BETS R3 Wrap up

My tournament started at 2am with my alarm clock waking me for the 3hr drive to the Big Smoke, Round 3 of the BETS Bream series. 61 teams with high expectations of a good day on the water… even with the Southerly wind and rain predictions. Starting from 24th position, our first stop was just around the corner in Hen and Chicken Bay. Casting a variety of soft plastics up onto the flats, we suffered a series of short takes and missed fish for the first half hour until I stuck one of the Bream. Only just tournament legal at 27cm to the tip, it was still our first of many for the day. Mixed in with the Bream, we managed a heap of Dusky Flathead and a couple of kidney slapping Whiting. Rotating between squidgy wrigglers and hard body lures, we managed to secure our bag of 5 in under 2 hours. We decided to hit up another shallow bay upstream on the Parramatta River before the tide dropped out too much. We made it only just in time and our first upgrade of the day hit the deck after a few missed opportunities and some pulled hooks. The tide was all but low so we made the decision to head to the Lane Cove River and fish some deeper flats. Quarter of an hour later, and a bumpy ride with the wind and boat wakes, we arrived at the new destination. Once again, we fished a mix of Squidgies and shallow running hard body lures to slowly upgrade most of the fish in our bag. Once again, we got a variety of fish and about 20 Bream off this flat in about 2 hours (the Harbour is full of fish). Turn of the tide saw the bream shut down and the flathead chase us off the flats, so we pushed down towards the mouth of the Lane Cove where we only managed more small fish. We were under 2 hours left in the tournament and we moved to our last spot for the day, Fishing boat hulls and mooring block's, we managed a few more just legal Bream until Terry flicked his plastic up under one of the boats and came up tight to our biggest fish for the day and a much needed ˜kicker' for our bag (about 800g). We headed back to the weigh in knowing we gave it all we had and we weighed the best bag we could have on the day. Our bag pulled the scales down to 3.09kg which put us into 21st place. This result also pushed us into 10th place in team of the year with only 2 rounds to go. I've not fished in either of the next two locations and both require travel so I won't get the opportunity to pre fish in any way. Here's hoping we can find a few.