This great Winter weather means still days and cloudless skies – but no rain. The fishing has been hard, with most anglers catching very little and the most successful ones have been keeping on the move, looking for fish that are out feeding.

The salmon and tailor which were on the beaches are now entering the lake, so they are providing some exciting fishing for locals and tourists.

Offshore, the focus is on gummy sharks because the cold water has shut down any other fishing options. Good numbers are being caught around Gabo Island with some big fish in the mix.

Gummies are a welcome catch because they taste great and provide good-sized boneless fillets.

Fishing off the beaches has been good with catches of salmon to 3kg and tailor to 2kg. The majority of anglers have been using metal lures but the way the fish have been lately, the size and colour of the lure doesn’t matter because they will eat anything that moves in front of them.

The entrance area has also been fishing well for salmon with one group of clients catching over 60 fish on metal lures. The following day I took out flyfishing anglers who got similar results.

However, salmon really test your patience when fishing fly because once hooked, they take a while to get in.

Silver trevally, tailor and flathead have been caught through the channel out to the John Bull marker. Soft plastic lures have worked well, catching respectable sized flathead.

Yellowfin bream and black bream are being caught in the top and bottom lakes on soft plastics and vibes. For bait fishers, prawns and nippers have been working well.

There are still plenty of big blackfish about, which are often a surprise to lure anglers after a good tussle.

The flathead in the rivers have been good, along with large numbers of bream.

Even though there are plenty of bream around, there is only the odd decent fish among them. However, once we get some decent rain the fishing will fire up right through the lake system.

Bream have also been caught in the Betka River by anglers fishing off the bank with fresh local prawns, especially around dusk.

Estuary perch have been caught around the snags further upstream but getting them to bite has been tricky.