We’ve had a couple of up and down months of fishing in Portland. The icy cold weather, winds and large swells hit us hard and made the fishing trips turn into a real challenge. The tuna season was reasonable, and the number of fish caught was good when anglers could move. There was no need to travel far.

Tuna are still out there, but most charters have made their way back to Melbourne by now. Local anglers are pretty over it by now and start looking at options for the new season. When the weather has been kind, some very nice fish have been caught in the deep water.

Very nice blue-eye are around the shelf area. The 130m mark has seen some very impressive Tassie trumpeter over 10kg, big flathead over 2kg and awesome snapper around 4-7kg. There’s been the chance of a nice gummy or school shark. Bridgewater Bay has also been fishing well when the weather permits, with good hauls of flathead and sharks.

This side of Lawrences Rock has been killed by small ‘couta and pinkie snapper, which make it hard to fish the bottom. When you can, pass them. We should see flathead around, and big whiting. There are large schools of salmon around, which can be caught in the boat or off the land. Flicking lures around, blue baits generally work the best.

The Lee Breakwater has been very quiet for the last couple of months, apart from ‘couta, salmon and the odd calamari. Locals are itching to see the breakwater improve and can’t wait to see the first big snapper arrive, then the chase will be on. Anglers have had fun with salmon cruising around Yellow Rock and towards Bridgewater. Some of the salmon have been up to 3kg. Lures and lightweight baits seem to work well in those areas.

For the fishers chasing bream, the Fitzroy and Surry rivers have been fishing well. The Fitzroy has seen perch and the odd mulloway. Of course, the mighty Glenelg River is a fantastic place to fish and has the chance of big bream, big perch and mulloway.

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The new boat ramp is working nicely and saved a lot of congestion, this tuna season.

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We’ll start to see some good mixed bags of table fish as the weather improves.