It was a rather a bizarre winter, fish-wise. Above-average water and air temperatures made fishing even more of a hit-and-miss scenario than it usually is this time of year.

Tailor were around earlier than usual, but the typically ubiquitous Australian salmon has been noticeably absent.

Hook, Line & Sinker recalls winter excursions where salmon schools were that thick you could almost walk across them, but reports of such numbers have been lacking this year.

Bream is one winter staple that continues to be fishing well, both in the lake and ocean.

Old mate Billy Williams was down at his favourite stretch of coastline, Birdie Beach-Red Ochre, on the weekend, and the story was bream, tailor and as many drummer as you wanted to catch.

Billy and a couple of mates were out last Saturday evening, on what was one of the warmest winter nights ever.

Chasing jewfish on the beach with a variety of baits, they "only" managed to catch bream on beach worms and tailor on pillies and slabs of mullet.

The biggest bream was around 1.9 kilos, mind you, while the best tailor they got to the sand was a very healthy 3.8kg.

A visit to the rocks on Sunday morning produced more tailor, one salmon and what Bill described as a plague of pigs (drummer) caught on cabbage, mullet gut and prawns.

Flathead continue to fish well, if you can find them. Don't be afraid to use burley if you're bait fishing in the lake, but be prepared for the odd surprise.

Michael Morris, from Bonnells Bay, was out on the lake on Sunday, burleying and bait-fishing, and had caught himself a flathead, a couple of bream and some tailor when something large started to play around in his burley trail.

Mike reckons suddenly there were bait fish leaping out of the water when the next minute his 'heave rod', with five kilo and a large slab of mullet on it, bent over and he lost a hundred metres of line in no time at all.

Tightening the drag to try to stop the beast only resulted in the inevitable bust-off.

That's it. Happy Father's Day to all the dads.