We’re now halfway through spring and I’m really looking forward to the season to come. Hopefully through this month the water temperature should slowly creep up, and if we are lucky we may even see a few of our regular summer fish coming through later in the month if the currents are right.

Inside our estuaries, predatory fish like mulloway are becoming a lot more active and there are plenty of nice schoolies coming from the deeper holes around the bay. The Karuah River bridge and Middle Island are two hotspots that regularly produce mulloway but it is worth marking any deep hole or drop-off you find and dropping a live bait down around high or low tide. Don’t rule out a daytime mulloway fish either as some of my best jewie sessions have been last-minute decisions when the weather has been too rough to head offshore. Live slimies and squid are my two favourite mulloway baits, and cloudy overcast days definitely fish better if you’re after a daytime jew.

Box Beach and Fingal Beach are worth a throw for mulloway and whiting, and Nelsons Bay Beach is producing some big flathead. Some nice bream will also continue to bite through September on the beachers and break walls.

Sand whiting will now be starting to show up on the beaches and spots like the Fingal spit. Beachworms are top bait and, like most beach fish, the whiting seem to really switch on an hour either side of low or high tide.

It was certainly a good winter for snapper fishing, and that should continue this month. Broughton Island and the front of Fingal island are spots to hit up for snapper, and of course be wary of the marine parks in those areas. Floating baits around Little Island has also been a producer of some quality reds for me before, and Boondelbah Island is also a top night spot for reds.

A few good snapper are also coming off the rocks, with squid and bonito being two top baits. Try to use the lightest sinker you can get away with and present your bait as naturally as possible. There are plenty of bonito hanging around the headlands, islands and bommies and a couple of kingfish mixed in. Before a bottom fishing session at Broughton I always troll some diving lures past Little Island, The Sisters and Cod Rock and more often than not it will produce my bait for the day.

It may also be worth putting a few traps out for the blue swimmer crabs this month, and I believe there is no better crab bait than a bonito frame.

Allmark Mountain is still producing a few big kingfish, snapper and some big bar cod but we should expect the deep water kingies to slow up a bit as we head into November, and the bigger fish come on the bite much closer to shore.