Striking Gold on the Glenelg!

After speaking to my good mate Andrew Axon from Canberra we made a last minute decision to enter the Vic Bream Classic on the Glenelg River in far western Victoria, being the last round for the year we thought bugger it lets have a crack.

I picked up Andrew from Melbourne Airport and we were on our way, it wasn't long before the clouds in the distance became the topic of our conversation. The forecast for the next few days was terrible with wind, rain and hail forecast but we were committed, there was no turning back, so we just kept driving into the great dark mass in front of us.

The following morning we headed out and braved the elements for a pre fish, after mooving around and trying a few different locations we decided that the next day we would make the long trip up river and hopefully the fish we found during the day would still be on the chew.

Being a late entry saw us all the way back in 65th position in a big field of 70 boats for the start on Saturday morning and with a long haul ahead we had plenty of time to discuss our plan of attack. The location we were going to fish was approximately 30km's up river and with the Glenelg River heavily restricted by speed zones it was going to be a 2hr trip each way with only roughly a 3hr window to catch our fish, with the size of the field and our starting position it was a chance we were prepared to take!

Arriving at our spot, and due to the diversity of structure, we fished a variety of rod lengths loaded with 4lb Stren Microfuse and 4&6lb Trilene Fluorocarbon leader, we both slid 2" Banana Prawn Shrimps onto our lightly weighted Nitro Bream Finesse torpedo jig heads and shot them in close to the undercut banks. If our lures didn't get hit under the cut in the bank we would continue the slow retrieve down the next drop off it as under the boat. We had some excellent fishing and over the next couple of hours and we managed to put together a reasonable bag of 5 fish as well as loosing a few crackers to snags in the process.
Arriving back at the weigh in there were some mixed results from the other guy's which made us a little more confident with our bag, after weighing in our bag pulled the scales down to 3.42kg and took us straight to 1st place and sent us off the start at the front of the field the following day.

Sunday morning saw us heading back up river to our previous days location, our plan was to simply put in the time travelling and stick to what we did on the first day. Battling the wind, again we fished the 2" Banana Prawn Shrimps light and slow and managed to put together another bag, our only concern was that despite a few upgrades still we had only around 2.7kg, was it going to be enough?

Arriving back at the weigh in it was a usual tournament Sunday, the fishing was tougher than the previous days and a lot of guy's had struggled out there and the weather certainly didn"t making it any easier. It was our turn to hit the scales, our fish pulled them down to 2.76kg, not a great bag but the only 10/10 limit for the weekend and enough to secure a win by nearly 1kg in the end. Go Team Berkley!

Cheers Bunga.