In piscatorial matters, the fishing gods definitely work weekends, if the last couple are anything to go by. Once more we had to put up with mongrel weather which, surprisingly enough, continued into this week.

Offshore fishing should be starting to go gangbusters with the eastern Australia current bringing warm water, and all the life it contains, down from the tropics.

So far this doesn't seem to be the case, with no significant reports of dynamic catches.

Gary Swift and a couple of his mates managed to get outside in the mush that was the offshore swell on Saturday morning in Gary's 22-foot (6.7-metre) boat, but apparently it wasn't worth the hassle.

First stop was the FAD out off Swansea to chase some mahi mahi, or dolphin fish, as they are commonly known.

Unfortunately the ones hanging around out there were around the 500 mark, and as the legal length is 600mm they ended up with an empty esky.

Gary said that they caught a heap of bonito, though, and a stop at a patch of reef on the way home, using fresh bonito strips as bait, produced a couple of medium reds (from 1.2 to 1.4 kilograms) a couple of morwong and some nice nannygai, so they at least got a feed.

Slightly overweight train driver mate Peter Rolfe, holidaying up Port Macquarie way, went out for a charter and backed up the serious lack of fish.

Peter's mob headed south-east from Port and managed one reasonable red and a black spotted pig fish (very nice eating, apparently), while another charter boat from the same company headed north-east and came back with virtually nothing.

The lake has also been hard work for fishermen, with a persistent south-easterly breeze making things tough.

Last issue we reported that Sam Ferguson's crab was 720mm, when in fact the beast was even mightier and measured 780mm.

Steve Townsend also managed to catch a mud crab around the three kilo mark, which when cooked up as Steve's special Singapore chili crab managed to feed no less than seven people.

That's it. Its time to re-spool some reels.