Team Pflueger Wins in Tassy.

The 2009 Spirit of Tasmania Trout Classics were held over two rounds in Tasmania’s central highlands.
Round one was held on Great Lake, a massive waterway with both rainbow and brown trout and round two on Arthur’s lake which is smaller in size with its population made up of brown trout only.
The tournament is photo based similar to the ABT barra series. The goal is to catch, measure, photo and release as many fish as possible in the standard 7-2pm fishing hour on lure and fly.

Round one we battled strong winds with gusts over 40knots making fishing challenging to say the least! I was teamed up with Andy McCarthy from Victoria and despite the conditions we chose to fish a shore with the wind pushing onto and down the shoreline. Riding metre high waves all day long was brutal on the body but the fish didn’t seem to care! Casting 2.5” Black and gold Powerbait T-Tails on 1/16th and 1/8th oz jig heads tight in on the rocks proved to be a winning formula. The fish were tight in on the shore looking for any items dislodged by the wave action. At the end of the day we had caught 21 fish for a total lenght over 10m with second place coming in with 12 fish and 6m+. Interestingly, many seemed to stick to hard bodies but the results show the humble T-Tail was the pick of the lures on the day!

Round two was held on Arthur’s Lake with calmer but much wetter conditions. For much of the day we battled wind and thunderstorms. The fishing however was reasonable with three teams finishing on 19 fish apiece. Like round one we opted to fish a windward rocky shore early and had instant success. Again fishing Black and Gold Berkley T-Tails we had managed 12 by 9am and things were looking good. After the fish went quiet we moved location to the Western side of the lake.
Fishing some standing timber in 12-20 feet of water I decided to give a sample MF50 a run with the fish choosing to lay low. The result was instant success! For the rest of the day most of our fish came on the MF50’s unfortunately we also dropped our fair share including one that came out of the water and spat the lure back at me in disgust…

We managed to miss out on the round win by only a few centimetres, however with a 1st place finish in round one we took out the overall series. Interestingly the results for Arthur’s proved how good Berkley lures are:

1st – Powerbait T Tails – Black and Gold
2nd – 3” GULP minnows – Moldy cheese and smelt
3rd – Powerbait T Tails – Black and gold/MF50’s

I think it is fairly clear that Trout have a weakness when it comes to Berkley products! I can’t wait for the MF50’s to be released. The smaller version is deadly on the trout and it seems the 50’s might be even better!

For much of the series I used the new Pflueger XTS Supreme and it performed flawlessly. Light, smooth and tangle free. These are sure to be popular amongst tournament and weekend anglers alike.

Pat Sullivan

Team Pflueger wins In Tassy

This past weekend [Jan31/Feb1] we had the 2nd round of the Tasmanian BREAM classics at the Swan River on Tasmania’s east coast. Fishing with Derwent bream guru Leigh McKenzie we managed to record our second win from two starts. Below is a rundown our how our weekend went and what we used to record the victory:

GULP! 6” Natural sandworms: Yes they still work!

The GULP 6” sandworm is one of the most popular GULP soft plastics of all time. I have caught stacks of fish on it myself and had some of my best results using this lure. While its not a secret weapon by any means it does seem to have become the “forgotten hero”! Without it I might not be writing this article!

Day 1:
After a reasonably successful pre-fish, where we located quite a few fish we headed downstream from the start and hit up our first spot. The plan was to mix it up. Leigh fished a hard body while I fished a Gulp sandworm. Two fish in the first three casts had the blood pumping. Somewhat to our surprise the sandworm was smacking the fish one after the other! By 7:35am we had upgraded, by 9am we would have boated 20 fish and already had a five fish bag of 5kg. All on the humble 6” GULP sandworm.

As the tide changed the fish moved on and so did we. We headed upstream and fished surface hard bodies over weedy/sandy flats. The action conditioned to be hot with a further half dozen fish in the next half hour including one upgrade at over a kilo.

Heading back to the weigh in we had managed to hold a lead of only 5grams over second place. With a meager 25grams separating the top three teams.

Day 2:
Heading out on day two is always a good feeling, although it does come with extra pressure as everyone is gunning for you. With the success of day one we headed back to our spot with instant success. First cast a 35cm to fork in the well, followed by another two fish in the next half hour. The tides seemed to change a lot on day two which turned the fish off. Time to make the toughest call of the weekend, stay and wait for the fish to come on the chew, risking potentially not getting our bag or move on and go searching for fish? We chose to move on which proved to be both the right and wrong decision. We caught a bag on top water and upgrade a number of times and managed to get home by around 500grams for the win! In hindsight we could have stayed and got a bag once the tide changed. Another team went into where we had been fishing after we left and pulled a 5.6kg bag on GULPs!

Anyways we made the call we did and we aren’t regretting it. A win is a win. The gear I used consisted of three different combos:

Pflueger Supreme 7’1″ 2-4kg, 7′ 1-3kg, and 6’6″ 2-4kg rods matched with Pflueger Supreme XT reels loaded with 3lb Stren Microfuse and Berkley Trilene Leader.
Lure/Jig head: 6” Natural GULP sandworm, 1/16th size 1 nitro jighead.

Don’t ever right off the almighty 6” GULP sandworm!

Pat Sullivan