The small and often discoloured creeks that run through dairy farms can offer great – albeit sometimes smelly – bream fishing. BEN CADDAYE reports.
I DISLIKE early starts but my decision to be on the water at the crack of dawn on this occasion paid dividends on my second cast as a solid NSW South Coast black bream crash-tackled my little hard-bodied lure on the fringes of a rock bar and made a couple of short but dogged runs for cover.
At a tick over 30cm, the fish was never going to cause me too many dramas, and before long it was swimming alongside my kayak with the gold Strike Pro Pygmy pinned firmly in the corner of its jaw.
I photographed the fish and dropped it back into the shallow, turbid water, unaware that I now had an audience … of sorts.
While I’d been battling the bream, a dozen Friesian dairy cows had ventured close to the bank to chew on a patch of thick, lush grass and have a sticky-beak at what this strange bloke was doing on this creek that meandered through their backyard. Unimpressed, they quickly went back to their breakfast as I paddled onwards.
Bovines & Bream
To be honest, in recent years I’ve come to closely associate cows with cracking creek bream. Some of the best bream-on-lure waterways I fish on the NSW Far South Coast wind their way through lush farming country. And the most productive locations within these waterways often seem to be right in the middle of prime dairy cattle grazing territory.
So, in the same way that a chorus of cicadas means bass to some fishos, the sound of mooing means bream to me!
The Creeks
At first glance, the bodies of water that adjoin cow paddocks can look a little uninspiring. They’re often shallow, discoloured and even a little on the nose at times. But the handful I fish on a regular basis harbour bream – and plenty of them. Bream seem to thrive in the turbid, nutrient-rich water. In fact, the cloudy conditions make the resident fish far less timid than their clear-water counterparts. They’ll enter the shallows far more readily at all times of the day and chase and hit lures with surprising daring and aggression.
The cow paddock creeks I fish are characterised by steep, snaggy banks, which make for perfect bream-holding structure. There are weed-beds and rock-bars, too, which attract small mullet and prawns and, as a consequence, are beacons for hungry fish.
Another great feature of these creeks is that hardly anyone fishes them. My favourites are accessible by canoe and kayak only and I’ve never come across another angler, despite fishing many times during peak holiday periods.
The Fish
Big southern black bream are what draw me to the cow paddocks. I catch the occasional yellowfin bream in these waterways, but the conditions seem to suit blacks – and that’s fine by me.
A typical bream-luring session in the warmer months produces runts around 20cm to genuine blue-nosed bruisers in excess of 40cm. In fact, my personal best bream was a 44cm thumper taken in shin-deep water in one of my favourite cow paddock creeks. Any 40cm-plus bream is a genuine handful on light tackle and I’ll admit up front that I lose more than I land – even with a locked drag and a beefed-up leader.
Cow paddock bream will bite all year round, but the fish I chase are at their most aggressive through summer and into early autumn. As water temperatures rise in these little creeks, bream are drawn into the shallows to feed. In the stillness of early morning you can often hear the tell-tale “kiss” or “slurp” as a bream inhales a tasty morsel from the surface. Under these conditions, they’re suckers for small, shallow diving minnows and surface lures.
Bream are not the only fish you will find in numbers in the cow paddock creeks; expect plenty of dusky flathead too. On occasions where I fish, every second hook-up is a flattie, and they’re welcome by-catch when they’re in the 40-50cm bracket (perfect for the BBQ). There are, of course, much bigger lizards on offer in these waterways. I hooked one around 70cm last summer that proceeded to tow my kayak a fair distance; and a local tackle shop owner nailed an 86cm beauty in the same area on a popper. Hefty flathead in tight water are great fun, and a strike from one of these big frogs in the shallows has to be seen to be believed!
Lures & Techniques
I almost exclusively use small, shallow diving hard-bodied lures when fishing the cow paddock creeks. I particularly like those that lie suspended just below
the surface and dive to about a metre. The Ecogear SX40, Strike Pro Pygmy and Strike Pro Small Fry are personal favourites but there’s a stack of very similar makes and models on the market that are equally effective. Just look for any suspending hard-body between 40 and 50mm long which dives to a maximum of 1.5m and you shouldn’t
go wrong. The Strike Pros are my “go-to” lure principally because they’re about half the price of many of their competitors and bream simply go nuts over them.
Fire these little hard-bodies in towards overhanging banks, drowned timber and submerged weed beds and commence a stop start retrieve, allowing the lure to pause mid-water. You will very often get hit as soon as the lure splashes down. If you don’t, expect hits on the pause as bream inhale the suspending lure and make a beeline for cover. Don’t overlook seemingly featureless areas of shoreline either. I’ve found that bream in feeding mode regularly like to leave the timber to cruise over sand, mud and weed. Anyway, shoreline that appears barren from above the water is sometimes littered with submerged sticks, twigs and other debris that represent reliable fish holding structure.
Surface lures and poppers are also extremely effective in the small, shallow waterways I fish. Surface walkers like the Bushy’s Stiffy Top Dog, Lucky Craft Sammy and Tiemco Pencil are just three examples of “walk-the-dog” style minnows that work, but there are countless others that are worth a cast. Employ a steady, constant retrieve that allows these pieces of plastic to twist and roll over the surface. When you spy a bream in pursuit, stop the retrieve for a second or two and wait for that unmistakable “slurp” as a southern black engulfs your offering. Well-worked poppers are also deadly on cow paddock bream. Try a River 2 Sea Bubble Pop, Rebel Pop-R or Bushy’s Stiffy Popper.
Soft plastics certainly work on cow paddock bream but I’ve found them less effective (and less exciting) on the whole than hard-bodies. Even when fished on tiny jig heads, I find softies don’t stay long enough in that mid-to-top-water strike zone and instead get fouled by the weed, twigs and leaf litter than so often adorns the bottom of these creeks. In saying that, soft plastics that I’ve had a degree of success with in the past include very lightly-weighted 65mm Squidgy Wrigglers (in Bloodworm) and Juro Firebait Longtail Minnows (in Green).
Tackle
My typical cow paddock bream set-up comprises a light 2m graphite composite rod matched to a 1000-2000 size threadline reel. Rivers and creeks that wind their way through farming country often boast serious snags so it pays to err on the safe side when choosing lines and leaders. Start with 6-8lb braid connected to a 10lb fluorocarbon leader, but if bust-offs become commonplace upgrade to a 12-15lb leader. You can get away with a slightly heavier approach in these locations as there’s nearly always some colour in the water. And let’s face it, when you’re attempting to stop a kilogram or more of powerful black bream from reaching its woody or rocky lair, you need all the help you can get!
Conclusion
Cow paddock creeks can be muddy, smelly and home to the densest populations of flies in the Southern Hemisphere. But don’t judge a book by its cover. Bream and other species often abound in these uninspiring little waterways and my eyes have certainly opened to the angling potential on offer. So make the “moove” and milk it for all it’s worth!
