Tales from the Back of the Boat - Pre Fish Fun

A change in tone is in order for this installment of Tales I think. Rather than drone on about my woes and misfortunes I thought we would have a look at an area of bream tournament fishing that attracts a diverse range of views….the Pre-fish.

The Pre-fish Day always brings about much discussion at tournaments. For some, a good pre-fish day is essential to set up the weekend. Finding and catching bream the day before the comp can instill great confidence in an angler. You know where the fish could be, you know the pattern of lure that has been successful and a sense of how the bite will be. You have the basis for a plan of attack on comp days and now it’s down to careful execution.

But then you have the flipside. You never saw a fish all day, nothing seemed to work and even worse, you learn later everyone else had a great prefish. Such a scenario does put an angler in a tough place before a comp. Add to that those anecdotes from fellow fisho’s who if they have a good prefish “never have a good tournament” and vica versa and before you know it the bream are messing with your head and you haven’t even started yet!

In an effort to try an rationalize the pre-fish day I was lucky enough to score a pre-fish ride with Berkley Pro Team member Mark Mangold at the recent Mallacoota ABT event in Victoria. It was the first time I had fished southern waters and I was keen to give the big Black Bream a crack. No undersized yellowfin bream for me this time! See what I mean…bream messing with my head already.

Hitting the water at sunrise I had already had a new experience….scraping ice off the boat seats! At least it was calm and dry and as we motored out from the ramp I settled back into the still slightly chilly seat of Mark’s Skeeter 200ZX and before I knew it all 225 horses of the Evinrude Etec were propelling us across the lake at….well lets just say quickly! (Quick sidenote….one of the benefits of being a non boater is the variety of boats you get to play in but I’ve got to say sometimes the ride in a big Skeeter with an ETEC hanging off the back beats the days fishing hands down.)

The fist stop was some fifty metres off a rocky headland, a spot we had heard had thrown up a few fish earlier in the week. Mark chose to give one of the new Berkley MF40 soft vibes a run and I plumped for a 3 inch Gulp Fry in Lime Tiger colour.

Here’s where the rationalization of the pre-fish began. Two anglers with two very different methods. Remember we are looking for patterns here so take advantage of having two lines in the water. We also fished in opposite directions form the boat and rotated every few minutes. And just for good measure we also swapped methods, just to see if differences in techniques had an impact. As it was the first fish fell to Mark using the Gulp Fry and I dropped one on the vibe seconds later.

It was at that moment we did perhaps the hardest thing in that situation, we stopped fishing. Fish were present so time was taken to note the how and the where. Fishing the lure very slowly was the first box ticked and the makeup of the bottom was noted, both visually and on the sounder. Here it was the classic patches of broken shell and rock in amongst the weedbeds. Water depth was around ten feet and reasonably clear with no real contour features or drop-offs. A move to a spot some 300m away showed similar conditions and again the techniques in the first spot provided results. The time was noted to assess the tide conditions, and a quick check of the weather saw us note that areas exposed to the winter sun seemed to have more life about them rather than those in shade.

After spending a few minutes reflecting the decision was taken to try somewhere completely different. Using the Lowrance sounder we found a gentle drop off with the water running from about 14 feet to about 25 feet. One thing I must comment on is the clarity of the image the new Lowrance colour sounders produce. All my pre bream fishing was done with high quality black and white sounders which I thought were delivering the goods but the image on these units is astounding. The bottom of this particular spot was uninspiring but if you look at the picture opposite you’ll get an idea of what we were also hoping to see…bait!

That huge bait ball passed under the boat and you can see a few larger fish hovering underneath. These indeed turned out to be bream and using both the Berkley Big Eye blade and the MF40 Soft Vibe saw results. Again the fishing stopped and we took stock of our surroundings and the conditions. Although different methods were used, fishing the lure very slow seemed to be the key. A quick tap on the Lowrance saw the spot marked on the GPS.

The day continued in much the same vein and as we motored back to the ramp a pattern was becoming clear. Fish slow, a lure with a touch or orange, fish around 10 to 14 feet, look for broken weedbeds around the edges and good bait showings in more open water. Sure, it could all change tomorrow but it was the foundation for a plan come comp day.

So here are Gatesy’s tips for a pre-fish from my “fings wot I hav lernt” book. They apply to boaters and non boaters alike…remember we’re all in this together!

