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Bonaccorso’s Big Day 3 Takes Out BREAM Open

It’s taken him near a couple of decades to do it, but Sydney BREAMer, Daniel Bonaccorso finally fulfilled his dream of winning the Daiwa BREAM Australian Open.

Fishing 7 events since the inaugural one in 2004, his 2024 campaign was a lot more comfortable than his first attempt, where the boat he fished from didn’t even have an electric motor - instead the team used oars to position the craft for a cast.

It what has become common over the years of the Open Daniel started with a 3kg+ bag and built weight every day until he rose from 4th to 1st of the final day with the biggest bag of the event.

Such a come-from-behind win was reminiscent of the late Greg Lee (after whom the Greg Lee Memorial Trophy is named), who famously dropped a 5.5kg bag on the final day of a previous Open to move from 10th place to first.

Although the weather improved over the the duration of the event, Bonaccorso favoured the wind and the rain, because he said that it helped his fish recover each day and we has able to milk quality fish from certain spots day after day - usually a tactic that doesn’t work that well in the three-day event.

He relied on one main presentation over the competition days. Fishing the middle section of the Harbour, he targeted isolated structure that the thought would be overlooked by the majority of the field.

He used a 3” Gulp Craw that he cut down and rigged on a TTT HWS 1/28oz jigheed and fished on 4lb Sunline Bream Special FC leader and 4lb Daiwa J-Braid (4 strand) delivered on a Shimano Zodias 270UL rod combo.

“I love that bait because it skips easier than other baits and I can get it where it needs to be,” he explained.

For Daniel, light leaders were the key.

“I always fish 4lb in the Harbour, no matter where I cast, I reckon that it gets the bigger bites. Don’t get me wrong - I lose a few fish on it, but I don’t use anything else,” he said.

There were times when he lost fish - especially on the final day - where he thought that the escape would cost him dearly, but ultimately he landed over a kilogram ahead of two-time champion Jamie McKeown and three-time winner Steve Morgan.

“That trophy will live on the mantelpiece for the next year for sure,” Daniel concluded, “so I can look at it every day when I get home from work. It’s pretty special.”

McKEOWN MISSES THIRD TITLE

Showing Sydney Harbour as an arena where anyone in the country can excel, Jamie McKeown again put up a strong showing in an event that’s 1000km away from his home waters.

Famous for winning the event twice on Sow and Pigs reef in the lower Harbour, this time McKeown used his expertise in crankbaiting moored boats with a de-tuned Zipbait to turn up the heat on day 2 (with the biggest bag of the day).

After a sub-par Day 1, he boxed over 4kg on the second say and put himself very much into the running. That bag was anchored by a 37cm fork length fish that are a crankbait and stuck.

“I had a few decent fish eat the crankbait and not hook up and I told my observer that when you land all of those bites, that’s when you win the Open,” McKeown lamented.

Jamie started the first day on the reef, but baled on the plan after an hour.

“I have learned my lesson not to stay there if the fish aren’t around and it wasn’t until late in the session that the boats showed themself as the pattern to be on,” he said.

Jamie used a ZipBaits Khamsin Jr in colour 473 that he would slightly de-tune with a pair of pliers to run either left or right after splashdown.

“You just tweak the towpoint and it means that the lure will swim sideways into the boat hull. It also means that if your cast is a little off, that’s no problems as sometimes the lure landing away from the boat is good. It means that it doesn’t spook the bream,” he continued.

His outfit of choice was a Samaki Zing Xtreme C12 paired with a Daiwa Freams 2500 spooled with X-Brais PE 0.6 and a short, 6lb fluorocarbon leader.

He also retrofitted the hooks on the lure with Decoy trebles.

Riding the pattern on Day 2 yielded his biggest bag of the event.

“Queenslanders do well down here because it suits our style of fishing,” Jamie concluded, “and there’s so many fish in here. I would have caught 10, 29cm fork length fish in the last hour. This place is full of fish.”

MORGAN CLAIMS ANOTHER OPEN PODIUM

2023 Australian BREAM Open Champion, Steve Morgan, continued his love affair with Sydney Harbour, boxing over 3kg every session to again end up on the podium in the iconic event.

Having landed all the fish that mattered in 2023 in Middle Harbour, it was no surprise that he again milked that corner of the waterway for a string of 30cm+ fish, albeit on a greater variety of baits and techniques than the previous year.

Morgan used the 65mm Cranka Crab in Olive, the Outback Breamer Baits mussel, a fishin.com.au stick minnow and a weightless Ecogearaqua in salt and pepper to collate his bags, varying the baits and techniques to suit the conditions on the day.

“Because I only get to fish Sydney Harbour a handful of days a year, I find it’s better to pick a part of the Harbour and learn that bit well, rather than try to do everything at once. Each year I put a bit more of the puzzle together,” he said.

For Morgan, that puzzle is to avoid weighing bream smaller than 30cm fork length at all costs.

“If you don’t weigh a bream smaller than 600 grams (30cm fork) the whole event, you’ll always be up there.

Each morning, Morgan would start in the Eastern Harbour to try and assemble a quick limit on moored boats before junk fishing up Middle to upgrade the catches.

“For the first two days, it seemed like I could only get bigger bites late in the session as the tide started to run in. Some of those were on the edges and some off structure like navigation markers and I’d catch most of the upgrades on the larger Cranka Crab. I’m getting really confident in that bait as an upgrade lure,” he said.

Fishing the baits on a variety of Daiwa INFEET rods and spinning reels, it was a full straight-through fluorocarbon presentation for everything except the big crabs.

“I fished those on braid and 7lb Daiwa X-Link leader to give me the confidence to throw them into some truly nasty structure,” he said.

With anglers being tracked through the Estimator scoreboards while live on the water, the Daiwa BREAM Australian Open has become Australia’s premiere, spectator friendly event. A heap of volunteer observers add to the coverage with mobile phone footage from out on the water.