FOR two out of the three of us it was our first time fishing the annual Golden Classic, so we were keen as to swim a few lures and get amongst the action. The plan was to have a quick prefish on Thursday arvo and put the info gained into practice on the comp days.
Our prefish went well with three different spots found, producing a total of five fish all on lipless crankbaits. Another quick look around on Friday morning trying varied techniques on some different structure like steep rock walls and timber drew a blank so our game plan for the friday arvo session was to fish the more gentle sloping banks with weed beds that we scored fish on the day before.
The first hour or so of the session proved frustrating for us with boats in the spots we’d planned to fish and a few pulled hooks on what felt like reasonable fish. Our persistence was eventually rewarded on a bank with minimal traffic which saw five fish hit the Environet for the afternoon. This had us half way to our ten fish total for the team so we were pretty happy about that with a full day’s fishing remaining.
A 4.30 am wake up had us questioning the festivities of the night before but we had to be on our spot ready to make a cast by 6am. By 9am we’d landed our fifth fish for the morning which gave us our ten fish team limit and from what we’d heard the fishing was tough so it was high fives and back slapping for team Fisho with seven hours left to try and improve our overall length of fish.
Guy Jamieson with a typical Windamere golden taken during the comp.
The upgrades kept coming and we finished with around 20 fish for the day, not bad for a bunch of newbies.
The Champions trophy was taken out by team Duffrods’ Dave Welfare, Greg Beattie and Richard Potter. It was a well deserved victory after a couple of near misses over the years. The boys only fished the last session after picking up a bag and burning out an outboard impeller on the Thursday. Their Friday was spent driving to Dubbo for spares only to find a sign on the shop door “Back in 2 hours gone to a wedding.” A pretty funny story and a fantastic effort!
Luke Pearce took out the Lowrance Big Yella prize with this 610mm fish.
2013 Lake Windamere Golden Classic results
Shimano Champion Junior Angler – Dean McMahon, Team Fish Tec Solutions, 2610 points
Okuma Champion Lady Angler – Jo Starling, Team Top End Outcast, 2570 points
Oztent Champion Family Team – Top End Outcast, Jo Starling, Steve Starling, Charlotte Reiter, 2679 points
Lowrance Big Yella – Luke Pearce, Team Tappa Tourney (610mm)
Engel Grand Champion Angler – Mark Hardman, Team Hardman Outdoors, 5433 points
AFN Grand Champion Team – Team Duffrods; Dave Welfare, Greg Beattie, Richard Potter, 5551 points.
