Pukka

Pogo, The Basspro catalogues I've seen haven't included all the items that Basspro sell. I think they have too much stock to include everything, so the catalogues tend to be more 'winter or summer specials' type brochures. Pukk'

Nice flatty's there Rick Haven't seen any reports of decent sized flattys coming in for a while, so good to see they're still about and willing to take a 'plakky'. Joe

Cheers Guys, Hi Joe the Cool One, I was using a 1/32nd Shirasu jig head, which is a fish-head shaped jig and I cut some lead off the nose of the jig with a pair of clippers to make it even lighter. The times where I could see the fish feeding I would cast the lure onto the top of the pontoon and drag it back slowly, so it would fall in the water with a gentle 'plop' right next to the edge of the pontoon, near the fish. If you're careful and don't spook the fish, you will see the bream turn and head down after the lure. After this happens it's a simple matter of watching your line to see if your lure stops sinking prematurely, or waiting for any tell-tale twitches or pulls. If you suspect the lure has stopped sinking before it has hit bottom, but are not sure if a fish has grabbed it, you can gently lift the rod until you feel the weight of the fish and then strike. Occasionally I'd see a fish go down after my lure, but not register any bite on the line. In this situation I'd let it fall about 15 feet or so and then slowly 'lift and drop' it back to the boat. Often, as you know, bream will follow the lure without committing, so working the lure back to the boat slowly with a couple of small 'long hops' is a must. The trevally I caught today was caught doing this. Casting to fish you can see on a hull is a bit different. Generally, I think bream on hulls in clear water situations tend to be spooked easier than bream on pontoons, pylons, jetties. For this reason I think you have to be a little more delicate with your lure presentation and/or cast from a longer distance. Also, when you see a number of fish on a boat, you'll normally attract a large part of the school with your lure and if you're lucky enough to get one, it's very hard to pull another out of the same school, unless it's a big school, big boat or both. Joe the Pommy One

Most of my time recently has been taken up with work and moving house, so it was just heaven to take a break from it all and hit the Parra' this morning. It was a fabulous morning to be on the water and even better that the fish were on the chew too! The plan was 'bream', and the way I wanted to get them was sight casting to fish along pontoons. This is one of my favourite ways of catching bream and to make it even more fun, I was using my ultra light Daiwa Midge Direction rod. I fished from about 7.30am til 11.30 but most of that time was spent in two places. I found a good number of bream in one marina and after catching a decent fish in the 30's, I left it for ten minutes, came back, and caught another. This seemed to be the pattern for most of the session. At the second spot I found an eye-popping number of big bream chewing away and if they spooked, I only had to wait 5 mnutes for them to come up again and resume feeding. It was at the second spot I latched onto a really nice Trevally, and while the 'Midge' coped with the bream OK, the trevally was an entirely different matter. Fortunately for me, there were no nasty objects around to steer the fish away from, so it was just a matter of holding on until the fish tired while at the same time hoping the rod wasn't going to explode into a zillion pieces. When the trev' finally hit the deck I was very relieved to give my wrist a rest, but the pain was all worth it as I hooped and hollered to meeself! I fished for a bit longer and added a couple of small fish, so decided to head for home. Final tally was 9 fish and the trev', best bream went 36 with 2 or 3 in the early 30's. Most of the bream and the trevally fell to 2 inch Ecogear Bug Ants while one of the better bream fell to a 2 inch Paramax in Plum colour. Can't wait to get out again soon! Pukka

I've got an 8 foot, (I think it is), Shimano Taipan somewhere. It's a real noodle of a thing and is floppy as they come, but I have to admit, I've had a lot of fun with it. I caught my biggest yellowbelly on it while baitfishing Lake Windermere a while back. I was only using 3 pound leader and a single split-shot rig and I'm pretty sure the line would've snapped in seconds if it wasn't for the extra 'shock absorption' the Taipan gave me. Joe

Thank you Tony and Joe the Cool One My dismal effort was the first thing I thought of this morning when I woke up and I've been 'grumpy Joe' all day as a consequence, swearin', slammin' phones down, insulting toast and kickin' possums, ( ) Readng your words of encouragment, certainly helped me get out of my doldrums and saved a good proportion of the local fauna around my house from being kicked, shot or embarassed, cheers fellas. Joe P.S. Hey Lance, are you going to post the pic' of the prefish-fish? EDIT: Sorry just noticed you've posted it Lance - duh!

