Competitors fishing the Victorian State Titles of the Hobie BREAM Kayak series got to witness something special on the weekend of the 27-28 March. Most major ABT Kayak records were broken as a string of super fish and ridiculous limits were presented to the weighmaster.

Out of the event, several competitors staked their claim to ABT fame, the best rewarded being 29 year old bulldozer driver, Joel Crosbie, who took out the event with a 6/6, 6.735kg two-day bag. He pipped the day one leader, Dave Hedge, who stunned his opposition with a 3/3, 4.36kg limit. Neither, though, weighed a single fish as big as Scott Baker’s 1.78kg behemoth.

Other competitors who weighed limits that would have won most events on the tour were left bewildered. Amazingly, Crosbie has his fishing – and the win – done by 9am each day.

Here’s how he did it.

A south Gippsland local, Crosbie hadn’t even fished Marlo until recently, but on the practice day, he landed a solitary 42cm fork length bream from a stretch of bank on near the river mouth. This was to become his primary spot, although it wasn’t until the starter’s horn that he decided to fish it. “I saw at the start the nearly all of the field headed upstream, so I was happy to head down with only two other boats, “ Joel said.
All of his fish came off a 100m stretch of bank and all ate a Berkley Gulp! 6” Sandworm cut down to 5” and slow rolled on a 1/32oz Nitro jighead.

He fished the imitation on a Starlo Stix 2-5kg spinning rod and Shimano Sedona 2500 reel spooled with 6lb Fireline and 6lb LineSystem leader. And although he used a stinger hook, all of the big bream were hooked on the main jighead. “The spot fished well for only a couple of hours each morning. By 9am when the wind had dropped and the cloud had burned off, the fish were in the well and the bite was done. We were back in an hour and a half early each day, “ Joel continued.

It was his second ever ABT event. The debut for him and his Pro Angler kayak was the Bemm River round on Australia Day, where he came 12th. “Now I’m doing me research for Forster. It’ll be great to go to the Grand Final and fish in the supplied boat,” he concluded.

Second placed Dave Hedge’s day one heroics were eventually eclipsed by Crosbie’s two-day total, however, his Day One 4.26kg bag is the only limit over 4kg ever to be weighed at a BREAM Kayak event.
“Marlo would have to be the best fishery on the tour for really big bream and the Bemm River would have to be the best for numbers of big fish. I love the bream down here,” expained the 35 year old TAFE teacher.
“The scary thing is that I got a fish to the boat that would have been even bigger than anything in my bag, but I couldn’t control its final run and eventually lost it,” Dave explained.

Hedge fished an Ecogear SX40 (gold) and Lucky Craft Tango in small, specific areas of the lake where he felt the bream were feeding on pipis. Using a slow, rolling retrieve, he’d immediately pause the lure if he felt the softest of bites. The bream would inevitable come back to engulf the lure. Hedge presented the baits on a Berkley Gen III Dropshot rod and Shimano Saros 2500 reel spooled with 6lb Fireline and 10lb leader.

Scott Baker landed the biggest bream yet weighed in BREAM Kayak events, with a 1.78kg fish that he caught on a Lucky Craft Pointer 67 in Ghost Minnow colour fished on a Daiwa Steez 2004, 7’3” Yamashita rod, 6lb braid and 4lb VHard leader.

With only one Qualifier to go, competition will be intense for the last remaining spots in the Hobie BREAM Kayak Grand Final.