As usual with this, the rivers along the coast get a hammering from those just needing their fix.

All the hype these past couple of weeks has focused on the tuna action over at Portland and Port Fairy, where the summer run of school fish have made their way into the shallows in search of the tiny bait fish that are around this time of year.

When these fish are fixated on the small bait, they can be very, very hard to tempt into eating anything so dropping leader sizes and lure sizes are the real key.

The majority of anglers that love chasing these predominately smaller run of fish choose to use small stick baits that are either floating or sinking and cast them deep into the schools and work them back to the boat.

The beauty about this style of fishing is that a lot of the time you're actually watching these fish eating your lures.

Scott Gray, Colby Lesko and Mitch Chapman saw this first-hand just last week when they had an insane session with 14 fish taken both on surface and sub-surface stick baits.

Triple hook-ups and screaming drags were a constant thing this day for the boys.

It was quite rough that day and spotting the fish first up was difficult but the other boats that were trolling made it easy to find first and then it was a matter of working out which way the schools were swimming and positioning your boat upwind and drifting to them without spooking them and putting them down.

Nomad Riptide 105 and Molix 120mm stick baits were the standouts when they were super fussy. If you're looking to troll some lures for them, you can't go past the old favourites in the Pakula Micro Uzi and the Black Magic jetsetters, which have accounted for numerous amounts of school fish. The Crystal Flash in the Pakulas is the go-to colour when they are inshore.

Also at Portland, there has been some great snapper caught along North Shore by anglers fishing pilchards and soft plastics. Michael and Adam Linke, along with Matt Cameron, bagged out on Tuesday with the best going 57cm caught by young Adam on a soft plastic.

The Glenelg River has been producing lots of small mulloway from 40-60cm, with the odd bigger model thrown in for good measure.

The Sapling Creek area and down from there seems to be the hot spot, as well as Taylors Straight.

Anglers fishing with live mullet have had the best results with some even reporting that the bream have been picking at the livies on the bottom. Squid strips and the humble pilchard have also been taking a few fish lately so it's worth having a few options in your arsenal just in case they aren't taking your first offering. Unfortunately, when there are small fish in the river you just have to wade through the smaller models to get to the bigger fish.

For those who haven't caught a mulloway before, this is a great learning experience of how they take a bait and how they fight also.

The Hopkins River has slowed down a fair bit but persistence will prove worth it when a good one comes along. With the water so low, it's very important to take care when navigating by boat, as I have witnessed boats driving directly over submerged reefs that are only a foot below the surface.

The major one to look out for is the Bay of Biscay just up from Deakin Uni in the middle of the river. The safe passage through is if you try to line up the two red buoys on the left-hand side of the river with your left-hand side of the boat and stick 10m off that or the other is simply sticking 10 or so metres off the right-hand side rock walls.

The bream have slowed up as I mentioned but there has still been some great fish coming out of the system mostly from Jubilee Park to Rowans Lane area and the odd decent fish along Pelican Point and the ski run.

Cut mullet and live crabs have been the standout for the bait anglers, which have been fished unweighted.

For the lure casters, it's been the new Zman Slim Swimz in 3" in the Smelt colour.

Barry Johnson took a first-time soft plastic angler out and he caught a perch first cast and a 70cm mulloway all on the same lure.

Cranka Crabs have also been accounting for plenty of fish when they are pushing up onto the walls in the middle of the day as the sun gets higher.

With another dodgy weekend coming up, the offshore brigade will find it hard to get out for a feed so I reckon it will be the rivers where all the action is going to take place. Hopefully, it's a wrong forecast but time will tell.

Until next week, tight lines and best of luck.