Magic Mallacoota by Will Thursfield

The pristine estuary of Mallacoota truly is a special place. Located near the border of Victoria and NSW in the Wilderness Coast, it is a trek, but once there is an amazing fishing destination.

The fact that it is roughly 500km from Melbourne and 600km from Sydney, along with the sheer size of the inlet, means that fishing year round is excellent. Not only is there fish a plenty, there is lots of genuine trophy fish here and accessible to all anglers. The mainstays are bream and flathead but the variety of other species in here is awesome.

Fish such as trevally, whiting, tailor, salmon, garfish and even mulloway can make up a bag on any given day.

I fished here in winter and was blown away with the fish we caught. With water temperature hovering around 11°C you wouldn't expect great fishing, but that's exactly what we got!

Imagine what it can be like in autumn.

VARIETY

In three days fishing I notched up ten species of fish. Not bad going for cool conditions. All fish bar garfish were taken on the lures, and majority off the piers as well.

On one memorable night I caught 40 odd tailor from the town wharf, along with a couple of nice flathead. It was mind-blowing stuff. If you like eating fresh fish then putting a good feed on the table day to day is a real possibility here.

LAND-BASED OPTIONS

What I like about this place is that great fish can be taken from the shore almost anywhere. There are countless jetties throughout the system and they all hold the possibility of ripping fish.

In front of the camping grounds near the mouth one can catch flathead, whiting, Australian salmon, trevally and at times a large number of garfish. The main wharf in town is a great place to flick a few plastics around. There is a nice drop off here that can yield really nice bream and flatties, along with the usual others.

On sunset you can catch huge numbers of tailor here. Great fun for the family! Further up the inlet jetties are found with some big flatties around. If you feel like stretching the legs then a good idea is to just walk around and give each of these jetties 10 or so minutes and move onto the next if it's quiet. You are bound to get a few this way. There are many options here and good fish are to be had by those in a boat and those who are not. Not everywhere can boast this sort of action.