The slowing current offered the bottom donkers a shot at the deep deep reefs and there were a large number of blue eye cod, bass groper, pink ling and solid gemfish pulled over the gunwales.

The deep structure known as Brown’s Mountain, up off Sydney, has been holding good numbers and sizable blue eye with a couple of them caught last week going well over the 15kg mark.

Closer to home Stanwell Park Canyons and Kiama Canyons have had lots of big pink ling and bass groper and gemmies but no hapuka yet.

There have been the odd reports of small yellowfin and albacore but these have all been very widespread at this stage.

Snapper have been playing hard to get with all the deeper reefs laden with filthy tackle stealing barracouta.

Despite plenty of reddies showing up on the sounders, getting to them has proved very difficult owing the hordes of ‘couta.

Best method was to anchor up and burley and throw very lightly weighted baits down through the burley trail.

The run of flathead has gone from strength to strength with all the local marks holding good sized fish.

Stanwell Park produced the best size last weekend and there were quite a few gummy sharks and flounder in the mix up there as well.

Beaches were firing for all species with some great blue nosed bream about as well as flathead and whiting.

There were a lot of mulloway about as well but most again are only of school size.

Josh Jones knocked off his first jewfish last week on a solo mission with his fish going around the 8kg mark.

There have been a lot of anglers chasing them on soft plastics of late with great success both during the day and of a night time with the Pro Lure 130mm fishtails being the most popular at the moment.

Colour-wise Mangrove Gold, Pearl Sardine and Baby Bass have been the pick of the colours locally.

Email: garywade@tpg.com.au