Plenty has been happening around the traps and there’ll be plenty more going on this month.

As a last flourish to an otherwise restrained Autumn, the coast received an extremely heavy yet mercifully brief deluge in early June.

That east coast low had the lot, with hailstorms, waterspouts and even the tornado which sucked up a fair chunk of downtown Lennox Head and spat out a pile of matchwood, bent roofing iron and fibro fragments. Miraculously, injuries were few and minor.

Evans Head received around 220mm of rain in 30 hours and places on the Alstonville Plateau had close to 280mm in less than 12 hours.

A lot of fish – bream, jewfish, flathead, bass and estuary perch – were still well up-river to around Woodburn but there was enough rain to encourage them to head towards the lower reaches and the estuary fishing around Ballina over the next month or so should be quite good as a result.

As it moved further south and seawards, that low-pressure cell stirred up the ocean a little but sea conditions mostly haven’t been too rough, allowing for plenty of beach fishing and a few reasonable days offshore.

The beaches have produced some golden days, with masses of kilo-plus tailor chasing the white pillies right into the shore break on some days and good numbers of school jew hitting worms and soft plastics at other times.

For those happy to don waders, beanies and warm jackets and brave the night chill, there’s been plenty of fun on the beaches after the sun goes down.

Big tailor have been main attraction on beaches including New Brighton, Seven Mile (north of Lennox), Sharps and Angels (between Lennox and Ballina), Patchs, Airforce, Evans Main and Black Rocks, in Bundjalung National Park.

As usual, the biggest tailor like to hunt in relatively quiet, deep water in dead of night and they just love 20cm-plus strips of fresh or salted bonito. A couple of 5/0 or 6/0 suicide hooks joined by a length of 50lb mono wire with about as much again above the top hook seems to do the job pretty well.

So far there haven’t been many migrating mullet schools observed locally, with itinerant beach netters active to the south and the local crews intercepting around 40 tonnes of Richmond fish on their way to sea. So reports of the big jewies that shadow the travelling mullet have been pretty sparse so far, although there’s still some hope.

Bream are yet to hit their straps along the beaches, too, although this month they should be in numbers if we’re going to see many at all.

Dusky flathead have been migrating along the beaches from one estuary to another, with some nice catches from the sand south of Ballina and all the way down to Woody Head. Soft plastics are a great way to have some fun with these fish, which often can be found only metres from shore in the gutters and holes.

Some Winters seem to be better for the beach flatties and this one seems better than most. It’s also common to pick up these duskies when chasing snapper in 10m to 25m over the patchy inshore reefs and shell beds.

The snapper have started out reasonably well with a few good hits before the big wet came through. Before that there were still some Spanish mackerel lurking about and who knows, this month there might even still be a few hurrying back to warmer waters.

But with growing numbers of reds over the inshore reefs and the prospect of more tasty pearl perch moving into the shallower waters, mackerel will become an afterthought or a very interesting by-catch.

What with the RAAF bombing range controversy, the Evans Head Classic and the big outdoor show at Lismore, the place certainly will be jumping in July!