Good read Shad. You're not wrong about bio-diversity and the 'thinning' of the gene pool, just look at the affect hundreds of years of in-breeding has had on the British royal family.. nutters the lot of them! Pukk'

Well, the Hawkesbury ABT event is over for another year and an interesting event it turned out to be. Personally, I didn't get the result, or the fish I wanted and I was a little disappointed I didn't improve on my weight from the first day.. but I had a good time donating SX-48's to the bream gods and I learnt a few lessons in extracting fish from the sharp stuff! Great fishing Billfin on your first placing in the non-boaters section, awesome stuff! I guess you can relax now. Well done also to Nickothefisho for finishing second! Congratulations to Lance S., really pleased to see you get up there knowing how hard you fished and thanks for all your help over the comp' weekend, very much appreciated. Micky C, you're 'rack legend' status is still intact mate. Lovely to see you make the top 5 Congratulations to all the other qualifiers including Andy Howard 1st , Wacko - a highly commendable 13th, well done Jack - great fishing mate! And BillyK 'the comeback kid'!, nice one Billy! Looking forward to Glenbawn and hopefully some more co-operative Bass! Joe

Thanks for that Evan. Joe

Simple one from me... As we're now seeing more high-end spinning rods brought into Australia by Daiwa, how long will it be 'til the Battler Limited's arrive? I'm not sure if it was you I spoke to Evan, but the last time I visited the Daiwa warehouse I asked this question, (I also inquired about the DEVEL 03). At the time you weren't sure when the next shipment will be. Joe

I'm going, but I live on the north side so I'll be making the daily trip from there. Good luck Jethro and all the others 'raiders taking part! Pukka

Well done Matt! A 39-er is a great bream in anyone's language. Pukka P.S. Have a great time at St.Clair!

Hey Grant, The National Park side mate. Dunno about bait, I don't use it at all these days, but I know no self respecting big flatty will turn up it's nose at a live poddy mullet. Under the road bridge is OK but very snaggy. Another worthwhile spot is on the opposite side to the National Park casting to the first pylon of the pipe bridge. I've been done good 'n proper by some unstoppables there in the past. Pukk'

Welcome to the site foxman Roseville is only a minute away from my place and over the past couple of years I've fished most of it's shoreline from a boat and the bank. The spots the guys have already mentioned are all great areas at one time or another, but don't be too disappointed if you have a few blank days up there, upper middle harbour can be like that.. a lot! In addition to the spots already mentioned, one of my favourite little lunchtime flatty spinning 'pozzies' is a small rock bar on the northern shoreline at Roseville, 20 or so metres downstream from the pipe bridge. On the outside of that rock bar is small deepish channel, which basically forms a 'tucker highway' for the flatties to lie in. The last of the run out tide seems to be the best time, but be careful of the oyster covered rocks if you decide to wade out to the edge. Pukka

Yep have to agree with Narra' those pics look verrry fishy indeed. I pass over the Wyong so many times heading back to Sydney, one day I'm gonna' make a concerted effort and fish the bugger! Pukk'

Hey Mike, Nice fish mate and glad t'see you had a good session. I didn't end up goin' out at all and decided to catch up on some Zzz's instead, looks like I missed out eh? Aaaah well, there's always next time... Joe

Nice one Chris! I'd swap a healthy Sambo', like the ones in your pics, for a frigate any day! Pukk'

Great report and great pics guys. I'm not only jealous of the fish, but also the fact you're wearing a t-shirt while catching it! It's already a bit nippy down here and winter has come wayyyy too early for my liking. Make sure you pack yer' woolies when you come down Matt - see ya' soonish! Joe

Thanks for clearing that up Rick. I have to say, I actually enjoyed 'jiggin' the way we were doing it and didn't find it boring at all. It took a bit of practice to work out the right weight, depth and retrieve and this made it far more interesting than the mind-numbingly tedious up and down jiggin' we were doing at the Clyde. Joe

In a word, 'no' CT. All the top 5 to my knowledge fished deep the majority of the time. At times when the bite was slow, I noticed a few boats taking a break from the deep stuff to fish the nearby bays or shorelines adjacent to the deeper areas. The odd decent fish was caught doing this, but they generally weren't as reliable, or as big as the deep schooled fish. Pukk'

