Cooks River Report – 26/1/07

What’s a better way to start off Australia Day than with a quick outing on the Cooks River. It rained the night before and the extra run-off would hopefully put the bream on the chew. It was still raining when I left home but 5 minutes before arrival it stopped and stayed away for the rest of the morning.

The tide was running out so I first tried the flats with a couple of HB’s. I had a few tentative hits but no hookups, so I continued up to the railway bridge. First cast with a 2” Minnow Grub and it’s picked up by my first legal of the day. Only 26cm total length but it’s a start!

There was a bit of current so I made sure I flicked my lures right in behind the pylons where there was a bit of an eddy. I mixed it up using 2” Grubs, 3” Minnows in pumpkinseed and 6” Sandworms in Camo. Another 3 bream joined their mate in the livewell before it went a bit quite so I moved down to the road bridge.

This has some great pylons and invariably the bream are right in tight taking refuge in the shade. You have to be ready for a take and get that fish out of cover before he wraps you around a line-shredding pole. Sometimes when you’re fishing close like this though you just can’t stop all the fish.

I moved about slowly, fishing one set of pylons thoroughly before trying the next. Today the fishing was great and the final tally for the day was 12 bream between 25cm’s and 35cm’s. Twice I was busted-up by fish that I just couldn’t turn so some of the guys down there must be real bruisers. By 9am the current had stopped and the fish went off the bite.

A couple of weekends ago I fished in the Berkley Summer Series Comp on the Georges River. At one stage I thought I’d hooked a nice bream but it turned out to be a 38cm tagged jewfish. If you capture one of these fish, note the length accurately and take down the tag number and call the fisheries on the phone number on the tag. There’s a $10 gift voucher reward for the info and you’re helping in the research, too. My fish was released at Kurnell in April 2006 and was 24.6cm’s long back then so it’d certainly grown a bit in those 9 months. Happy yakkin’, everyone.

Cheers,
Cid