Wes is away for a month in America so I hope readers don’t mind me doing his column this issue. He will resume next month back to normal.

I guess the main thing on everyone’s mind at the Ninety Mile Beach is salmon. There are also still some good winter gummy sharks getting caught however we will talk about that later. First we will go through some spinning for salmon.

The big salmon have turned up early this year, and if that’s anything to go by, we are going to have a sensational salmon season. I personally think the most fun way to chase salmon on the beach is too take a lighter graphite spin rod and walk the beaches casting metal lures.

You can still use a normal surf rod if you want, but you will probably get sick of it after about 10 casts as they are heavy, bulky and not made for casting lures all day.

The salmon have been averaging 2kg this month, and there are plenty around 3kg or 60cm long. I have a couple of favourite metal lures to use, but basically you just need a 25-40g metal lure. Colours aren’t all that important, but blue, green and silver are all proven colours.

Choosing what beach to go to is important. Basically you want some swell and rough breaking water in close enough to cast to. So if you get to a beach, and it’s dead flat or has a gutter 200m out, it might pay to keep driving to the next beach until you find more fishable water.

Modern graphite rods with light braided line on them will allow you to cast well over 50m and maybe even 80m if the conditions are right. Recently we had some very wild weather which completely changed the beaches. The surf went very brown and dirty for a few days and nearly all the sand was washed off the beach.

Obviously this wasn’t a good week to fish, but the week earlier we were smashing plenty of 3kg plus salmon on lures.

There have still been good amounts of gummy sharks caught at night. It’s cold, but if you put in the hours you might get the results. In the past month, there has been at least 3-4 gummies caught every week, so they’re still there despite the cold water.

Fresh bait will increase your chances, and there’s plenty of salmon around to catch for bait, so this hasn’t been too hard to get.

This year has already produced some huge salmon on the Ninety Mile Beach and I wouldn’t be surprised if some over 4.5kg get caught this year.

So get some metal lures and a spin rod and get down there and give it a go. It’s one of the most fun forms of fishing you can do.

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