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swim in pools with them to listen) that ticks all of the boxes for bream. I’m not shy to up the line size a little when cranking bridges. The fish seem so fixated with pinning the bait against the structure that 6lb fluorocarbon is no problems at all. Make sure that you cast as close as possible along the pylons and bring back the bait with the current. If you’re really clever, you can rig two baits and tune them to swim left and right to really bang the structure. I, however, like one, straight-swimming bait and clever casting. Final tip for bridge crankbaiting? I use a specialised trout rod – as strong as I can find. The parabolic bend helps hook-ups and also helps to keep the hooks in place when you’re trying to wind
Tournament Angler Guide them out of the nasty stuff. STICKBAITS Tiemco Stick Minnow (007) • Ripping over flats and sinking around structure in 2-12ft of water. This is one of the baits that has stood the test of time for me. There’s a Tiemco and an Austackle version of this bait, and they both work equally well. Sometimes the Tiemco version suffers a ‘drought’ of supply. There are two places that I fish the Stick Minnow. The first is on shallow, weedy flats. Casting it with the wind as far as you can on 2lb fluorocarbon and a rip-pause retrieve has caught me plenty of big bream over the years in a couple of feet of clear, weedy water. The other scenario is around boats and pontoons in the same areas. There’s no better finesse presentation when bream are keyed onto
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Tiemco Stick Minnow (007)
shrimp and baitfish. And yes, there are times when bream will 100% eat the Stick Minnow in preference to a Cranka Crab. You just need to let the fish tell you what they’re up to on the day. The key to fishing a Stick Minnow vertically is line management. You must lay down the line as straight as you can immediately after
Atomic Hardz Crank 38 Deep (ghost gill brown)
the cast, and then feed it a little slack. The hooks are so sharp on these baits that the bream will hook itself, and all you need to do is start winding when you see the line moving irregularly. PLASTICS Ecogear Grass Minnow M (okiami) ‘pink grub’ • Georges Bay, St Helens, burn and kill over shallow flats in <2ft of water.
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Another bait that’s stood the test of time is the okiami coloured Ecogear Grass Minnow M on a #1 worm hook. This is a killer search bait for practice days, and also a gun bait for when bream are feeding on prawns. Most people don’t believe how fast I’ll fish the bait until they see it (there are some great examples on the accompanying video). I burn the bait fast, making it skip and jump on the surface before killing it dead and letting it sink a little. If there’s a bream (or a pack of bream) following, they’ll normally charge it when it stops. I fish a pink grub on 6lb fluorocarbon and 6lb braided line, because you need the lack of stretch to set the hooks solid, and the floating braid doesn’t hurt in the presentation. Having a big bream bow-wave a pink grub is one
of the best things in bream fishing. I recommend you try it at least once a season! Ecogearaqua 50mm (salt and pepper) • Slow sinking and sight fishing around pontoons and boats from Sydney to the Gold Coast. If sight fishing is my favourite breaming technique, then the Ecogearaqua is one of my favourite tools to do it with. It’s a versatile, castable, snag-resistant bait that both black and yellowfin bream find hard to resist. My favourite combination is the 50mm version of the bait (rather than the 40mm) fished on a VanFook Magic Beak no. 1 hook on 6lb Yamatoyo Chinu Harris leader, and whatever 6lb braid came in the most recent ABT tournament giveaway. Rig the bait from either end (you swap ends when the bait tears after catching a
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