Hi CT The Ecogear Grass Minnow M was a popular choice with the deep jiggers. Some used other colours (like me ), but Jay obviously had most of his success with the red and silver flake which I'm pretty sure has the colour code 111. The reason why the bass liked this colour is anyones guess. The reddish colour changes its appearance at depths where there is less light, and the added attraction of the silver flecks may have had something to do with it - who knows, but it sure worked! The word 'jigging' was not really the right word to describe what a lot of people fishing deep were doing. The way Jay and a lot of others fished was, firstly to target the schooled up bass on the sounder, drop the lure down to just under the school, if they were suspending, and then 'slow-rolling' (or slow-wind), the lure back up through the school Once past the school you'd either reel all the way in hoping you had a follower, or allow the lure to drop back to where you started and repeat the process. Jay was using a technique where he would have the anti reverse on his reel disengaged. After winding his lure up through the strike zone 10, or 15 feet, he would wind the same number of turns of the reel handle backwards. This way he kept the lure moving up and down right in front of the fish's face for as long as possible. I fished with Wayne Parry on the third and final session and the fish we found were holding around a thermacline about 10 feet off the bottom in 40-45 feet of water. We would drop our lures right to the bottom and wind them back up with a steady but not too slow 'roll'. Once a bite was detected we'd keep winding at a slightly slower pace until the fish swallowed the lure. Sometimes we'd wind all the way in, sometimes we would drop the lure back down when it got to about halfway. We used 3/8th size jigheads, but I know some people opted for 1/2's or even 5/8th weight jigs'. Whatever weight you used, it was important to count the lure down to determine how long it took to reach the bottom then using that figure to work out how far down you had to let the lure sink to get to where the fish were holding on the sounder. CT, I don't know if you know about 'needling' or 'venting' bass, but if you're fishing at these kind of depths I'd recommend reading up on it. Any fish you catch at this depth will go belly-up and die if it's swim bladder isn't pierced and the excess air released. Hope this helps you a bit anyway CT, Pukka P.S. I forgot to add in my earlier post a big thanks to Lance S. from Ecogear for taking me out on the prefish. Lance introduced me to fishing Ecogear VT65's over the tops of sunken trees, which was a hair raising experience for me I can tell you! I managed to lose 3 Ecogear VT's, , but I was happy to try something new and next time I'll be sure to pack a heavier braid and leader!

Hey Chris, I've fished the Worny a fair bit and all my EPs from there (not that there's been that many), have come on the turn of the tide, high or low. About now would be a great time to target them, I know the ones up in Middle Harbour get a bit active after and during a lot of rain, and I imagine the Worny wouldn't be much different. Pukk'

Great report Rick and good t'hear you had a good weekend. I had a great time with my boaters over the w'end. they were both great guys and good fishermen. I learnt a few new techniques and gained a little more impoundment bass'n experience, which was just what I wanted as a non-boater. It was certainly an eye opener seeing all those boats 'parked' in the middle of the lake, I'd never seen anything like it before! And as you mentioned Rick, although there were people fishing in very close proximity to each other, the atmosphere stayed friendly and relaxed which was great t'see. And finally, a special mention goes to Jorg on his fine effort to finish 26 in his first ever bass comp'. Mick C reminded us of the quote; "imitation was the sincerest form of flattery" and it was Jorg's fresh look at the lake during the prefish which had us all reconsidering our tactics the night before the start. Jorg's "Topwater Masterclass DVD" will be coming to a store near you soon! Great fishing Jorg! Joe

There were some great fish weighed in David, including a 2.7kg 55cm fish! Most of the fish caught came from deep schools suspended under or around the thermacline. From what I could gather, the grass beds and shorelines held a few bass, but they were pretty scarce and became scacer as the comp' progressed and the sun came out. Pukk'

Hi David Haven't been back long, and don't know the full list but I'm fairly sure the top 3 were: 1st Jay Morgan 2nd Dave Green 3rd Wayne Parry Look out for Jorg, (Snag), he followed up his social win with a great performance in his very first bass comp'.. top fishing Jorg-y boy, well done mate! Pukk'