The Lake Macquarie City Council contest, which starts on Friday and runs through to Sunday, offers prizes worth more than $20,000, courtesy of Berkley and ABU Garcia.

Categories include the biggest fish caught for adults and children and there is also a prize pack for the fish that goes closest to the mystery length. All competitors, regardless of results, go into the draw for $3000 worth of prizes. Entries closed on Wednesday.

The contest will be held across Lake Macquarie, from land or boat, beaches or inside the lake, with bream, flathead, tailor and whiting targetted in a catch and release format.

Sean Griffith, from Fishermans Warehouse at Marks Point, said flathead and whiting had been recent highlights of fishing in the region.

"It's great timing for the comp because the fish seem to have shown up on cue," Griffith said.

"The boys have been catching some nice flathead, and surprisingly enough on prawns.

"I suppose after the prawn run, everything is looking for a feed of prawns.

"It was a slow winter for flathead and with the comp on this weekend in the lake, it's nice to see the flathead come on. There should be some nice catches.

"There's still leather jackets kicking around and still some big salmon getting caught off the beach, all along Blacksmiths.

"And the whiting have shown up and there's been some great catches. One guy showed us some pictures and actually dropped some off for us to eat, so that's been pretty good.

"They are catching them on the beach, in the channel and on the sand flats. They have pretty much shown up everywhere and they are catching them on the live tube worms. They have been slaying them.

"We got some nice kings up along the rock faces on Monday, from Swansea back to Caves Beach, all the way down to Mawson's. We also picked up a few fish off the artificial reef off Swansea.

"There's some half-decent weather for the comp and there's a lot of people entering, so it should be a good weekend for fishing."

For more info visit www.letsfishlakemac.com.au.

Teralba Lakesiders Fishing Club will look to an even bigger and better junior teams tournament next year after a "huge success" on the weekend.

The competition, which was open and free to all competitors 16 years and under, had a local division and another for those outside the region, who were able to fish anywhere in Australian waters and still be part of the contest.

Teams of four, with an adult manager, competed in the catch and release tournament where brag-mat photographs of fish were used to submit results.

Teralba Lakesiders president John Thoroughgood, whose team won, said the aim of the contest was to encourage more families to fish together.

He said 10 families and 25 members in total had joined the club as a result of the competition, which was "quite extraordinary".

"It was a huge success," Thoroughgood said.

"We had 80 juniors fishing and we had them fishing in Queensland and Sydney. And we had a good cross-section, with local boys and girls.

"We had an influx of families coming along, and that was the best part of the whole thing.

"And so many of them are joining our club to carry on the same theme through the whole year.

"The young guy who won biggest fish last year won again, and we had some tremendous prizes for that, but he had the equal biggest with a 10-year-old this time, so he stepped aside and let him have it because he won it last year. That was the attitude of the comp."

He said the turnout was a third bigger than last year and all sponsors were back for next year.

The field consisted of 67 local juniors, 20 from outside the region and 40 adult team managers.

Overall winner was Tyson Rich. Noah Thoroughgood was second and Gizelle Weimer third.

Local team winners were The Happy Hookers of Noah Thoroughgood, Blake and Brodie Thoroughgood along with Arabella Marsh-Jones. In second place were The Gardie Boys - Alex, Liam, Denzel and Dominik.

In the online division, the overall winner was Jye Treloar followed by his sister Sophie then Breanna Robertson from Grafton. Team results went to Team Salty Gear of the Treloars - Jye, Sophie, Luke and Simon.

Mia from the Boffos took out the Buzz Boat Mystery fish award with a large shovel-nosed shark and Jack Avery from Pippis took out the BCF Big Bream Award.

Tyson and Noah equaled for the Tailfin WaterRail Longest Flathead Award with Noah taking the Tailfin WaterRail home and Tyson taking the Sharkskin Big Bag with wheels prize.

A promising sign for game-fishing lovers this week with a blue marlin caught and weighed at Nelson Bay.

The fish, which came in at over 220 kilograms on Thursday, was snared by the crew of Reel Issues.

Chris Drake, from Tackleworld Port Stephens, said "it's all starting to happen" offshore after some recent patchy weather.

Drake said reports of yellowfin tuna were also coming in.

"Offshore there's been some good snapper and kings around," Drake said.

"The fish have been a bit hit and miss because we had all that rain and bad weather."

Drake said better fishing had been on offer inside the bay and estuaries.

"The whiting, bream, flathead and jewfish, they have been out in pretty good numbers inside the bay and up the rivers, in the deeper holes up towards Soldiers Point," he said.

"The blue swimmer crabs in the back of the bay have been out in good numbers, plus the muddies on the moon's. That's the pick of what you do with your fishing at the moment."

'The beaches have been pretty good. We've had solid numbers of salmon for guys who like to spin for them, and there's some good tailor among them. There's been some half-decent jew on the beaches as well.

"Whiting have been a bit slow on the beaches but they should start firing up once the water warms up."

For your chance to win the $45 Fish of the Week prize, courtesy of Tackle Power Sandgate, and the glory of being in the paper, email your pics to fishing@newcastleherald.com.au with catch and contact details.