ABT Hobie/Daiwa kayak fishing series, rd 11

Author: josh

Category: Trip Reports

Created on Monday, 09 May 2011 18:24

Written by Josh

Fine conditions were predicted for Yamba on the Sunday just gone and fortunately for the field of participants in the 11th round of the ABT Daiwa/Hobie Kayak Series, predictions held true. As dawn broke over the Clarence river a field of around 22 entrants slid their kayak-fishing warships into the water and took off in search of the elusive bream. Seven hours later all kayaks had returned - most of them with fish in the well - and very few sour faces among them, indicating a reasonably successful day on the water. Although a few didn't have any fish to weigh in at the end of it all, I believe everyone caught fish regardless. While the fish weren't terribly active, there seemed to be plenty around. None of the fish caught were terribly big, with plenty of 'squeakers' bagged and there were plenty of other fish caught, most notably tailor and flathead. Here's a snippet from Steve Morgans full report at BREAM.com.au:

In the lead-up to the intense rivalry for the rugby league State of Origin games, Queensland BREAMers struck an early blow, invading the Clarence river and taking the major placings in the 11th round of the Daiwa/Hobie BREAM Series, held out of Yamba’s Blue Dolphin Holiday Park. And it was previous Redcliffe winner, Nicholas Meredith, who presented a 3/3, 1.45kg bag to the weighmaster to take the top position. Fellow Brisbane-ites, Will Lee and Denis Metzdorf shared the second podium position with identical, 3/3, 1.14kg limit.

For my own part in the event, not only was I completely unaware of this intense rivalry (it all seemed rather friendly to me), I also seemed to be fairly unaware of where to find the fish, despite taking to the water with a high degree of confidence. Don't get me wrong here - I didn't turn up thinking I was going to be able to beat these guys at their own game, but I did show up rather optimistic of at least weighing in a full bag. I mean... I've caught 3 or more good size bream as by-catch fishing in these parts before, so why not if I spend 7 hours hunting them specifically? I suppose it just goes to show that no two days on the water are the same. 

I did catch a few bream, 4 to be exact. The 1st two were taken (on surface lures) within the 1st hour or so close to the tavern, both of them tiny. Surface action slowed to a crawl as the sun became brighter though and this was when I decided to head to where I thought I'd find a sweet spot at one of the holes I know around the Iluka breakwalls. Action here was surprisingly slow, however, and is probably why I spent almost 3 hours there alone. I caught 2 more bream here and in hindsight they were probably legal (albeit squeakers for sure) but foolishly I flipped them straight back in, instantly assuming they were too small. It wasn't until I returned and looked at fish others were weighing in that I realised I'd under-estimated their size (yes, I did have a ruler, but allowed assumption to cloud common sense and didn't even use it). Not that it would have helped if I did, however, because the pros had of course faired a lot better with many of them weighing in 3. 

Of the 3-fish baggers, one of them was local boy and Big River Tackle staffer Joey, who was using a Hobie for just the second time, his first being a quick test run on Thursday night when I introduced him to the Revo for first time. With only half an hours experience under his belt, Joey was able to get out there and mix it up nicely. I'd be interested to see what he might achieve with a bit more pedal-powered kayaking under his belt. I was thinking about hanging with Joey for the entire day just in case he had any issues, but he looked pretty comfortable out there from the get go, so in the end I left him to work the pontoons to head for my spot on the Iluka side of the river. Not many participants bothered trying to cross the river to the other side and in hind sight I can safely say that they probably all made better choices than I did :-)