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Report: Cricket score bream!

MY mate Col Gordon lives on the Central Coast and was keen to take Fisho editor Jim Harnwell and myself to a secret spot where the bream reportedly climb all over any offerings made to them.

Subscribing to the theory that one fish taken on the surface is equal to six taken below, our lure boxes were full of surface lures as well as the odd bibbed lure, blade and plastic.

The night before Jim was to make the five hour trip north and myself about the same east, Col rang to say he’d been struck down with a nasty flu and had to pull out. After a quick discussion with Jim on whether to cancel and reschedule or go ourselves, we decided to continue on to “Bream Heaven”. After we’d sworn to secrecy, Col gave us directions to this mostly overlooked waterway.

After arriving at our destination it did appear by the lack of rubbish and no other anglers that the spot didn’t receive too much attention from the general angling public.
After setting up camp we unloaded Jim’s Hobie and my kayak and rigged up some ultra-light spin gear and some fly gear.

With grey skies threatening we also took raincoats along for our first foray onto the sacred waters.

Not a hundred metres from camp, Jim was the first to get some thumping surface strikes from some unseen bream. It wasn’t long and he’d hooked up to a nice one. From there the scenario was repeated again and again.

The sucking surface strikes were exhilarating and by watching Jim I soon realised the key was to pause the lures for up to 30 seconds before moving them again.

I don’t know how many times we saw bow waves behind the lures … we stopped them and then a sucking surface strike resulted in a feisty bream hook up.

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Fisho editor Jim Harnwell with a bream hooked on the surface.

Under a darkening sky and drizzling rain we called it quits. We’d also released our 50th bream for the afternoon and more than satisfied, headed back to camp for a brew and a good feed.

Early next morning we headed down the creek opposite to where we’d fished the previous evening. Again we were soon taking fish everywhere we paddled and then saw fish breaking the surface further down.

Paddling down to within a long cast of the surface action, it looked like a school of tailor were working. My first cast brought an instant response from a bream.

Every cast was then either a hook up or a missed surface take. I called Jim over to join in. “Are you sure they’re not mullet?“ he asked before his first cast answered the question; indeed it was a mix of mullet and bream surface feeding.

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Catching a heap of bream from a kayak is hard to beat!

The surface action just kept on going until the sun got higher and the bream started moving lower in the water column.

Jim switched over to a Jackal Chubby and was soon taking fish consistently, although two fish buried him in a snag and cost him two lures.

I switched over to a fly rod and tied on a small clouser. It took about six casts before it was taken by a sub-surface bream.

With a bright blue sky and being mirror calm it seemed that the bream would stay clear of the shallows until evening or a wind chop, or clouds moved in to give them cover.

It was impressive watching sea eagles and shags skimming the surface where the fish were feeding, causing them to explode in fright from the fast moving birds.

The middle of the day was quiet as all action on the surface had ceased. A midday snooze accounted for a few hours before we got into the afternoon session.

As we had a few hours till the evening I decided to rig a Gulp Shrimp unweighted on a worm hook floated down amongst the deeper water and snags. This brought instant strikes from bream hidden down deep and in no time at all I’d used half a tray of Shrimps.

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Gulp Shrimps worked well when drifted down into snags.

Jim chided me for “bait fishing” … I reckon it was more that he had no Gulps and didn’t like the fact I was slaying the fish on them!

We belted around a few different sub surface lures and took fish on everything we tried until evening closed in.

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Another surface feeder comes to the boat.

A wind soon picked up and put a chop on the water and we were blessed with a bit of cloud cover so the bream would feel safe moving into the shallows to feed through the evening in to the night.

The surface fishing picked up and we had a ball getting belted on the surface for an hour or so before Jim headed back to camp to get the billy on. He left instructions for me to catch our 100th bream, which I finally did as the sun began to set.

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Fish no.100!

Next day it was with much excitement we headed downstream to where the previous morning’s surface feeding action had taken place, but were disappointed to find that it was mainly schools of mullet breaking the surface.

Jim took five fish and called it quits to head back to camp to pack up. I persevered with the fly rod and an intermediate line and fished a clouser deep. After catching two fish I also pulled the pin on the best bream fishing I’d ever experienced. While I have caught bigger fish, the sheer numbers had made it a fantastic experience.

We’d caught and released 110 bream; this figure was rounded down and didn’t include some very small fish. Jim reckoned it was pretty good fishing and that he would again be happy to make the five hour trip north, if invited.

I can’t wait till we can go back again!

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