1. The fish doesn’t matter so much. It’s where you find it that counts. Note everything about that spot, the how, why and where. Your looking for patterns here but note anything peculiar to eg: Fish took lure whilst it was sitting on the bottom ‘cos I was having a coffee etc.
2. Try to resist the urge to keep fishing the same type of spots. Move around. Its just as important to know what areas are not working as well as which areas are.
3. Use your sounder! Seems obvious but that is what its there for. Having a cuppa whilst pottering along is not wasting time if your keeping an eye on the sounder. Its research! Watch and learn.
4. Above all RELAX! There will be enough to think about on comp days. Enjoy the day out and be open minded. A rod rigged with a Nitro jighead, one with a Big Eye blade and one with a MF40 soft vibe will give you three different types of fishing immediately on hand. Give each one a whirl even if it’s not how you would normally fish…you never know!

And if it doesn’t work for you on the day don’t panic. You will still have a good range of spots that you know about and keep in mind the oft quoted “you should have been here yesterday!” line works both ways. They could be there tomorrow.

So did our pre-fish deliver on the day? Well Mark just hung off the top ten and had a particularly good second day where one of the spots we had marked turned on for an hour or so and gave Mark in his words “the best hours bream fishing of his life”. Interestingly as noted above, the fish weren’t there day before but the spot had commonalities with others that had produced.

As you would have seen from the Pro Blog it was Team Berkley’s Brad Hodges that won the event that weekend, secured with a cracking 5kg+ bag on the second day. I actually fished with Brad that day and it was only a few minutes in that Hodgey bravely predicted that someone that day would return a 5kg bag. I think he was pretty happy it was him!

Finally I have mentioned patterns several times in this blog. How about this for a pattern over three recent events – Tweed ABT Russell Babekuhl, Port Macquarie ABT Scott Towner, Mallacoota ABT Brad Hodges.

I’ll let you work it out.

Until next time

Gatesy

Ps Big thanks to Pro Team member Mark Mangold for the pre-fish and his knowledge but more importantly given the cold, the loan of his pants for the comp. No…not those pants thankyou, wet weather pants.

Go Hard Young Man

I love fishing soft plastics as much as the next obsessive compulsive plastic fisherman but being of the generation that grew up fishing hard bodied lures I still have a place deep down that takes great pleasure in fooling fish with hard chunky offerings.

I recently got my hands on some Berkley Frenzy Flicker Shads with the express mission to put them to the test in a range of environments and on a range of species. When I first put them in the water the first thing I noticed was their neutral buoyancy which for me is a plus as once I have cast my lure to a target and twitched down to the fish I don’t want it floating quickly back to the surface or sinking like a stone to the bottom.

So my first impressions were good, so what type of action will I get? Well to my surprise a very enticing tight shimmy not dissimilar to a Rapala Shad Rap, now as these were one of my go to lures some twenty years ago this was tick two in the box.
The next thing I tested was the depth it would reach on a standard cast and retrieve and on standard tackle I could trick the lure down around six feet, 2 meters to those metric minded folk and when given the old funky chicken erratic retrieve it danced and flashed exactly as how I like it. The next thing was of course to put it in front of some fish and see how they liked it after all they have the final say on what lure I am going to use to try and catch them. Well the results have been comprehensive with around 14 species racked up on them in a few short months, they are deadly on flathead trolled in shallow water the bream love them and my favourite the mangrove jack think they are just snacks.
I have caught barramundi on them, sooty grunter, tailor, mackerel, cod and 5 different species of trevally.
So I have proved they catch fish but how do they stand up to it? Well apart from having to replace a few trebles that were straightened on good fish they unlike the old Shad Raps haven’t parted. And the best thing about them believe it or not is the price, these lures retail for around 6 or 7 dollars which really is value for money.
So next time you feel like going hard and are looking for a low cost hard body lure check them out - the colour range is great and all of the colours have caught me fish.
So go hard or go home.

Jason Medcalf

Jason Medcalf is a Berkley Pro Angler in Bundaberg, Qld. Look for more of Jasons blogs in the future.
Dinger.

MF40 – bridging the gap

Last year it was the metal blade, this year it’s the hybrid. The MF40 is a cross between a plastic and a blade, a lead weight head with a Powerbait coating. The MF40 is a little bulker that the Big Eye Blade which gives it more water resistance, therefore the MF40 has an excellent sink rate.

I recently spent a day working the MF40 up and down the many bridges that intersect the Yarra and Maribyrnong rivers. The method was fairly simple, make a lengthy cast parallel to the bridge pylons and work the MF40 back towards the boat. I used a slow steady lift and drop retrieve, this gave the lure plenty of vibration which was easily felt through the rod tip. It didn’t take long before I was hooked up to a nice plump 35cm bream. The system as a whole has been fishing rather tough of late and to consistently pick up hits and fish through the bottom of the tide was really quite impressive. By the end of the morning session I had a nice bag of fish swimming around the live well.

