Don’t Give the Morgans a Head Start on Home Waters!

Although the Brisbane International Boat Show’s invitational BREAM Tournament is essentially an exhibition event, that doesn’t mean that there’s no competition between the teams.

Add to that a $5,000 cash prize kitty underwritten by Daiwa and Evinrude, and there’s plenty of hard fishing done … but let’s take a step back and see what it’s all about …

ABT has taken the opportunity to promote catch and release bream tournament fishing to the general public at this boat show. It’s a win-win for all involved – the BIBS gets a weigh-in spectacle that’s arguably their most popular hour on the Fishing Expo stage, the boat show patrons get to see the boats and gear that they’ve been oogling at the show in action and the top ten ABT sponsors for the year get to pick a team of two anglers that will represent their brand, wear the uniform and hand out freebies to the spectators while they’re weighing in.

As a bonus, this tournament uses the Moreton Bay arena. It’s stacked full of big bream in clear water in several areas, but it can be a rough ol’ waterway in any sort of wind. For this reason, it’s unlikely that ABT would run a general event there – you’d have small boats getting sunk trying to get to the fish.

The 2008 event – like the inaugural 2007 comp – was lucky enough to fall in a window of perfect springtime weather. With land and sea temperatures very close together and gentle isobar gradients, 2 1/2 of the three days saw gentle breezes and the big bream spots easily accesses.

The particular hotspot for the last few years has been the Redcliffe peninsula. It has dozens of scattered reefs and rocky foreshores that hold more than a handful of big bream. Where a 2.5 kilogram bag is a good limit for 50 km further south at the Jumpinpin, there’s the real potential for a bag double that in the northern Bay.

So, as the boats sped out of the Brisbane river just after dawn on Day one, around half the field ventured north and the other half south.

Team Berkley’s Scott Towner had spent a few days at my place in Brisbane a couple of weeks earlier and had tested Redcliffe’s waters successfully – landing bream to 39cm on his first visit to the reefs.

We’d also spent the day before the comp pre-fishing together – Scotty teaching me all about Berkley Pepper Prawn 2” Shrimps and me taking him through the Redcliffe ‘Temple of Memories’. Over the last decade there’d been some memorable trips – mainly with QFM columnist Mick Lee – a converted bait-fisho who taught me all about the habits of the bruiser peninsula bream.

You can read all about the tournament results on www.bream.com.au and the battle for the top three placings. All I can say is that it’s a rare yellowfin bream tournament fishery indeed where you can weigh 4kg+ bags each day of the event. As team Berkley can attest to, it’s also heartbreaking to weigh a 4.5 kilogram bag and actually lose another half a kilo on the leaders.

The lesson learned for team Berkley was not to give the Morgan boys a head start on their home waters. The lessons I learned from Scotty Towner were much more useful.

I’m not a big Gulp! user. Topwaters, hard bodies, vibes, stick minnows and pink grubbing are my specialties. I like visual fishing – not drifting around in deep water hoping a bream will eat my (artificial) bait.

But wintertime in Queensland and Northern NSW is the worst time of the year for most of my preferred techniques. Indeed, once the water drops under 20 degrees I tend to struggle in tournaments.

Scott gave me the confidence to use the Peppered Prawn Gulp! Shrimps in shallow water when he comprehensively outfished me on our practice day. Adding to Scotts lessons, I quickly learned that accurate casting to shaded structure – boulders and reef edges – on sunny days was a great way to combine sight-fishing and Gulp! fishing. A happy compromise.

As the press release explains, an plan with jighead and hidden-weight style rigging worked.

Using a tandem approach, Steve used the Shrimps on a 1/12 oz TT jighead while Tim threw them on a 1/12oz Hidden Weight System. Both used 6lb Yamatoyo leader in the rocky country to minimise bust-offs and they only broke off one key fish all three days.

Tim’s Millerod Bream Buster was paired with a Shimano Fireblood and 2lb Fireline Crystal while Steve’s Angler Stealth S840 held a Daiwa Airity 2500 and 4lb braided line.

“Most of the bigger bream came in the first few seconds after the lure landed on a long cast,” Tim said, “ and the bream seemed to relate closer to structure the brighter the day was, so accurate casting was reasonably important. There’s nothing more exciting than hooking a kilo-plus-class bream in evil country, you keep the drag screwed up, hold the rod high and wind like mad.!”

Darren “Dizzy” Borg shouted out that I’d gone to the ‘dark side’ by using Gulp! With over 4kg in the livewell, I took it as a lesson learned – in a tournament, why not use the most effective technique on the day. For me, that’s not always Gulp!, but I’ll definitely have a pack or two of those Shrimps on board for when I’m struggling in those Winter events from now on!

- Steve Morgan.

Posted by Dinger. All photo's courtesy Steve Morgan, ABT.