REPORT: Vic bream Classic 2014 Grandfinal
The 2014 vic bream classic grand final was held down at the amazing mallacoota inlet in far eastern Victoria. Generally a bream fishermans paradise, the Mallacoota system can give anglers some of the best bream fishing they will ever come across, but for the 50 anglers who made the 2014 vic bream grandfinal unfortunately it was not what we hoped for.
Fridays pre-fish started with some nice weather, and while the bream were not as easy to find and catch as you would like, we were still able to track down some feeding fish on some deeper banks in the top lake, and decided that would be our best option for day one. We didn’t find too many fish hard up on the edges with the sunny and calm conditions, so we had to change our tactics form previous trips to Mallacoota.
Day 1 came and again we were set for some very calm and sunny conditions, not what we wanted to see. And unfortunately it ended up being harder to tempt the fish to bite in these conditions. The fish that were happy bite the day before had all but moved or shutdown and we struggled to put together a bag of 3 fish, reminiscent of the Hopkins river round, Rob got his first fish when a bream picked up his plastic which was snagged in about 1 foot of water. Got lucky on that one! The only upside to day 1 was a 40cm (1.07kg) bream which I managed to get fishing a shallow bank in the top lake, it had my hopes up and was sitting in first place for for big bream for all of about 5 minutes! Half the field did manage to find their 5 fish but still spoke of how tough the conditions were.
Day 2 the weather looked much better for our target species to feel more confident out feeding, it was overcast, a bit windy and even a few showers around.
The fish were definitely more eager to take our offerings and we managed to find our bag of 5 fish throughout the top lake, fishing flats early then moving to deeper banks throughout the day, all our fish came on soft plastics fished along the bottom. We had to sift through a lot of smaller fish and tons of flathead to get our fish and in the end we were paying the price for not moving around enough to find some bigger fish. We were happy with our bag of 5 fish for day 2 but knew we were going to be way down the rankings for this competition.
Congratulations go out to Alan Lister and Darren Murphy from Team “Bream it on” for taking out the win, they found a great patch of fish and persisted, which paid off for them. Thanks to Bill from Vic bream classics for a great round, and year of competitions, and we look forward to the 2015 season with the introduction of a new venue.
