I do know of a couple of anglers who had the luxury of getting some great mid week calm days and managed to get out the entrance. All the reports were positive and the managed to catch at least two gummy sharks each and a variety of toothy sharks whilst drifting over the sand in close.

The snapper have been around out on the reef but they are only averaging 1-2kg. This should change as we should get the autumn run of big snapper soon in the next couple of weeks, and these won’t be small.

There’s still some really big bronzies in fairly close, as I’m still being inundated with reports of guys towing out baits off the surf and getting absolutely smashed by huge sharks. So for those who like big stuff, it might pay to stay in fairly close the next time you get outside the entrance.

There’s been another run of elephant fish during March on McLoughlins surf beach, and I have heard of between 20 and 30 elephant fish landed. But remember the new regulations have now come in and you are allowed only 1 elephant fish per person per day.

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