Vic Bream Classic Grand Final

The 2009 Vic Bream Classics has been run and won, and didn’t the series conclude in style.

Forty Eight of the best bream fishing teams converged in Metung on the picturesque Gippsland Lakes for what was to be a sensational weekend of fishing.

The forecast for Friday’s pre-fish wasn’t looking too good but the winds died down, the rain cleared, and by midday the sun was shining. My team mate Nick and I, Team Urban Assault, were on the water fairly early trying to find a few patches of good sized bream. It wasn’t until midday that we located them, when headed back up the Tambo River to work on some schools we had noticed earlier. In the first 10 minutes we had boated over 2kg of Southern Black Bream and left it at that, we needed to find a few more spots just incase this one didn’t fire come crunch time.

With the pre-fish now over and the tactics all sorted it was onto the briefing and time for the meet and greet. Everyone was in a jovial mood and somewhat cagey, what would you expect it was the night before the biggest teams bream event in the state. It was great to catch up with a few familiar faces that I had met through the two Classics I fished previously this year and those I know from the Breammaster and Fishvictoria forums.

We woke pretty early and were launching by 6am for a 7am start. Keen, yeah just a bit, but we would rather be on the water than waiting in the queue to launch. Once 7 o’clock came around Bill, the tournament organizer, started proceedings. We had to wait until he called us to go in 36th position and off we went. Flying as fast as our Savage tinny could take us we headed to the Tambo River to the spot that had produced some good fish the day before. To our surprise, and dismay, at least half of the field was also there; obviously they had stumbled on the school as well.

We pulled in to our spot and got started; fifth cast in with my Vault 35 I nailed a 37cm fork length bream which was 41cm to the tip and just over 1kg. Once he was in the net and then in the live well I heard a reassuring ‘nice one boys’ from one of the pro teams in the event, we had drifted near them when trying to sort out our live well. Needless to say we were very relieved and it is my new PB to boot.

The comp was looking like it would turn into a vibe fest. Metal blades of all persuasions were being thrown left, right and centre. We kept on plugging away at the schooling bream and managed to fill the well with a full bag by 9am. A lot more fish were landed and lots were the legal size of 28cm to the fork. Nick landed a great upgrade around 11am which went 35cm to the fork and rounded out the bag. We decided to head up river in search of the elusive big bream but to no avail, it also doubled as a pre-fish for Day 2 and we had decided what our tactics were for the next day.

With the day coming to a close, and feeling comfortable that our bag would be around the 3.5kg mark and hoping for midfield or better result, we made our way back to weigh in. What we weren’t ready for was our bag weighed in at 3.68kg and helped us to 8th position, still a long way behind the leaders of 6.90kg but still in the top 10. Dinner and an early night were on the cards so we were in our best shape to back up our top 10 finish.

Once again we were up early, launched and waiting by 6am, and ready to tackle these schooling bream once again. The fish were coming on slowly but at a steady rate and once again we had a bag, this time by 10am. Heaps of bream were captured and we upgraded a few times but only adding a few hundred grams here and there. At 1:15pm we made our way back to Metung and to the weigh in, roughly estimating that our bag would be around the 3kg mark.

Once weighed in, at 3.02kg, our total 10 fish bag weight rounded out to a nice 6.70kg and the feeling was of a possible top 10 finish. Waiting around for the final result was difficult, but when tenth was read out at less than us we were excited. Still waiting for our names to be read out the suspense was getting too much. Then finally it was announced that we had taken out sixth, I couldn’t believe it, hand shakes all round, we went up to claim our prize pack. And the rest is history…especially the 11.4kg that took first place; there were some monster bream in that bag.

Now we are preparing for next years VicBream Classics season starting in February in Melbourne. We finished in 5th place at the Docks round this year and hope to back it up with another good result, its not that far away, bring on banks fishing…



By Craig Matthews