Day 1 - Thursday 27/09

After the rest of the night went by without further incident, Dad woke me up just before 6am and we launched the boat and headed upstream. About half an hour later, Dad hooked up on a Berkley Gulp 3” fry in banana prawn. He lost it near the boat and it was about another half an hour until I hooked up on my Strike Pro Cyber vibe, and I landed an estuary perch of about 30cm. 

We covered a lot of ground, and after another quiet half an hour I caught a small bream, my first in many months, and as you can see I am highly excited by 15cm bream!

After moving further upstream I managed another nice EP of 33.5cm, which unfortunately had swallowed the lure and was bleeding profusely so he made the trip back with us for dinner. Then we decided it was time for breakfast so headed back to the shack for some bacon and eggs. Below is the view from the shack where we are staying, and as you can see my swag is set up in prime position!

In the afternoon, we launched again just after 1pm. We stopped about 500m upstream from Donovans and immediately I was into a nice EP of 34cm. About half an hour went past and I had 2 more, however they were both incredibly small!

At this stage Dad was getting despondent, as he hadn’t troubled the scorers for the day. He put on a black strike pro cyber vibe and first cast was onto a nice bream, that went 28cm. As he was unhooking it he somehow managed to not only keep the fish hooked but also embed the back treble in his hand. This took quite a while to extricate, and we were almost considering a visit to the hospital to get it out!

 We then motored right upstream about 10km to find the other boys tied up to the side. After hassling them a bit we moved about 100m away and first cast I managed a 31cm bream on a black ecogear ZX35. The disappointing thing for this was that at $24.99 the first fish I hooked ripped off one of the back hooks, and it wasn’t even big!

We went back towards the shack and couldn’t sound up a fish for basically the entire length of the river, so went back to the shack and threw around a few unweighted cubes. 10 minutes in I had about 5-6 undersize bream and I hooked a nice one, but trying to lift it up to the top deck it fell off. This inspired Dad who also started fishing. I then hooked another good one who was running a fair bit, so I sent Dad to the bottom landing. A few minutes later he netted a 37cm bream.

At the end of the first full day this bream gave me a total of 71cm (37cm bream, 34cm EP) and Dad and Mauro were each on 28cm (A bream each). Paul was yet to trouble the scorers….