Winter is a great time of year to visit Mallacoota as the place is a lot quieter. Without all the boats on the water it’s a lot easier to find somewhere on your own to wet a line.

Over the past month we have had some glorious weather with a fortnight of dead flat sea conditions which allowed the locals to get out there and chase a feed of flathead and gummy shark. Some great catches were made for those anglers who were able to get away from the annoying schools of leatherjackets which bite off sinkers, hooks and anything they can get a hold of. The sand flathead have been a good size with fish to 3lb, and the gummy sharks can be caught anywhere from the front of Gabo is down to Quarry Beach.

The water temperature is starting to cool right off, hovering around 15-16ºC at the moment, and it’s only going to get colder. The salmon are turning up on all the local beaches and over the next month the schools will start entering the lake. They are great fun on light gear but on the whole they are voracious eating machines, probably causing more damage eating anything in front of them such as small bream and perch. And with no commercial value the schools get bigger every year.

The weed beds haven’t yet grown back after the floods of 2010, but hopefully they are on their way back as they are such a great source of food for the fish in the lake. The sand at the entrance has really been shifting with the entrance moving its way down towards Bastion Point. It has plenty of depth, and as long as the seas are calm there is no problem heading out to sea.

The colder water has seen good numbers of silver trevally enter the system. Plenty of fish are being caught around the 1kg mark and they are great fish to catch, putting up a hard fight all the way to the boat. Some big tailor have also entered the lake but landing one is not easy. Nine times out of 10 they end up biting you off.

Plenty of flathead are still being caught with the common size around the 40cm mark. Bigger fish over 50cm are a lot harder to come by.

The black bream are starting to feed up prior to spawning and are being caught in both the top and bottom lake. They need to do a bit of feeding as both the yellowfin and black bream are not as heavy for their size as when they are in top condition. As usual there are plenty of smaller bream upstream above Gypsy Point with some decent flathead also being caught.