It’s that time of year again when the Bemm becomes a bit of a sleepy hollow with not too many anglers out on the water, apart from on the weekends.

Despite some very wintery days the weather has been pretty good overall with some excellent quality bream landed. Popular areas have been around the mouth of the river, but when the wind blows Siberia has been a good option. They have been taking a variety of baits with sand worm and local prawn the most popular. A few fish have also been caught on garfish.

There has also been plenty on offer for the lure fisherman with ‘vibes, accounting for plenty of fish in the lake. I have used a variety of different makes and models with most of them working well, the only thing that I have found is that the darker colours seem to be working better at present. It’s even got to the point where a lighter coloured version that isn’t working can be coloured in with a black permanent marker and then catch fish. As far as lures go, the vibes have a lot going for them as they cast well and really don’t require as much finesse as a soft plastic. For any bait fisherman looking to branch out and have a go with lures, vibes are a great place to start.

With the entrance closed there have been some big tailor locked in and they have spread pretty much throughout the whole system. Anglers casting lures up high in the river for bream and estuary perch have been shredded by some of the larger versions and there have also been reports of smaller bream being bitten in half in the main lake. The biggest one I have seen weighed in tipped the scales at over 8lb and its possible that there are even larger ones there that would be incredibly hard to land on light gear.

The luderick have slowed up again as they did around this time last year; we probably need the entrance open to let a new run of fish in. A few of the locals have been catching a nice feed of gars when the weather has been still and sunny using sandworm.

The winter months are usually the time to target big salmon on the beaches and early indications are that it should be a good option. Salmon around 2kg have been caught at most of the beaches using pilchards and surf poppers. A few tailor have been mixed in as well.

Winter at the Bemm can often be a great place as the temperature is usually a couple of degrees warmer than some of the more western fisheries. With the lake still relatively low and the surf starting to fire there should be some good fishing on offer for all anglers.