REPORT: 2015 Vic Bream Classic – Mallacoota, Round 5
A bit of a write up of our latest round of the Vic Bream Classic held down at the beautiful Mallacoota in far east Gippsland. And beautiful it was! Sunny warm weather made for great boating, but probably made the fishing a little bit slower than normal for this time of the year.
PREFISH
Prefish at Mallacoota is usually the same everytime we are here. It entails making your way around the system, from up river, through the top lake and down to the bottom lake, checking out likely spots along the way to try and find some good quality fish. This time round we didn’t even head up river as we decided to concentrate on the lakes and there many bays, flats and edges. It didnt take long to realise that the fish were holding a little bit deeper with none being hard up on the edges of the top and bottom lake. We fished some deeper banks and flats throughout the system and found fish holding in the 1.5m and deeper region. These fish came on a variety of lures which was a good sign for us, Daiwa Double clutches, Jackall chubbies and soft plastics.
We still couldn’t really nut out a pattern though, with only one fish generally being caught at the different locations we tried. We ended up in the top lake fishing a deeper sloping bank and flat, and it was here that Mike got two 40cm fish in the space of 10mins that we decided it was a good place to start on Day 1.
DAY 1
Day 1 dawned with blue cloudless skies and light winds. Not a welcome sign for bream fishermen! As planned we headed straight to the top lake and started fishing that same deeper banks. It was slow going, much slower than we had hoped, only picking up 3 legal fish in the first few hours. We decided a move was needed, and checked out a few other banks in the top lake, finally rounding out our bag with a couple of better fish and a upgrade. All these fish came in water 1.5m and deeper on Jackall chubbies, and Dragon maggot plastics rigged on a 1/12th jighead. We stuck it out in the top lake to try and find one of those bigger fish from pre-fish but it was not to be. Our Day 1 bag went 3.45kg and only had us 23rd position.
DAY 2
Day 2 we decided to roll the dice and due to the much better fishing weather (overcast and windy) we headed straight to Goodwin sands. We had heard of a few yellowfin bream being caught out that way in prefish, so headed stright there and found a section of flats to ourselves. Ended up being a great decision as we had our bag of fish and a few small upgrades by 8.30am. Nothing monstrous, but a good mix of black and yellowfin bream. These fish all came on Daiwa 60mm Double clutches, and gee was it some fun fishing! It gave us a good base to try and upgrade to some bigger fish. We left the sands as the sun went higher and the wind died off. We went back to the top lake and hit up numerous deep and shallow banks looking for those big fish. Mike got one decent upgrade on a Jackall chubby, and then the next 10 fish were all similar or smaller sizes to what we had. One last move back to the bottom lake to finish off the arvo with no real luck, leaving us with a bag of 3.55kg and a overall position of 23rd. While not the result we were after, we did have some fun fishing and learn’t some more about this amazing location. We will be back!
Congrats to Team Native Watercrafts Charlie Saykao and Aaron Williams on a great win.
I was using a combination of Daiwa Gen Black, black label, and tournament bream specialist rods, with 2004 size Daiwa TDsol 2, Freams, and caldia reels, spooled with 6lb Daiwa J-braid and 4lb TD Sensor.
Mike was using his Daiwa infeet, megabass hyuga and racing condition, all with 2506 and 2004 Luvias’s.
