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Tambo River Fires in Humminbird Bream Final

The weekend of the 10th and 11th of October saw the top 50 teams from the 2009 Humminbird Bream Classic Series converge on the beautiful township of Metung to battle it out for the 2009 Humminbird Bream Classic Invitational. Winning the Humminbird Grand Final is the pinnacle for any serious bream tournament angler and all the teams that had qualified through the 5 qualifying rounds in 2009 were determined to take out the championship. For Team Lucky Craft's Cameron Whittam and Mick Kaksa who came into the final with great form, a consistent 2 days fishing would produce a new Humminbird Bream Classic record 2 day bag to secure them the championship.

Day 1.

The field awoke to a beautiful morning on Day 1 and with the weather forecast looking stable for the 2 days fishing the scene was set for an epic tussle. Based on the anglers pre-fish day on the Friday there was 2 very different mind sets among anglers. While some teams that persisted fishing edges and flats struggled to get fish, for a select number of lucky teams who had found the mother load of bream schooled up in the lower reaches of the Tambo River things couldn't have been any better. This is where Team Lucky Craft headed on Day 1 in an attempt to hook into the quality fish they found 2 weeks earlier before the pre-fish ban. "We fished just upstream from the mouth of the Tambo River on Day 1 in a spot found during our pre-fish. We fished a tandem approach where Mick fished the deeper water with an Eco-Gear VX40 in colour 439 and I fished the edges with a Lucky Craft Pointer 48DD" Cam said. After Mick pulled 3 quality bream in quick succession Cam also changed to the Eco-Gear VX40 and Team Lucky Craft proceeded to put together a 5.5kg bag by 7.50am and by 8.15am they had already upgraded 4 times. With things looking up and the water temperature rising the boys decided to move onto the flats at around 11am and using a combination of 65mm Lucky Craft Flash Minnows in the Ghost Minnow colour and Bushy's Stiffy Minnow in the Brown Snake colour they pulled another 2 quality fish to improve their bag. Saturday's weigh in was an awesome spectacle with bag after bag of bream pushing past 5kg. Team Lucky Crafty placed their bag on the scales for an impressive 5/5 bream for 6.18kg which is any other tournament would have had them a shoe in for the Saturday Berkley Best Bag Prize, but with a huge 5/5 bream bag for 6.90kg Team Tyre Power Jig Pro's Dean Gamble and Mark Cribbe's took out Day 1 honours.

With so many large bream coming in on Day 1 the Eco-Gear Big Bream was changing hands every few minutes which created some great excitement for the big Metung crowd. It was Team Rod - Tip's Rod Stephens and Paul Tippett who put the Eco-Gear Big Bream Prize out of question as they weighed only one bream on the Saturday but that bream just happened to weigh a huge 1.78kg that they landed on an Eco-Gear VX lure, sealing them the Eco-Gear Big Bream crown. All the talk that evening was about the huge school of fish that were held up at the mouth of the Tambo River which set a brilliant scene for 40 plus boats on Day 2 racing across the lake at 100km an hour to get there first.

Day 2.

For Team Lucky Craft the race to the Tambo was no problem with their Lewis Typhoon (Formally Southern Star Stealth) and their Yamaha 150 HDPI VMAX making short work of the trip across the lake. Once in position the boys set about repeating their day 1 efforts but unfortunately the going was much tougher and after an hour working the Eco-Gear VX 40 vibes they still hadn't turned a scale. It was time for the boys to use all the equipment at their disposal to bring home a solid bag. "When the fishing slowed we really relied on our Humminbird sounder as we used the side imaging and sonar to search for smaller concentrations of fish as the larger fish were congregating in the small schools" Cam said. Once located the boys used a combination of G.Loomis GLX TSR862, SR842 and Slazenger Obsessions rods matched to Daiwa Steez and Certate Finesse reels spooled with Sunline PE braids and 3 and 4 pound Sunline V-Hard fluorocarbon leaders to tempt the somewhat shutdown bream. "With the fishing getting very patchy on Sunday we decided to downsize our lures and used the Eco-Gear VX35 in colour 445 which enabled us to slowly ground out our bag, however we did manage one upgrade at the mouth of the Tambo at 1pm on a Diawa Double Clutch which was a great relief" Cam said.

As the Day 2 weigh in began it was obvious that the fishing had slowed considerably from the day before as most teams struggled to even get 5 bream let alone any bigger specimens. With Team Tyre Power Jig-Pro out of the race with only 2/5 bream for 0.94kg, Team Lucky Craft had a real chance to take victory and with a Sunday Berkley Best Bag of 5/5 bream for a solid 5.22kg they sealed a commanding victory with 10/10 bream for a thumping 11.4kg taking out the 2009 Humminbird Bream Classic Championship and setting a new Humminbird Bream Classic record 2 day bag along the way.

From all the crew at Humminbird and Vic Bream Classics I would like to congratulate Team Lucky Craft's Cameron Whittam and Mick Kaksa for an outstanding victory. I would also like to thank all the great sponsors and competing anglers who supported the Vic Bream Classic Series in 2009. Look out for the December 2009 release of the 2010 rounds and dates on the www.vicbreamclassics.com.au website or to relive all the action be sure to tune into our new show Fishing Life which will air on Aurora from February 15th at 8.30pm.