I also counted a couple of hits from Mulloway while fishing the bridges. The first one was short lived, I lifted the rod tip to find quite a bit of weight on the other ended. As I had it under the boat and was just about to steer away from the bridge pylons the hooks pulled. I really didn’t get a chance to set the hooks properly. The second jewie slammed the lure as it was sinking back to the bottom, a very distinctive “tick” came rippling up the fireline and could be felt through the rod. This time a struck hard and really woke up the large fish. The jewie peeled off a good 10 metres of line and then turned and disappeared under the bridge and that’s when it really started to motor. Line disappeared quickly until the inevitable happened and the line touched one of the pylons and broke.

It was really exciting and rewarding to spend a day catching fish on a new lure. The MF40 is already producing quality fish all over the country and the list I’m sure will continue to grow with the upcoming release.

Hodgey

Brad is one of the Berkley Pro Anglers and has been testing the MF40 for several months.

They are now available from most tackle outlets.
Dinger.

The wait is over!

After much hooplah and some serious test fishing the Berkley MF40 soft vibe has arrived.

You can expect to see these baits hitting the stores by mid week of July 13 onwards.

The first eight colours are all available but as the majority of the first shipment has sold out and we don't expect the next shipment until mid August, I would be hunting them down pretty quickly to avoid dissapointment.

The new colours Bombers Moon will arrive next shipment and Oily Boy [pictured] has been scheduled for September.

The ABT super series on Lake Macquarie held the weekend of July 3/4/5 saw several of the Berkley and Pflueger pro's fishing MF40 baits with the following catch results. Flathead to 90cm, whiting, flounder, small snapper, squid, bream, jewfish and salmon.

Conclusion -They work!

From the deep south Pat Sullivan in Tasmania has been doing well on the lake trout population.

So, it looks like a great bait for a variety of species. Look for the PFTV clips showing how they are best fished.

Can't wait for the 50 and 60 sizes!

Mallacoota ABT Qualifier

The ABT Mallacoota qualifier was a highly anticipated event by all participating anglers. With fine and calm weather predicted it would be hard to find a more picturesque location to spend a couple of days chasing bream.
Due to work commitments I had to miss the prefish day which lowered my expectations for the tournament. My plan rested solely on my findings during the Vic Bream Classic held two weeks prior to this event.
Starting down the order on day 1, I made a short 5 minute trip to Mallacoota’s top lake. I began fishing a big eye blade in 4m of water about 100m from the bank. With schooling fish being the word on the street, I was hoping the fish hadn’t moved too far since the classic. I was a little unsure of my decision and after the first hour clicked by, without even a hit I really started to curse not having prefished. I made a change to a 4” Turtleback worm in pumpkinseed matched to a 1/12 Nitro bream finesse jighead and immediately landed 3 legal bream included a plump 35cm fish. (how quickly things can change) The bite slowed again so I moved closer to the shore line to scan the shallows. Flicking lures into the lake fringe saw my non-boater pull an awesome kilo plus bream. Unfortunately that was the only fish sighted so we headed back out into deeper water. I spent the rest of the day throwing turtlebacks with a fairly standard technique, once the lure had reached the bottom I would gently lift the rod, moving the turtleback about 1m. Just long enough to attract the bream with the fluttering tail. Most of the hits came while the turtleback lay still on the bottom.
The bite pattern was very on and off for the entire day. There were long periods of nothing that were broken by small patches of 3-4 fish. With a couple of upgrades within the last hour I weighed in 4.18kg and was placed in 6th position. My non boater fished fantastically and took a healthy lead into day 2 with 4.26kg in the non-boater division.
On day 2 the bite pattern changed dramatically which had my live well empty at 8:30 and once again I was unsure of what to try next. I had 2 choices, either persevere in deep water with day 1’s proven pattern or move to the shallow margins. Decisions can make or break a tournament and this one set up an incredible day of fishing. The move to shallow water saw 4 bream boated, 3 of which were over a kilo. The fish were holding on the weed in between the rocky shore and the deeper water. Casting camo worms and a hardbody over the weed and working it back with an all important pause in the dark patches seemed to do the trick. I watched all 4 fish rise from the weed, chase down and swallow the lure. It was heart stopping, hold your breath fishing!!! The 5th fish proved to be the toughest. With 2 hours to go, I moved back to the deeper water and threw a big eye blade. It was pure relief when a 30cm yellowfin bream made it into the boat. To top it all off I was able to upgrade that fish with a 35cm black bream.
Weighing in just over 5kg on a tough day and taking my total to 9.41kg was extremely pleasing. The nerve racking wait as all the other anglers weighed in was made even worse when two other 5 kilo bags made it to the scales. The end result had the top ten riddled with quality anglers and to come out on top was unexpected but very satisfying.
Cheers Hodgey