Posts
The first round of the Squidgy Southern Bream Series for 2010 was held today on the Georges river. I started the journey from the South coast last night at about 11:30pm and arrived after a few stops at around 4am. Everyone else started to show up at around 5am, including the mobile coffee dude, so after 2 quick hits of caffeine i was charged and ready to go. It started off overcast, then a quick downpour of rain hit us but passed quickly, but there was very little wind so it was looking good.
The boaters started first, for safety reasons, and we started about 5mins later just after 7am, a lot of yakkers headed for the oyster racks, others went east, some went west and i found myself all alone in some very breamy looking water. I made the decision to start off with surface lures and was hit about 15mins into it by a solid fish which gave me just enough time to feel how heavy he was before throwing the hook, then the same thing happened 10 casts later to another good fish. I was a little frustrated to say the least, but i figured it was a promising start to the day so i remained confident in getting some fish into the livewell.
Time kept on ticking by with hardly any interest in any lure i tried including shallow and deep HB's, SP's, surface lures and blades. I tried the edges of the mangroves, including some suicide casts way down deep into the mangroves, oyster racks, sandflats, drop offs and nothing was going my way. The only thing i was yet to try was fishing under the hulls of the moored boats, so i made my way over then about half way there the wind got up from out of nowhere. I was tempted to go find some shelter somewhere, but since ive never fished or even been to the Georges river before, i wasnt sure how far i would need to go to find some good spots out of the wind so i stuck with my plan to fish the hulls and tied on a heavier blade to get to the bottom.
The first boat i tried gave me my first bream for the day, which went a touch under legal length so i had to return him to the water, but again my confidence picked up with the sight of a bream. I tried 5 or 6 different boats with no result until i tried one boat in particular, first cast and i got a good solid hit but no hookup, so i fired another cast and got hit on the drop and landed my first legal bream for the day which went 26cm to the fork. I stayed with the same boat for at least an hour getting hits on almost every cast, some were just little taps, but there were some good hits in there too so i knew it was just a matter of time before one of them hooked up.
Eventually one did, and i landed a second legal which went 30cm to the fork, so 2 in the tank and im confident in getting the 3rd. I thought it must be close to time up, so a quick check on the time and it was only 11am, still 3hrs to go!!! I stayed with the same boat for the next 20mins then decided to move on since the bite had died off, but in the remaining 3hrs i couldnt get my 3rd fish, but i was happy to at least have something to weigh in. Final results copied from the Basin lure and fly website:
Georges River Kayak
POSITION KAYAK TEAM NAME ANGLER NAME WIEGHT BIG BREAM
1 K19 Carl Dubois 2.175
2 K11 Stewart Dunn 1.77
3 K16 Daniel Holder 1.58
4 K8 Wayne Robinson 1.425
5 K17 Jason meech 1.155
6 K7 Team AKFF 2 Craig Coughlan 0.955
7 K12 Rider Thomas Wood 0.86
8 K13 AKFF Dave Gleeson 0.565
9 K4 Pinniped Brian Rutledge 0.545
10 K6 Brad Reid 0.53
11 K15 Hobiesports Dave Hedge 0.52
12 K18 Sailing Scene Rowan Stanek 0.52
13 K10 Andrew Death 0.505
14 K9 Parko Alan Parkinson 0.485
K1 Rocket Rod Waller 0
K2 Joe Pietrasikiewicz 0
K3 Jason Reid 0
K5 Bamboozle Ken Raley 0
K14 Denis Huon 0
K20 Edmedia Marcel Chaloupka 0
Well done Carl, for your win with a solid bag, and Stewie and Daniel for making up the top 3. It was good to see a few more yakkers for this one too, hopefully we will see a few of you at the Clyde river next month.
