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Slater Breaks BREAM Drought at Hawkesbury

Daiwa and Maui Jim are two of the great ABT BREAM event sponsors, so it was no surprise that Tom Slater, fishing Daiwa gear and wearing Maui Jim shades took out a close fought Maui Jim round of the Daiwa BREAM Series on the Hawkesbury River.

In a strong, talented field of BREAMers from Sydney and beyond, Tom and Canberra-based Joe Darmody had their own competition going over a kilogram ahead of the rest of the pack. The pair were separated by a mere 15 grams when the dust settled. To put it into perspective, that’s around three teaspoons full of water.

And although their weights were similar, their approach to the arena was totally different, with Tom fishing big, Cranka crabs way upriver and Joe crankbaiting washes in the Hawkesbury’s confluence with the Pacific Ocean.

SLATER’S FIRST WIN IN 8 YEARS

Tom’s last ABT Qualifier win was in 2016 on the Clarence River in northern NSW. He amassed some of his bag that event on a 50mm Cranka Crab lure. The lure stayed the same, but the size changed this time around. He upgraded to the 65mm version and the big fish came thick and fast.

Each day, Slater travelled out of Pittwater and up the main river as far as Spencer. Concentrating on a short stretch of steeper bank with broken bottom up to 40m offshore, Tom repeatedly drifted the stretch of river.

It was a small stretch of rocky bank that Slater assumed would be left alone by fellow anglers, given its diminutive size.

“I could see all of the broken bottom and fish on my Humminbird Mega Live and there country is so varied I don’t reckon that you can ever drift the same line twice. Your crab is always drifting over a different rock or different shelf. We did the same drift around 20 times each day,” Slater said.

Tom didn’t pre-fish on the Friday and was confident that his favourite stretch of river would hold quality fish. He wasn’t mistaken.

The tides were perfect for his style of fishing - high early and running out all day.

He would painstakingly drag the large (65mm) Cranka crab (in Olive) across the rocks and rubble, detecting bites on a Daiwa INFEET ‘crab rod’ (Z 782LFS-ST) and Certate 2500 reel spooled with PE 1.2 Expedition J-Braid and 14lb Daiwa X-Link leader.

Even the heavy line setup didn’t stop three fish roasting him on the Sunday.

Tom recounted the upgrades that did it for him after hearing of the narrow winning margin.

“Each day, I’d pull in at Bar Point on the way home and one each day, this was good for one, crucial upgrade. I wouldn’t have won without those fish,” he said, which proves that it’s always worth maximising your time in the water.

DARMODY DROPS 15g SHORT

In reality, Joe Darmody doesn’t live in Canberra - just a little town of Bungendore to the east of the nation’s capital. It’s a couple of hours’ drive to the nearest bream.

Joe fished the 2023 iteration of this event in a borrowed boat and landed in 33rd place after running out of fuel on the first day and dropping just under 3kg of bream on the scales on the second.

He turned his Hawkesbury fortunes around massively, dropping an event-biggest 4.61kg limit onto the scales on Day One and another 4kg+ bag on Day 2, falling just that tiny bit short of his first ABT win.

Here’s how it went down.

Joe fished a lot of his favourite spots in the river, Pittwater, Mullet and Cowan Creek in the prefish, yet nothing gave him the feeling that he was on any kind of quality.

He had a hint from his travelling mate, Adam Kennedy, that there were some fish on Lion Island and after getting a few on the wash edges, he decided washes were, indeed the go.

Starting the comp around various washed in Broken Bay, he eventually ended up on Lion Island and immediately started catching better quality fish.

The bite improved when the dirty water started flowing out of the river proper and hit the island.

Joe’s biggest fish came not off the edges, but a deeper, rocky ledge in over 10 feet of water, and his biggest fish of the event, a 1.26kg beast, hit the lure right next to the boat, showing that they would leave the bottom to chase a lure.

His gun bait was the Jackall Chubby Deep on Brown Suji colour that he fished on a Millerods Brawler, Shimano Sustain 2500, 10lb Sunline Castaway braid, terminated with 8lb Sunline FC Rock leader.

Like Slater, he figured that heavy line and leader would give him the best chance of extracting the kicker fish he needed to win.

Eventually, Darmody spot-hopped other washes in the area, but the money spot was always the southern side of Lion island at the time when the dirty water rolled in.

“Like everyone, I did lose a fish that would have gotten me over the line. There was a lot of debris in the water and one fish ran around a floating stick. I didn’t think that this was much of an issue until it somehow caught me solidly around it and got off,” Joe said.

Indeed, it’s when the story ends differently on fish like that that you end up taking hime your first bit of ABT BREAM hardware.

BERMUDEZ DELIVERS FROM BACK OF BOAT

Sydney BREAMer Cristian Bermudez is a pretty quiet bloke. We can imagine him asking Mark Healey very politely for the net time after time on Day 2 of the event where he boxed 2.8kg for three fish and nearly doubled his Day 1 catch.

Cristian had what his fellow non-boaters called the ‘dream draw’ for the weekend, with two previous winners of the event in consecutive days - Michael Colotourous on the Saturday and Mark Healey on the Sunday.

“It still depends if we are able to fish well together,” Cristian said, “it’s definitely not a given that I’m going to catch them.”

With Michael on the Saturday he caught his limit on Cranka Crabs with an upgrade - a 34cm fork length fish - on a curly tailed grub in the racks.

Sunday, though, is where he shone, averaging nearly a kilo per fish on a day where the Boater AOY leader didn’t catch a limit.

“We used the same tackle, but I think I was working the lure more slowly than Mark. I tried to touch and feel the rock with the lure and leave it sit for longer and this is where I was getting the bites,” he explained.

He fished the crab on a Millerods Brawler, Daiwa Revelry 3000 reel, 15lb Daiwa Expedition J-Braid and an 8lb fluorocarbon leader.

“The trophy at home will remind me of the good times at this event,” he concluded.