Summer, the time when anglers of any kind love. It is when the weather is fine all the time and anglers don’t have to worry about dodging the raindrops.

It is time for trout, salmon, flathead, bream, trevally and any other fish under the sun. Summer spells fishing on the northwest.

Northwest anglers are getting very happy as the Australian salmon are on fire. The places to be fishing are Leven River, Marrawah, Arthur River, Inglis River, Forth River, Port Sorell, Mersey River and all the good surf beaches.

All methods are good with the best baits being pilchards and squid for surf fishing and bluebait, whitebait and squid for the estuaries. As for lures, silver slices, soft plastics (especially 3” minnows and sandworms), deep divers, Tassie Devils and Sea Rock 7 from River2Sea, fire tiger coloured lures (which is fluoro green, fluoro orange and black) and deep divers tend to work better.

With flies, try anything bright and colourful mainly fluoro colours but anything that imitates blue or whitebait would work well. The 1/0 White Clouser is as good as anything.

In a recent trip to Port Sorrell we caught three good sized salmon between 4-5lbs each. Plenty of other anglers are catching big fish at Port Sorrell making it the salmon hotspot.

Huntsman Lake has been in and out of the list of hotspots on the Northwest. Some good bags have come from here, especially out of boats, one of which had five solid trout, the biggest being around 3lbs.

As for lures soft plastics are the best bet but hardbodied deep divers can also account for some good bags. With mouldy cheese coloured soft plastics the pick of the colours.

The whitebait have been pushing hard in to most rivers with the Inglis and Duck rivers being standouts. This has been getting the searun trout very excited and I have heard lots of reports of good 5-6 fish bags being caught at many different rivers along the coast.

There is also a lot of talk about big 6-7lb trout coming out of the Arthur River. Places to try are Inglis, Forth, Arthur, Duck, Mersey, Henty, little Henty and Pieman rivers.

Fishing with both flies and lures has been effective.

Best lures have been soft plastics, silver slices, F7 Rapalas, Daiwa Shiners and anything else that resembles whitebait.

Patterns that have been catching fish are light green, grey or white Matuka but any other flies that imitate whitebait work as well.

The silver trevally is back as usual in December. Places to catch these hard fighting fish is the Leven River, Port Sorell, Forth River and Mersey River. Bait, lure and fly offerings all work on these fish. Best bait is chicken, but bluebait works fine.

Lures to try are soft plastics like Berkley T-Tails and 3” Minnows. Best fly patterns are Crazy Charlies, Deceivers and Clouser Minnows in many different colours and sizes.

A good set of polaroids are sometimes handy when fishing for trevally using any method, because some fish hang around in close and can be easily spotted, but are mostly smaller fish.

Trout fishing in summer on the Northwest coast is fantastic. My best bets are Lake Burbury, Lake Mackintosh, Huntsman Lake, Lake Rosebery, Lake Rowallan. Many rivers on the Northwest are also worth a try, especially when the weather is warm and settled.

Things to try are your usual baits like worms and wattle grubs. Lures like the jointed Rapala and CD7s, Tassie Devils, soft plastics such as 3” minnow (mouldy cheese and pumpkinseed being the stand out colours).

As for the flyfishers it is time for dry flies and trying to match any hatch.