31May2009
"Outfishes All Other Baits"
I thought it was about time I put the Berkley motto “Out fishes all other baits” which is printed on every packet of Gulp! to the test. The Werribee Bream Classic is a competition held by the Werribee South Fishing Club. The target species is the Black Bream and anyone can enter. The competition is open for people to use whatever means they think will catch the biggest bream. You can use live bait, dead bait, plastics, hard bodies, flies and any other rod and bait combination you can think of.In an entry list that was close to 50, I was one of only 2 anglers in the field that was throwing lures, I thought this would be an interesting challenge. The comp starts at 12 midnight on Friday night and runs through to 2:00pm on Sunday. There were plenty of ultra keen anglers that had collected their favourite fresh bait and were fishing right through the night to try and make the most of the 3am high tide.I entered the comp at 11:45am on the Saturday, 15 minutes before entries closed. I fi
Read MoreLeave a Comment28May2009
Vertical jigging with gulp
One of the best ways to run a vertical jig is with a Gulp bait! This system is by far the most affective methods ever and it’s so easy it’s almost silly!! If you’ve ever fished a vertical jig then you would know this scenario for sure.You drop a round over a great looking show on the sounder and you just know your going to be on! After all, the last two rounds have produced fish! In the back of you’re mind, you’re starting to think, when are these fish going to get a little stirred up and shut down? You start the retrieve. You wind your jig past the point where you should have got the big hit. You’ve only got a couple more winds left in you when you get that big ‘donk’ on the line…ON...and off!!This can happen on the very first drop of the day if the fish are not right on the job. I mean hell; I’m not always hungry either!! When you start to analyse the pros and cons of what a vertical metal jig can bring to the party in the way of total edibility, the only th
Read MoreLeave a Comment27May2009
MF40 MADNESS
After following the early tests of the new MF40 soft vibes on the Purefishing blog, I was lucky enough to get hold of a few to road test on Victoria’s Black Bream population from John "Dinger" Bell. And it just happened that I was heading to Gippsland last weekend to chase a few bream! I saw some very early prototypes of this lure some time ago, and had waited with interest for their progression. To say I am blown away by these things is an understatement. THEY ROCK!We headed to Gippsland Lakes and after having a quick search across some flats, we headed up the Mitchell River searching for concentrations of fish. It wasn’t long until we got to ‘The Cut’ and found some interesting schools of fish on the sounder holding off the edges further up the river. Wasting no time, I began casting the soft vibe upstream (and these things cast a mile!), working it back with a fairly standard lift/drop/retrieve technique usually employed on metal vibes.It didn’t take long, as I was hooked
Read MoreLeave a Comment25May2009
GULPS IN THE GULF
It had been quite some time since I last visited Weipa in Queensland's Gulf of Carpentaria. The place has a reputation for great fishing and it certainly lived up to this for me. While in town, I stayed with a good friend, Mark Ward. Unfortunately, Mark was busy at work for most of my stay. Because he's a top bloke, he offer me the use of his boat and I was soon into the action. Day 1 and 2After chasing a few queenfish, mackeral and trevally each morning, the tides became more favourable in the smaller creeks. I ventured a few kilometres up into one of these and put my Abu Revo to work. I fished an assortment of shallow diving lures around the mangrove edges as the tide emptied the system. Day 1 produced several smaller fish and was the practise round for day 2. On the second day, I headed straight to the productive section of the creek. The action was slow and the tide still had drop the water another foot to get the predators out of the backs of the mangroves. As the water dropped, t
Read MoreLeave a Comment20May2009
Scouting a new System!
The Barham River located in Apollo Bay is a small system that I had never fished before. The general purpose for the weekend away was not fishing and when I saw the weather forecast (gale force westerly winds with rain) I wasn’t too fussed. The rods still managed to make it into the car and tides and local reports where checked just in case.Waking up nice and early on the Saturday I decided to drive to the highway bridge to check things out before my wife woke up. The wind was already blowing the proverbial and the rain was coming in sideways. I didn’t fish much that morning but I did scout around for about an hour checking out all the likely looking spots. I checked out a few snags up river, a couple of creek and river junctions and the 2 bridges that cross the river. Eventually I decided that with amount of fresh water in the system I would target the flats at the mouth when the weather calmed a little.In the early afternoon I was able to sneak away for a couple of hours. The riv
Read MoreLeave a Comment17May2009
Fishin’ with The Wizard!
