Now is a great time of year to be fishing locally, especially in Western Port. The large gummies on offer around the Western entrance and inside the port are excellent with some seriously-sized females moving in to pup. Fishing fresh baits along the bottom curve of a channel or gutter will generally lead to tangling with one of these fish, it just comes down to timing the stage of the tide.

There have been some nice school snapper caught in the port by anglers fishing the cunjie ground and rubble through areas like the north arm out from Hastings, and across towards the corals in similar bottom terrain. Fresh squid, pilchard and yakka have been the best-chance baits.

Customer Trent landed a ripper gummy fishing along the edge of the main western channel near Vetnor. Fishing chunks of freshly caught yakka and trevally provided Trent with the opportunity to release this 25kg fish.

Customer Dan also landed a ripper gummy fishing with mate Seb. The guys were fishing around the Western entrance where they found some nice patches of reef and fresh bait in the form of wrasse and parrotfish. Fishing nearby to the reef resulted in a lovely shark of around 20kgs. Large chunk baits tend to ward most small pickers away in this environment, and leave plenty for the larger gummies to hone in on.

Customer Nigel has been fishing the North arm in Western port where he has consistently been landing snapper up to 70cm. Nigel has been fishing small patches of cunjie in 10 – 13m of water. Most of the school fish have been sized from 55 – 65cm and have been taken on pilchard