The great autumn weather has felt more like summer than winter, with a good day of rain to keep things flowing, but with winter knocking on the door it won’t be long before it cools right down. The town has been busy with plenty of visitors to the area and with the good weather, there have been plenty of fishing options.

Fishing the local beaches has been good with bream and whiting caught and good numbers of salmon starting to build as we head towards winter.

Early winter is a great time to fish the beach for mulloway, and many good fish are caught as the mullet start their migration north, with the mulloway in tow. Good fishing has been had from the rocky headlands with some big black and silver drummer caught.

On the past month, the fishing out wide has been excellent with striped marlin, albacore tuna, and yellowfin tuna caught. This time of year brings some of the best weather for heading out wide. As yet there has been no sign of southern bluefin tuna, but it shouldn’t be too long before they make an appearance.

Yellowtail kingfish have been caught, but are at times difficult to find – other times all you can see is kingfish! Troll and cover lots of ground to find the fish while keeping an eye out for birds or any sign of fish. Good-sized snapper are around and fish caught by anglers who use fresh bait are unsurprisingly catching plenty of quality fish are been caught by anglers fishing with soft plastic lures.

Some leatherjackets, morwong, and other reef fish have also been caught along with some good-sized tiger and sand flathead on the flathead grounds. This year the water temperature is warmer than usual, so fingers crossed the fishing will hang around a bit longer as well. The local estuaries have fished well; with the water temperature still warm there are a variety of fishing options still on offer.

Sand whiting continue to be caught, along with dusky flathead. As the water cools, the bream start to fire up and silver trevally and tailor start turning up in numbers. Even though it’s getting a bit cold to be out fishing all night, this time of year sees some good mulloway caught in the local estuaries.