Mandurah, Western Australia.
Saturday, November 18, 2017
Day one action of the 2017 Hobie Kayak Bream Series 9 Australian Championship started yesterday morning in perfect fishing conditions. By the end of the day, local angler Alex Greisdorf from Halls Head had set the standard for the others to follow and led the field of 45 anglers, from across Australia, by a mere 2g.
There were some excellent fish caught today in different locations across the arena, and many anglers, from the top to the bottom of the field, reported being busted off by some huge Western Australian Black Bream brutes.
The angler who hauled aboard the largest fish of the day, and won the day one Atomic Big Bream $250 cash prize, was Sean Higgins from Western Australia. Higgins jagged a hefty 1.29kg Black Bream to fill his bag, just after 8:30 am yesterday morning.
Like Higgins, a lot of other anglers who did well also had their three fish bag limit in their Hobie XL Livewells in the early hours of the session. Most found it much tougher to attract the bite later in the day.
Some areas were stocked full of squeakers, but in the right locations fish around 700g were the more the average size.
As anglers head out into the Peel Inlet today, many have adjusted their strategies and are taking off in different directions to yesterday. Others who bagged out, and reported deliberately leaving numbers of large fish in areas they had been yesterday, were heading back with the hope they could bag out early with the solid fish they had sighted.
As anglers headed off this morning the top ten in the championship were:
- Paul Burton WA 2.17kg
- Alex Greisdorf WA 2.15kg
- Sean Higgins WA 2.11kg
- Massimo Salomone WA 1.89kg
- Simon Morley NSW 1.72kg
- Joseph Gardner WA 1.72kg
- Danny Jobson NSW 1.65kg
- Mark Young NSW 1.58kg
- Brendan Pieschel NSW 1.4kg
- Scott Marcinkowski NSW 1.35kg
Outside these anglers, the highest placed South Australian is Alex Whitehead in 11th position with 1.26kg. The top Queenslander is Michael Halliday in 12th place with 1.24kg. Brogdan Zisu heads the contingent from Victoria with 0.81kg sitting in 16th, and Paul Hardiman from the ACT leads the team from the Australian Capital Territory with .40kg.
The average weight of fish caught on day one of the championship was .52kg, and just 6 grams separates the top three anglers, the spread between the top five is 450g, and 820g separates the top ten.
