Last week Jay and I fished the first round of the Gamakatsu Summer Bream Series out of Bribie. With the forecast of rough seas in the middle of the day, it was really a tough call to make whether to do the run to Redcliffe or fish the flats at Bribie with both spots producing for us in the past. Bribie lost out and we made the run to Reddy in 10-15kt northerlies which was far from pleasant as we were one of only eight boats to run the gauntlet.
Pulling up to one of our regular spots, we were quick to notice the lack of clarity in the water but with the flooding tide we were hoping for cleaner water and moving baitfish which could potentially make Reddy fire. After a good hour of fishing and only a handful of hits, we knew something was not right. Is Reddy shutting down?? Do we run back to Bribie?? Or do we stick it out and wait for the tide hoping for fish?? Well, guess which one we chose?? Yep, we chose to stay and to cut a long, long story short, here is a summary.... We caught one legal bream, I caught a filthy big catfish (Which I reckon was lost and ages away from the nearest estuary!!), we took waves over the bow, I got smoked by a big cod (lost gear), we took MORE waves over the bow and we went to the assistance of our mate Tristan Taylor (who smashed the head off his electric motor and then crushed his stainless steel prop on one of Reddy’s hardest boulders!! OUCH!!)
So with our heads down, we face the dreaded trip back to Bribie into what was now a 20kt Northeaster......Oh fun!! After looking like two drowned rats, we decided to fish some flats that we knew produced fish for us in the past. This proved to be luckless to our surprise so we then headed to the canal system of Pacific Harbour to see if our luck could change. I changed plan of attack from hardbodies to plastics and decided to throw a 3in Berkley Craw rigged on a 1/16 TT jighead to wake these sleepy bream up. It proved to be successful when I nailed a nice 29cm fork Bream after working the back of an encrusted pontoon. We then proceeded to work a whole stretch of pontoons with only a Moses perch to show for it which really showed us it was not our day. With 10mins to go we decided to have a last throw of the dice and headed back to the flats to see if anything had changed. While slow rolling hardbodies across the flats we noticed a huge dugong dredging along the weeds having a phat old time eating everything in site. With all this activity, Jay suspected there would be trailing bream feeding on the scraps of the dugong’s fun so we decided to follow it aiming our casts in it’s trail of destruction. This paid off with a fat 27cm bream boarding the boat in no time and we were quickly off to the weigh in.
We ended up finishing 17th out of 40 entrants which wasn’t too bad after the mixed day we had. It really goes to show that when you aren’t catching fish, keep your chin up and keep plugging away as your next cast might be the fish that makes your day!!
Happy Breaming,
Grayson.
P.S. Here are some photos from this year’s ABT Bream Grand Final on Sydney Harbour. Special thanks to Benny Godfrey and Gavin Dunne who helped me finish 9th in the Non Boater Category!! Cheers Guys.
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