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Amos Uses East Coast Tactics to Win Albany

It’s a rare occasion for a boater to win their very first ABT boater event. It’s an ever rarer occurrence for a boater to travel to the other side of the country to do it. New South Welshman Adam Amos did just that at the ZipBaits round of the Daiwa BREAM Series at Albany in Western Australia’s south western corner.

A native of the Central Coast, Amos used the techniques that he employs in his home lakes of Lake Macquarie and Tuggerah Lakes to get the job done and take home the win.

“I did fish an ABT event many years ago as a non-boater, and I double-donuted at that,” Adam explained, but the combination of having family in WA and a relationship with Force Lures meant that the trip to Albany made sense to him.

He spent all of his fishing time in the main lake, which, to him, felt like his home waters and he used a combination of topwater and soft plastic presentations to assemble his winning limits.

His anchor fish was a cracking 1.39kg brute that ate a cast between two patches of cockle weed and made it to the net. He took home $2,000 for his efforts.

Amos rotated between a Bent Minnow 76mm peach face colour that he fished on a Millerods TwitchFreak rod matched with a Daiwa Luvias Airity LT reel, 10lb Gosen braid and 6lb Sunline V-Hard leader. He also used a custom painted Bent by Jamie Bowden.

His plastics outfit was a Duffrods Crank-n-Bones 6’11” 1-4kg rod with another Luvias Airity. Amos rotated between a Gulp Shrimp in Camo, an Ecogearaqua in salt n pepper and a Force FLT Grub in motor oil.

He reported around 50 fish for the boat on the Saturday and another 40 on the Sunday, so quantities of bream weren’t an issue - just extracting the bigger fish from the schools.

The win also resulted in Amos getting an instant qualification to the Daiwa BREAM Series Grand Final later in the year that offers an Alloycraft/Mercury/Oceanic trailer package fully kitted out with Green Marine Lithium and Garmin - valued at over $60,000.

He will definitely be one to watch.

CROMPTON SNARES SECOND

2023 BREAM Grand Final Champion, Mark Crompton led the event after Day One and slipped to second place on Day 2, but was still stoked with his achievements out west. The 99 AOY points helped him take a mid-season lead in the BREAM Boater Angler of the Year race.

Although he spent a little bit of time in the rivers, he saw the fish and the weed that he thought would win the event in the main lake.

He ended up spending a majority of his time in Albany’s oyster racks, catching cricket scores of smaller bream while trying to target the smarter, larger fish that schooled with the small ones.

“The hardest part was to get the lure to the bigger fish without a smaller one racing in to get it first,” he said, “you could see the bigger ones in there, but they were definitely not the first to eat.”

Crompton used his favourite AGS INFEET flats rod (742L+XS-S) coupled with a new Certate 2500-S, 0.6PE Expedition braid and 4lb J-Thread Finesse FC leader. He’d make long casts with three soft plastics - all jighead rigged, because he likes the head-down sink.

One was a Daiwa BaitJunkie motor oil grub, the second was on old-style green Juro Firebait and the third a Hurricane Sprat.

“We also had a couple of hours where we fished topwater (mainly the Daiwa Slippery Dog in a variety of colours). We’d cast the lure as far as possible, burn it for a few metres after splashdown and then stop it dead. The bream would climb all over it,” Crommo continued.

The performance meant that the top two anglers in the Boater division were from the eastern states - something that we’re sure the locals will be keen to remedy come the Blackwood River round.

BLAKE BAGS NB WIN

Western Australia’s Blake Liddelow dropped a giant bag onto the scales on the Sunday to emphatically win the non-boater section of the competition.

Anchored by a 1.21kg kicker fish that ate a Bent Minnow up the Kalgan River, Liddelow fished topwater all weekend.

The ubiquitous P74 colour in the 76mm version was his main tool and he fished it on a Daiwa INFEET 722 ULFS rod paired with a 2500 Shimano Stella reel, 6lb braid and 6lb leader.

“My big fish on Day 2 wasn’t really committing to the bent minnow and I tried to hand it off to Joey Gardner to switchbait it with a plastic, but it turned around and committed before Joey could make the cast,” Blake said.

That fish was 1.21kg and sealed the win for the native sandgroper.

Blake’s looking forward to a Lake Macquarie Grand Final.