By Jamie Coates
WARM weather on the horizon has anglers chomping at the bit.
If the weatherman has it right, we should see light winds, flat seas and warm temperatures over the next week or so which should be enough to kick most of us into gear.
The offshore fishing was not too bad over the weekend and we saw some good mixed bags of fish from all depths.
Liam and Brock McKinnon headed to the shelf with Lachie Charlton for a drift over the weekend and managed a nice 40kg mako shark for their troubles.
Jesse Davies and I spent a day out over the weekend and managed a nice bag of nannygai from the 55-metre area, along with four nice snapper from Danger Point on the way home.
The shark news was a little quiet, but I did see a few frames in the fish bin, so someone must have found a patch out there.
Inshore fishing has been red hot.
The snapper numbers have been unreal these last few weeks.
There is a real mixed size among them though, with some guys catching countless numbers of undersize fish – some as small as 12cm – where as some others are pulling up and getting straight onto the bigger ones.
The size of the legals has been mixed too, plenty in that 38-48cm range of just size, but some of the bigger fish are in the high 70cm range and even nudging 80cm.
There has been a fair bit of by-catch down there too among the snapper, with salmon, mackerel, squid and crayfish even grabbing the odd pilchard.
The surf fishing over the last few days has been excellent.
We have seen some good catches of shark from the Piccininni area over the last couple of nights but the size has not been all that big.
Most gummys have been less than 5kg, but they are still a great feed.
Snapper numbers for the land-based guys have been good.
Paradise, Nene Valley and Canunda are all spots fishing well at the moment.
Some of those snapper have nudged 3kg too, so that is an excellent sample from our local waters.
The local surf fishing club held a competition over the weekend and there was plenty weighed in. The winners in the junior section were Levi Hunter in first with a 1.73kg snapper and second went to Jasper Sudgen with a nice 1.21kg snapper.
The seniors section was won by Brodie Chuch with a 2.58kg gummy shark and second was Pumba Farrell with a 2.24kg salmon.
There was a great turnout and it is good to see so many up-and-coming juniors getting out there and enjoying their fishing.
Whiting fishos this week have found some great numbers both land based and from the boats.
The average size seems to be fairly good right across the board which is encouraging to see.
The boaties have been doing well from Danger Point, through to the Port MacDonnell Breakwater, into Cape Douglas and to Blackfellows Caves.
The landbased guys have caught some nice fish from the Port MacDonnell jetty, Blackfellows Caves rocks and Cape Douglas.
There are a lot of snapper mixed in with the whiting at the moment, so do not be surprised if you think you have got the whiting from hell.
Drop netters and cray potters have been boating some thumper crays while the weather has been good.
I have seen some absolute crackers from the Racecourse Bay area over the last few weeks.
It seems to be a bit of a hot spot and plenty of very good ground to fish.
Off Port MacDonnell has also fished well and there is no shortage of areas to try out there.
The Glenelg River news has been a bit light on this week with our neighbours over the border plunged into a five-day lockdown, but that did not stop the eager locals down there getting a fish in before tucking the boats away.
There were a handful of reasonable mulloway caught on lockdown eve in the estuary on live mullet.
The bream and estuary perch have been in good supply.
Our local flyfishing guru Gordon Jeffrey managed a dozen or more very nice fish on home tied flies in a shrimp pattern just before the pause, keeping five for table and letting the rest go.
Gordon’s young lad Ben fished the Donovans area over the weekend with Craig Turner and boated several nice bream on the ever reliable cranka crab.
The forecast for the weekend is excellent for just about everyone.
I hope to see plenty of pictures over the coming days and don’t forget, if you want to feature in the report, send your pics to me via our Spot On Fishing Tackle Mount Gambier Facebook page and we will get you in.
Until next week, safe fishing.
