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Tweed River ABT 17th/18th Feb.

blue_mako

By blue_mako
in Saltwater

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blue_mako Newbie

blue_mako

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Hey Guys.

Though I might as well do a report about the Tweed River ABT I entered on the weekend. I met up with angler number 2 of 'Team Not Sponsored', Simon on Saturday at around 8am for a prefish of the River as neither of us know the Tweed well.

PREFISH:

From Kennedy Drive boat ramp we headed up river to our first location, a rockwall which dropped to a sandy bottom in about 3-5m of water. I started off working an SX40 in colour 333 (Gold Coast Special) on my Shimano Stella 1000 and G. Loomis IMX with 10lb Avani Sea Bass PE and 2m of 4lb Siglon Fluorocarbon Leader. Simon was using a Shimano Stradic 2500, Shimano Rack Radier with 4lb Fireline and 2m of 8lb Kokoda Seaguar Fluorocarbon Leader. His lure of choice was a Gulp! 2inch Shrimp in Molting colour rigged on a 1/24th Berkley Nitro Jighead.

We had a few casts at the bank before Simon was onto the first legal of the day, a 24cm Fork Bream. I had a few more casts before I switched to my Shimano Stradic 1000, Berkley Dropshot rod with 4lb Fireline and 3lb Nitlon Fluorocarbon Leader. I put on a 1/20th TT Jighead with a 1/0 hook and a 2inch Shrimp in Molting pattern and casted out. I had no luck for a few casts before Simon landed another legal and was getting quite a few hits. I hooked a good fish of around 25-26cm Fork and decided to be lazy and just pole it into the boat, unluckily the leader snapped at the Jighead and he earnt his freedom.

We knew there was fish there so we drifted further down to save the location for tommorow. We got a number of small Moses Perch and Cod before I hooked onto what I thought was a Jack, only to be a very very bright red Moses Perch of 35cms. I got busted off by a rat Flathead on 3lb leader and we drifted down to some flats surrounded by a lot of pvc piping standing up right :S . We got a few undersized Bream and Moses Perch on SX40's before we started working the canals.

As usual we got a lot of missed hits and I pulled a legal Bream from some weedbeds on a 1/60th rigged Shrimp. You could have almost called it for a Black Bream the way it had colours of bronze and brown to match the weed. He had a few mates which got away, though I'm pretty sure I nailed one of them the next cast after that fish, he was undersize by 0.5cms :dry: .

We pulled up to a shady pontoon where we lost 4 fish between the both of us which were sitting right up in the shallow water in the shade, just out of view :( .

We went back out to the wall which produced the fish in last years Tweed ABT where we got a couple more Bream. We were just drifting past a spot where I landed a few small Trevally last year. The currents meet there and there's a few good swirls and eddies that had formed. I said 'We're in GT territory now' and ripped my 2inch Shrimp back giving it sharp solid jerks when my line locked up and the fish spat it. I jerked it a few more times bringing the Shrimp upto the surface and a school of around 5 or 6 45-50cm Big Eye Trevally were all fighting for the lure. My line tightened up and away went my lure for a dashing run against the current. After a good 10 minute fight a 47cm Big Eye Trevally was landed for a new P.B. and a lot of hairy fun on 4lb main 4lb leader :cheer: . (Thanks Nabs for putting me onto these Shrimp!)

We had a full bag by now and were still in search of more Bream but that wasn't to be with no upgrades for the rest of the day. I nailed a 36cm GT from around some bridge pylons which fought for a good 5minutes on my Loomis 1-3kg puting a solid bend in my rod. I got that one on a Gulp! 3inch Craw in Camo pattern cut down to 2inch which Ando put me onto.

That was about it for the prefish. I landed 3 P.B.'s (Big Eye, GT and Moses Perch). We landed about 25+ Bream between us with only 5 legals for a 1.6kg bag. Also about 30 rat Moses Perch, 5 rat Cod, 5 rat Flatties and a couple of rat Moses Perch relatives. Oh yeah, almost forgot, landed a Friggit Bird of around 80cm wingspan on the 2inch Shrimp as well! :P . He took a dive from way up to chase down my slowly sinking Shrimp ;) . He also bit me when unhooking him.

COMP DAY:

We got up nice and erly and got key tag number 8 for an early start. I landed the first legal from a rock wall near the start line on a 2inch Shrimp within about 5 casts, he went 25 fork. Great start ;) . Simon dropped what looked to be an undersize Bream before we headed off after catching some more rat Moses Perch.

Simon pointed at a rockwall which we didn't fish in the prefish but we decided to pull up to it anyway. Within 5 minutes Simon nailed a good 25cm fish for our second legal. More rat Perch so we decided to go to our good spot from yesterday.

We pulled up and soon after the heavy rain started. Fishing through the rain we didn't get many touches until I decided to though a wide cast out to the center of the channel, just incase. Of course I got a lot of nibblie little hits. Though they were good sized fish, just not exactly in the most active feeding mood. I landed another legal going 25 Fork. We then repeated the drift in deeper water when Simon got a nice 27cm Fork Bream, our biggest of the weekend going 430grams.

We got a lot of rat Bream and Moses Perch as expected but we had high hopes in that we could get our 5th legal for a full bag. We repeated the drift twice more before I got onto a 26cm Fork Bream. Weren' we relieved! :woohoo: . A good bag with all fish between 25 and 27cm Fork, we knew were in with a top placing with 5 fish at least a good 2cm over legal length.

We headed back upstream to the rockwall where we began where I landed my 4th legal for the day at 23cm fork. Unfortunately didn't upgraded any of our fish but we were still happy with our efforts so we decided to call it quits and weigh ina good 10minutes early.

Scales showed 1.8kgs for a 6th place finish and our entry of $120 back in our pockets. We also got a random draw Bias Boating cheque for $50 :cheer: . As usually i've typed too much but it was a great weekend. The Trevs were thick on the comp day but unfortunately we had to avoid them :( . Should have some pics of the 2 Trevs some time soon ;) .

Troy

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blue_mako Newbie

blue_mako

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Oztrav: Thanks Mate.

Werewolf: Hopefully things may happen some time in the future! ;):) :cheer: .

Angus: Yeah mate I'm loving these Bream Comps! Should hopefully be doing the Gold Coast nnext month as well :) . And yeah it was hard not casting at them, they kept busting up near us and it was really teasing us!

Troy

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blue_mako Newbie

blue_mako

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Feral: The reason why they started the Summer Series is because there was no competitions over the Summer so they've extended it from just the Winter months to all year round so there's always opportunities to fish a comp.

In Summer the fish don't weigh as much, the 1.8kg bag we got over the weekend would have weighed around 2.2-2.3kgs in Winter.

Here's a link to the results table:


/>http://www.bream.com.au/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=231

Troy

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