ABT Tweed 2009 - An On Water Perspective

Following torrential Queensland rains, the ABT Tweed event was looking to be a muddy, tough affair. However, anglers were met with a river much clearer than expected come pre-fish day. The pre-fish day indicated that the comp was going to be reasonably tough with plenty of small fish, and the only size fish caught in practice, coming from only a few locations that were bound to be pressured heavily by several boats over the following two days.

I was fortunate to stumble on some good concentrations of small but legal fish on some flats during the prefish day, and settled to secure five fish in my well each day before surmising further about where I would catch the bigger one’s.
The plan of attack included throwing hard bodied lures over flats to try and catch a few legals, before heading to deeper, rocky structures to target big fish using the ever popular 2 inch Gulp shrimp in Banana prawn colour and Craw in Camo colour. My first day started to plan with 5 legals in the well by 8:30am. Then began the hard slog, with many locations both up and downstream fished hard, for only small upgrades. I fished some of the upper sections of the river very hard – casting near weightless cut down Gulp craws under mangroves but failed to put anything bigger into the livewell. A few bass were caught upstream – indicating we had copped a decent fresh leading up to the comp – only a pity we weren’t fishing one of the popular ABT bass events! At the end of the day, I managed to weigh a measly 1.6kg that put me into 9th position.
Day two is always tougher on the Tweed, and I opted to try one rock wall location first up in the morning to try and catch an elusive bigger fish. I only gave myself 15 minutes in this location before heading back to the flats to dredge up small legals and fill a bag. The first up location only produced a 23 cm legal prior to me leaving to throw hard bodies again on the flats. I managed to get my bag on the flats again and then returned to my rock wall location to fish it for the rest of the day in the attempt to get that elusive big fish. Casting varying weighted jigheads (depending on tidal flow) 2 inch Gulp shrimp I was able to get a few 25 and 26cm fish to upgrade my bag slightly. However, as hard as I fished – I was unable to fool one of those kicker fish. I weighed another 1.6kg bag for Day 2 and fortunately it was enough to push me into 6th spot and gain one of the prestigious Grandfinal qualifying spots.

Fellow Berley Team mate, Russel Babekuhl fished the conditions very well, and targeted oyster racks in the system to come out a clear winner for the weekend. Casting lightly weighted Gulp craws around structure produced all of Russel’s fish. Other Berkeley members that fared well included Matt Fraser who pipped me by a few grams...I’ll get you next time Matty! Matt caught several of his fish on the MF40 range of lures (as shown below) that will be hitting our shelves soon. Grab as many of these things as you can afford when they arrive as they are fish magnets!
The weekend taught me that once again, dirty water is not a precursor to catching nothing. Targeting fish in the shallows is always a handy trick to have up your sleeve when the water turns muddy. Fishing plastic imitations of food sources that are readily available following a big flow is also a good strategy. For this reason, the Gulp shrimp and craws work very well in such conditions.
I now have a 3 month break before the next comp, which is great because the snapper have just started chewing well in my local waters, so I’m off fishing the deeper stuff for a while!
Happy fishing,
Nige