Squidgie Bream Grand Final - Parramatta River - 3/5/09

Firstly, a big apology for not putting any reports up for a few weeks but I DO have a good excuse! A couple of weeks ago I managed to put myself in hospital (just unlucky me, I guess. I had a Mallory-Weiss Tear. Look it up if you want to) for 6 days (4 of those in Intensive Care) and for some reason, they wouldn't let me out to have a yak and a fish. All is good now though so I should get out this week sometime and get a few runs on the board. To top it off, this report isn't even about fishing from a kayak. Oh the shame...

Luckily, all my dramas happened before the Squidgie Grand Final so Gary and I could still attend and go for gold. 20 teams departed from Hen and Chicken Bay at 7am and Gary and I had already worked out a detailed plan that we were going to stick to. First stop was a rock wall 5 minutes up river. Gary started throwing a Chubby and I was working a 2" Gulp shrimp (pepper) rigged on a 1/20th jighead. Only 10 minutes into it, and I hook up. Nice fish and he's 31 cms to the fork. That's a good start. Gary then hooks up but drops it and 5 minutes later, I do the same. Bugga. No more bites after that so we move off to work some bridges with blades.

For the next 3 hours Gary and I proceeded to hook and drop fish left, right and center! I thought I had rubber hooks on at one stage. It was soooooooooo frustrating. Finally, at Gladesville Marina, Gary gets the hooks to stick and number 2 (29 cms fork) is in the well.

Off to Birkenhead Point Marina and more dropped fish. Over to some flats for one flathead. Back upstream to Westport Marina and BANG, I hook up big time. Thump, thump, thump up the line and I realise it's a trevally. A good one too but useless in a bream comp. A quick photo and back he goes.

The next fish I land is a nice Leather Jacket. Oh, for fuggs sake! With only 45 minutes to go, we venture up to Exile Bay. I'm flicking a berkley Big Eye Blade around when it gets crunched as soon as it hits the water. I see a flash of silver and call out to Gary, "Yes, finally, get the net." But our luck today was well and truly absent and in comes another trevally. Aaaargh! Time ticks away and I hook up again. Another flash of silver and you guessed it, ANOTHER Trevally. Gary and I are laughing at this stage and we couldn't have caught a bream if you thrown one at us from 3 feet away. That's fishing for you. Sometimes it all comes together and sometimes it all goes to s%#t.

Our two fish weighed in at 1.040 kgs and the winning bag by Team Squidgie was over 4 kilos so we weren't even close. We still had fun though and that's what it's all about. A big thanks to Gary for having me on board and our next comp together will be the WSBB Bream Scramble in a couple of months, where Gary and I will be defending our win from last year. I think we'd better get out there and practice. Happy yakkin', everyone.

cheers,

Cid