I always enjoy a chance to fish with some of the other Berkley guys. We all live in different parts of the country and as such adapt techniques to suit our home conditions and species. I was down on the Gold Coast for the weekend and happened to ring Steve “The Wizard” Wilson to tell him I was in his neck of the woods. He mentioned he was heading out for a fish on Saturday morning so I promptly invited myself along for the ride! Although Steve does not live that far away from me (3 hours) he has slightly different offshore structures available to him, and I was keen to check out some of his sneaky tricks!We headed out from the Tweed at first light and the forecast was for great conditions so every man and his proverbial animal was out on the water. Being that a lot of them shot straight out wide, Steve decided to fish the shallow reef systems that hug the coastline. We were fishing with Pflueger 6 to 10 kg rods and reels loaded with 30lb Stren Sonic braid in the high vis gold. Beca
Read MoreLeave a Comment12May2009
Bulky Hawg – Brown Pumpkinseed Fleck
I first saw a 2” Bulky Hawg during my first ABT tournament back in 2006 where I fished as a non-boater and was lucky enough to draw Scott Towner on day 1 and Mark Mangold on day 2. The venue was the Gippsland lakes, a huge expanse of water that holds some equally large bream.Half way through Day 1, Scott changed from a camo worm to a Bulky Hawg, a bait I had never seen or even heard of before. I watched Scotty skip cast these 2 inch plastics under the overhanging trees and using his trade mark double hop, he completed his bag with some impressive Gippsland fish. After our day of fishing together, or should I say Scotty’s day of fishing (I didn’t land any legals) he threw me a packet of Hawgs to try out. That packet of Hawgs definitely changed my fishing for the better. It took me from scratching around and catching a couple of fish a weekend to catching 10, 20 and 30 fish a day.It all started while fishing the thousands of pylons that line the banks for the Yarra River. I still
Read MoreLeave a Comment12May2009
Bulky Hawg – Brown Pumpkinseed Fleck
Bulky Hawg – Brown Pumpkinseed Fleck I first saw a 2” Bulky Hawg during my first ABT tournament back in 2006 where I fished as a non-boater and was lucky enough to draw Scott Towner on day 1 and Mark Mangold on day 2. The venue was the Gippsland lakes, a huge expanse of water that holds some equally large bream. Half way through Day 1, Scott changed from a camo worm to a Bulky Hawg, a bait I had never seen or even heard of before. I watched Scotty skip cast these 2 inch plastics under the overhanging trees and using his trade mark double hop, he completed his bag with some impressive Gippsland fish. After our day of fishing together, or should I say Scotty’s day of fishing (I didn’t land any legals) he threw me a packet of Hawgs to try out. That packet of Hawgs definitely changed my fishing for the better. It took me from scratching around and catching a couple of fish a weekend to catching 10, 20 and 30 fish a day. It all started while fishing the thousands of pylons that l
Read MoreLeave a Comment12May2009
Berkley MF 40 smashes Tassy Trout!
After getting some of the yet to be released Berkley MF40 soft plastic vibes I was dead keen to give them a go on some of Tassie’s highland trout prior to the season closing at the start of May. Up at 4:30am I headed to a mates place to meet up for the trip up to Arthurs lakes. We were on the water ready to hit some pre-spawn trout by 7am! After only a few cast with a silver shiner coloured MF40 I was onto a nice little brown…. They work! The day was fairly tough for the most part with a bright clear day with little or no wind. Even in these tough conditions the vibes out fished all other lures hands down. We ended up looking deep and by keeping our vibes close to the bottom in 5m of water we were able to get onto close to a dozen fish in the last 2.5 hours of the session. We missed probably 15 in this time too as the fish were not willing to commit aggressively in the bright conditions. Even so throwing other types of lures proved fruitless. We went home happy with our re
Read MoreLeave a Comment05May2009
Vertical Jigging with Gulp!
Whilst on a resent trip to South Africa I had the pleasure of fishing with a very knowledgeable angler by the name of Mark De La Hay. Having both found a love of vertical jigging and soft bait fishing, he had quite an unusual mix of both on offer when we went jigging in the deep! Using 50-lb Whiplash braid over Pflueger Supreme jig rods we where marking on the fish finder what I was told where big Amber Jack. Fish that would normal straighten out the 7/0 hook that’s attached to a 5oz Nitro jig head. So this is how the rig works!STEP 1 - Get a heavy Nitro jig head (3, 4 or 5oz) and cut off the hook just as it starts to make its way around to the bend. Then you need a large split ring, a heavy solid ring or swivel and an assist hook from a vertical jig. Put the split ring through jig head eye and attach the assist hook cord to the solid ring (or swivel) and then to the split ring as well (never tie your leader to the split ring or jig head. You need to attach the hook directly to eithe
Read MoreLeave a Comment