Pukka

Errr, just thought I'd pay a little tribute to Dave Allen this week. I just decided to change my avatar each week to reflect something topical.. watch out, I could be Amanda Vanstone next week! joe

Thanks Tony, I was under the impression the next size up was 4 inch, 3 inch is even better... don't throw those samples away Joe

Nice one Ken, sounds like you're getting a few more trips in now, the weather must have turned at last Looking forward to a few more Pumi' reports Joe

Hey Guys, Good luck to all my fellow Fishraiders who are entering the St.Clair round of the ABT Bass Comp's this weekend. I'll be up there as a non-boater, and I have to say I'm really looking forward to getting back into bass'in. Hopefully my boaters' will find a few fish for me, or I will help them find a few, either way I'm determined to have a good time and with 60 boats on the water it's gonna be fun! Have a safe trip fellas and see you up there! Pukka

Good fishing Lance and lovely piccy too! I wouldn't mind 5 of those 'average' fish in my livewell come the Hawkes' ABT See you at St.Clair mate. Joe P.S. Jethro the next size up in the Bug Ant is 4 inch, which can be cut down for bream, as a lot of people do with hawg style plastics, or used whole for Bass. From what Tony and Lance tell me, there will be a couple of colours coming in initially followed by a few more shortly after. Apparently they're very popular in Japan right now and stocks are limited - go figure!

Great EP's guys! Lovely t'see the goon' still fishin' well, haven't been down there in months Pukk'

Hi Mitch, I was lucky enough to try out a few packs for the Aus Open. I finished off all but one of the packs down at the Clyde and, like you and many others, I'm itching to get my grubby paws on some more. I now have affiliations with Ecogear, so you can take this how you want, but I can honestly say they are a great lure and a more than worthy replacement for the Hawg. I'm told the 2 inch version should arrive in the shops within the next few weeks, but don't quote me on that! (Tony? ). There is also a 4 inch version of the Bug Ant which I'm looking forward to testing out on bass. Hopefully it will be as successful on bass as the 2 inch version has been for me on bream. Joe

Good lil' session Adam .. dunno about you, but I want it to stay murky Joe

Thanks for posting that up Ken. I wonder what they'll come up with... Joe

Hey Jaso, great report mate, aounds like you had a very enjoyable session. The fish responsible for taking lumps out of your plastics is most likely to be either toadfish or leatheries, or maybe even the squid you were seeing. You can tell you've had a bream 'hit' by looking closely at the lure for rows of 'dot-like' indentations, bream rarely take bits out of your plastic. Watching what your line is doin' as your lure sinks is a must when fishing boat hulls. Bream will hit the lure and make the line twitch, or grab the lure and hold it, which stops the line sinking as if you'd already hit bottom. They can also simply grab the lure and race away and your line will subsequently race away as well. It's great when you have this happen as it means the lure's already in the fishes mouth and the fish racing away means you only have to give a short firm strike to set the hook. Sorry, if you know this already Jaso, but if you don't I hope this helps. Pukk'

Nice fish Narra! Pukk'

Nice one Tony, great session! ... love the Bug Ants, they're awesome for bream, but now we gotta see how they go on Bass! Joe

Nice one Chris! Pukka

Hey Rick, thanks mate and thank you to all who replied. Richard had success using a P'seed Bass Minnow and I was using a Watermelon/Pearl Ecogear Minnow-S. The faster you retrieved the more interested they seemed to get, but it was hard work trying to keep the speed up and my wrist would just 'lock-up' on some casts. Hope you get the opportunity to get out there Rick, I've a feeling they could be around for a while longer yet.. fingers crossed. Joe

Great report and awesome looking fish there LB! I haven't caught a cod yet, but when I eventually get to targetting them, I'd be over the moon if I got one of around the size shown in your pics' - great fish fellas! Pukka

.. they're everywhere Andrew, literally everywhere! Joe

So Richard and me weren't the only ones to get into the frigates Great session, report and pics guys! Seems like all of Sydney's waterways are teeming with fish at the moment, great to see! Joe

....

