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30cm black bream taken on a Zipbait skinny pop
I have spent some time without a yak of my own recently which is the reason for the lack of south coast fishing reports on my behalf. However, last Wednesday i picked up my brand new Hobie Pro Angler (the same colour as my last one just the new model) thanks to Pauly at The Sailing Scene in Sydney, who opened the shop especially for me so i could pick it up before the weekend.
Sunday afternoon was my first opportunity to get the yak in the water, so i decided that since i had a limited amount of time to fish i would stay close to home and fish the local river, but with the amount of boat traffic present, mainly ski/wake boats i thought my best option would be to drive as far upstream as possible before the river turns to fresh water and fish for black bream and estuary perch.
I launched at 4:30pm and arrived at my spot just after 5pm and fished poppers and unweighted plastics around the many snags in the upper reaches of the system and i was rewarded early in the session with a bream just on legal size. The action was fairly consistent, getting hits on both lures every couple of casts, and landing fish every few minutes but i found it tough to find any of the real bruisers that i know live around the area.
All of the fish were bream in the 25-28cm size range, but fought hard for their size close into the snags. At this stage i was thinking of heading home until i cast the unweighted plastic towards a snag but it wasnt one of my best casts and landed a metre or so from the target, but as soon as the lure hit the surface a bow wave shot out from the snag and hit the plastic hard, the drag screamed as the fish went for deeper water, then performed a U turn and went straight back into the same snag it came from and snapped the line.
Shortly after, i landed a 30cm fork bream on the Zipbait popper from the edge of a shallow weedbed. I was just about out of daylight so i started the pedal back casting at a few snags and weedbeds along the way without any luck.
Im very happy to be back in a yak and enjoying the many different opportunities it can provide, and im looking forward to getting back into the comps as well.
