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Team Club Marine Pick The Club Marine Rnd to Take Victory

The weekend of the 12th & 13th of October saw 50 teams head to picturesque Metung for Round 5 of the 2013 Humminbird Bream Classic Series. The Club Marine East Gippsland Bream Classic was the final opportunity for anglers to gain points for the Humminbird Bream Classic Invitiational, set to be held at Nelson in November & the last chance for a select few teams to try and take out the 2013 Club Marine Team of the Year Trophy. Team Minn Kota's Cam Whittam and Warren Carter weighed in 5 fish for the weekend at combined weight of 3.79kg adding to their TOY points and just scraping through to take out the trophy for Team of the year whilst Team Club Marine's Michael Bressan & Gregory Crellin pulled 10 fish for a total weight of 8.95kg to take out first place in Round 5.

After a prefish day that produced few fish and more notably a lot of empty live wells the anglers awoke on Day 1 to picture perfect conditions, with blue skies and a slight breeze. Talk earlier in the week had the anglers under the impression that the Bream were few and far between or very far away, this sent a handful of the faster boats far up the Tambo & Mitchell Rivers. Team Club Marine was one of these boats, fishing on the Mitchell River upstream from the grassy banks area in near perfect conditions, using G Loomis GLX SR 842-2 & Shimano Lure Project Rods (Vibe) with Shimano Stradic Ci4 & Saros reels loaded with Castaway 10lb PE braid and 4mtr of 4lb & 5lb Rockfish & VHard Fluro Carbon leaders. Using the HDS 8 with structure scan they sounded up large schools of fish in the middle of the river however these fish proved difficult to catch so they decided to work along the edges near the schools looking for fish that might be feeding. With the occasional bump on the line they had no solid hook ups and the first pass produced nothing. Thinking these fish where being very finicky the anglers slowed their retrieve down with excruciatingly long pauses. This proved to be the recipe for along with using the Wilson Tango Shad LC & Zerek Live 15 (50mm) Cranka Vibe & River to Sea Vibes. A quick swap over to the opposite bank and the first cast had an excellent 1.4kg bream on! After a few nervous moments Team Club Marine had their first fish in the well. A great start to the day. Within the next couple of hours they had filled their bag and upgraded a couple of times. Thinking their bag was around the high 3 or 4kg, they knew a decent upgrade would put them in a great position for day 2. The anglers decided to head up to the mouth of the Nicho to search for their upgrade, arriving there about 12:30 they worked the flats with no result. At the end of day 1 the anglers came in to find that they were one team of only four that had filled their bag with 5 fish, the rest of the field having struggled immensely to find the fish, not only had the boys found their 5 they had the biggest bag of the day at 4.37kg. 28 teams had not managed to bag a legal fish on day one.

Day 2 did not boast the fantastic weather that day 1 had given us with high winds and possible rain forecast for the afternoon so Team Club Marine along with the rest of the field were hoping to catch their fish early. It was not to be, the morning started slow with Team Club Marine finding a bait fisherman right out off their bank in the middle of the Tambo river and a persistent seal that kept following them around, popping up when they thought they had lost him. Once the seal decided to move further upstream the first pass produced an undersized fish and then another 34cm forked bream. Second pass another similar size bream was netted. The seal returned after Michael had been fighting a large fish for a good 20 minutes and finally spooked the fighting fish to the river edge where it found a nice pile of timber to retreat to. Gone! Now back down to business….. The next fish came for Team Club Marine soon after and it was another nice bream of 30cm fork, soon followed by fish 4 & 5. The anglers then decided to move off to search for some upgrades up stream and managed another 2 good size bream of 33cm and 35cm forks before deciding to venture into the wind at the mouth of the Nicho once more. It was very rough on those shallow flats out in the open water but this usually means the big bream will be right up on top of those flats. The guys only gave themselves 15 minutes to fish there as the trip back was going to be treacherous now that the wind had gotten up. They drifted quick and had travelled about 10 meters and Greg was on to an awesome bream, this fish was up around the 40cm plus and our final upgrade. An awesome end to a great days fishing bagging a 5 fish bag totalling 4.58kg to take out the 2013 Club Marine East Gippsland Vic Bream Classic & the Marias Lures Best Bag for the weekend.

Unfortunately the rest of the field were not so lucky, 30 teams did not weigh a fish on day 2, one team got caught in the mouth of a river unable to make the journey back across as the waters had gotten too dangerous. The rain was bucketing down by the time weigh in was meant to begin and the presentation was moved indoors at the Metung Hotel to announce our winners including the Eco Gear Big Bream - a whopping 1.8kg caught by Team Doma's Damien & Zig Domagala on day 2. Austackles Monster Movers was awarded to Surf Coast Tin Arses Reece Pitkowczy & Paul Davidson who moved 32 places on day 2 to finish in 11th place. This signified the end of the 2013 Humminbird Bream Classic with the Invitational Grand Final set to be held in Nelson at the end of November. For more information contact Tournament Director Bill Hartshorne on 0409 823 070 or visit www.vicbreamclassics.com.au