OPINION: Cool change drives fishers north

The cooler temperatures have definitely hit us now as winter is just a few weeks away.

The cold weather down south has certainly encouraged many people to hit the road and head up here.

Luckily, there are plenty of options for fishing in the cooler weather here and it can really bring on certain fish to feed in higher numbers.

Spanish mackerel, whiting, dolphin fish and blue swimmer crabs are a few species that you can expect to fire up in this change.

The Exmouth Gulf tends to be more productive in general as well, with cooler temperatures inviting more action.

This week we had Peter Howell from Melbourne visit Exmouth to wrap some boats with artwork, but he just had to also get out and have a few days testing the waters.

He managed to land some solid fish including ruby jobfish, cod, gold-band jobfish, rankin, pearl perch, coronation trout, and yellowfin tuna.

Needless to say, he had a good trip! Pete has been coming here for years and with the results from this trip, we're sure he will be back soon.

The winds have been strong one day and none the next.

Cloud cover brought a few drops to the town of Exmouth, but poured on the west side in certain areas.

The overcast days haven't been great for sight casting, yet we've had some guys reporting that the fly fishing around the west side from the shore has been great.

Big tides with the new moon make the waters murky in the gulf, but anglers are lucky that the west side has such clear options.

Anglers walking the shoreline on the rising tide have reported good responses from queenfish and spangled emperor.

Exmouth is renowned for having a diverse range of species, with anything from barramundi to billfish and more than 40 different game species.

It also has five species of rock lobster, blue swimmer crabs, mud crabs, squid, prawns, bread-and-butter species like flathead, bream and whiting, not to mention the great reef species like coral trout and red emperor.

We have seen tailor this far north too, but a catch last week got some serious attention when Australian salmon (usually a southern species) were caught off Learmonth Jetty.