One of the most common question I’ve been asked recently is, “are the whiting on”?

It seems that out of every week, there’s only 1 or 2 days where I hear of good whiting reports, whilst the rest of the week seems to be pretty ordinary. For whiting that is!

The best report I have heard was from one angler whom got their bag limit of 30 between three anglers and kept catching and releasing for the rest of the day.

On the good days I’ve heard of plenty of bags of 10 fish and then you’re some fives and sixes as well.

The one thing that does seem to make the different is the bait. The Bass yabbies or nippers seem to be the go. Anglers that want to get a bag of whiting need to have the nippers; those using other baits are just getting a couple of odd whiting or none. The sizes are between 28-32cm on average.

However there’s some fish getting around in the 40cm+, but not as many.

The kingfish are back in force, just like in 2008.

However there seems to be either a lot more of them or that anglers are getting better at catching them.

The biggest numbers of these fish have been getting caught at Port Welshpool, however there are still really good numbers of them in Port Albert all the way through to Manns Beach and Mcloughlins.

They are taking baits such as squid very readily, however if you want some fun, get some big jig head and a packet of jerk-shad pattern soft plastics and you will not be disappointed.

Some times they will take dead baits, whilst other times they wont, and sometimes they want a lures moving as fast as you can possibly get it, whilst other times they hit it at a slow pace or on the drop.

You really need to mix it up a bit to have the most success, don’t just stick to one idea or method. Most of the kingies have been just undersize to just over size. 60cm is the size limit, so most are falling between 55-65cm.

There are loads of toothy sharks offshore at the moment; they range between school sharks, bronze whalers hammerheads and makos. Remember after January 31 all makos must be released.

Fresh fish fillets are the way to go if you want to get good numbers of sharks offshore, otherwise pilchards and squid are the next best option.

Even catch a few flatties and sacrifice one or two for fresh bait. It works well. There’s some absolute monster sharks around, with some anglers reporting hook ups with with white pointers or massive bronze whalers.

There’s loads of hammerheads and school sharks up to 1m in length around, which make for an excellent feed.

For more information, contact Will at Allways Angling in Traralgon on 51748544.