Well, judging by Mitch's report it looks like the frigates are everywhere! Bassifier and mee good self hit the Hacking this morning and yep, the frigates were on fire here also. Firstly, we went to the mouth of the river to see if there was any surface activity and it didn't take us long to find the Frig's scything thru the waves. These were on the small size however so after we'd both caught a couple each we decided to head upriver. Our intention had originally been to find some nice bream off the grass, but with these speedsters around the popper plan went on the back-burner. Motoring along our eyes lit up as we spotted massive bait schools and even bigger frig's chasing them. Some half a dozen fish later with tiring wrists, arms and shoulders we took a break and jigged deep for a while to see what was making the great arches appearing on the sounder. Well, the arches turned out to be a mutlitude of different species and we caught our fair share of all of them including; snapper, tailor, yellowtail, frigates, trevally and a lone soapie jew! Later in the day Richard also got bust off royally by a rather large kingy and we spotted a few more but couldn't tempt them into taking our lures. After the pelagic fun slowed down we headed to the rocky shorelines to get back to our original plan of catching a few bream. A couple of casts later we had bream of all sizes smacking our poppers with Rich' getting a particulary nice fish which is pictured below. As the wind got stronger we decided to give the frig's one more go before hometime and a couple more were added to the boat before we got tired of chasing them around the bay. What a day it was.. it seemed like every species in NSW was feeding on the masses of bait fish in the Hacking. Awesome. Pukka

Hey Grant, I don't really know any of the local boys apart from Wade, so not sure how the other guys went. Wade is a damn good fisho' tho', so no surprise to see his name up there. Joe

Well the fat lady has defiantely sung, and the Clyde ABT is over for another year. The river has a formidable reputation on the ABT 'circuit' and while it remains a very tough fishery, there seemed to be a few more 5 bags this year compared to last, and I think the total fish caught increased as well. My plan for the comp' all along was to hopefully, find a few fish in the oyster racks. Consequently, come prefish day I had all my SX-40's and 48's rigged and I was raring to go. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before I discovered the racks to be seriously lacking in any fish, and not only that, I had made the big mistake of using up all my valuable prefishing time trying to find them in the racks, when I could have been testing pastures new. That night having had my plan blown out of the water, I wasn't feeling very optimistic about my chances. I drew NickoTheFisho as my non-boater for the first day and it was great to have someone I knew well on board for what was going to be a tough days fishing. I planned to fish the racks for an hour and if they didn't produce, I would either head downstream and jig the mouth of the river, or go upstream and fish areas I hadn't prefished before. I decided, perhaps mistakenly, that the areas I really would have liked to have fished upstream were too far away, so downstream I went. Now I have to say, using 1/8th and 1/6th size jigheads in deep water is not my favourite style of fishing, but a comp' situation sometimes means you have to grit your teeth and bear it, so for around 5 hours I monotonously jigged up and down while drifting along in the strong current, repeating the same drift an endless number of times. For all my jigging I managed to fool only a couple of 'just legals' onto my lure. My only compensation was, a lot of my fellow competitors had found it just as tough, if not tougher, than me. Second day I had Dan Brown aboard and although tempted by a total change in tactics, I resolved to stick with the deep jigging techniques I was using the previous day. By this time however, I was just beginning to get a feel for how the area fishes, so I planned to fish the mouth of the river first up for an hour, then hit another spot a little further upriver before heading downstream again for the turn of the tide when, hopefully, the best fishing would be had. Dan and I caught a couple of small bream initially, only for them to come up short of the 25cm mark. One of these fish only just missing out on being weighed in by 2 millimetres, even though my tape said 25' spot on. We moved upstream and swapped our heavy jigheads for 32nd's and tied on a few poppers. We fished hard again and our persistence was finally rewarded with Dan boating the best fish of the day, a Clyde 'monster' of 600 grams! We fished the area for a bit longer but the fish were again absent without leave, so we headed back to the mouth. It was during endless repeats of the same drift I managed to boat the next 'keeper' which totally engulfed an Ecogear Bug Ant liberally smeared with Shirasu scent. By this time I believed we had 3 legal fish in the well, so I finally started to feel a bit more relaxed, however I had the feeling as time went on and the run out current pushed harder, the chances of adding to the total were going to get fewer. So after all that I ended up in 21st spot. I can't be totally happy with 21st, but on the plus side, I think I learnt a little more from this comp' and gained some very valuable experience which can only help me improve as a competition fisherman. Finally, a lot of very bad things get said about the Clyde during comp' time, but I have to say, it would be a great river to fish 'socially'. The range of species and scenery is superb and well worth the visit, especially if it means you don't have to fight over the same fish with 133 other anglers. Pukka

Batemans Bay is at the mouth of the Clyde River???? Did you mean transporting fish from upriver in the Clyde to downstream (Batemans Bay), because that is what a lot of competitors did. Pukk'

You weren't wrong Mick, whatta' fish! The harbour seems alive at the moment, just a shame we have to fish a bream comp'! Joe

They look good Mick.. isn't that your big bass lure? Joe

Oh no, there's a Derby County supporter on the boards! Well done on the fish Cova', shame about the t-shirt Pukka (LFC supporter )