Tournaments

Kicking off the 2022 BARRA Tour

The ABT BARRA tour is officially underway for 2022 with anglers making their way up to Lake Tinaroo in Far North Queensland for rounds one and two of the season. Round one was a two-day event from 4pm – midnight, giving the anglers the best of the day and night bite.

Naming sponsor Wilson kicked in a few freebies for anglers to take into the first session, including a handy soft vibe box that may have been an omen for what was to come for the top of the leaderboard.

Liam Robinson and James Wilson, better known as team Anita Barra/ Humminbird, won the Tinaroo all-nighter last year and got up to similar heroics this year, casually breaking ABT records as they went.

The pair were able to set a new ABT record of heaviest 10 fish bag (2 x 5/5 fish limits) coming in at a massive 149.55kg – that’s an average weight of around

The Humminbird electronics on their tinny, which include four Helix units to facilitate MEGA Live, Sidescan/Downscan, MEGA 360 and mapping – were used to their maximum potential to target fish precisely.

Scan the QR code to see the Winning team interview

“We would use sidescan at the helm to identify spots and when we found an area we liked we used the MEGA 360 at the bow to target the fish, watching them swim out and around the weed and putting their patterns together,” said Liam.

“Even though we have Live now, which is unreal, and we used it to drop vibes on a few fish, I still believe 360 is the best tool for barra fishing,” he added.

Once they found the The field for the BARRA tour gets stronger every year with nearly 40 anglers making it to Cairns for the first round of the season.

Liam Robinson of winning Team Anita Barra/Humminbird pictured with one of their record setting fish. Over his left shoulder you’ll see the MEGA Live and MEGA 360 combo they used to leave no stone unturned.

areas they liked, they popped them into the memory bank and kept moving, building a collection of spots to keep

15kg or 105.5cm on the ABT weight/length table.

There were fish sitting both deep and shallow and with the shallow fish unwilling to bite, it was the fish in the 12-15ft range that they targeted. on rotation.

“We probably had 5-6 spots within a small area that we just hopped around all night to stay on active fish,” Liam told Steve Morgan.

The boys showed the field exactly why they have a Zerek Fish Trap colour in their name, with the ‘Anita’ coloured 95mm Fish Trap accounting for the majority of their fish.

“I reckon this lure has caught over 15m of barra the past two days,” said Robinson, holding his Anita coloured Fish Trap up to the camera in his winner’s interview. “I’m going to retire this one once I get home.”

Short sharp hops are the standard retrieve and a light yet fast rod is preferable. Liam and James both run a Shimano Zodias paired with a Shimano Vanford 4000 and a braided main line with 50lb fluorocarbon leader. BIG SECOND SESSION FOR

TEAM WILSON

Apart from being the naming sponsor of the tour, the Team Wilson fishing boys are pretty handy on the tools as well. Kord Luckus and Jeremy Cornelius ‘Fish Trapped’ their way into second place with an 8/10 fish limit for 114.25kg.

By the second session, they had refined their soft vibe bite to where they were able to fill a full limit and throw in a few upgrades, catching fish from the beginning of the session right to the end.

“We figured out that the barra were feeding on red claw and, once we knew that, we just focused on the soft vibes,” said Luckus.

“We did catch a couple of fish slow rolling the LiveTarget Gizzard Shads before we fully committed to the Fish Traps as they were producing the better fish.”

They favoured the sidescan on their Lowrance units over the ActiveTarget live imaging to locate fish sitting around the 6-7m mark, sitting just off the bottom.

“The fish we saw on the sounder swim under the boat weren’t actually the fish we were catching, we weren’t really dropping down to them, we were catching them casting in the depth we knew they were sitting in,” explained Luckus.

The flavour of the day was the 95mm model Zerek Fish Trap in GS1 colour – a pure black colour with yellow stripes. Black is favourable in deep water as it remains visible at depth, making it easier for fish to locate.

The trick was to keep the lure as close to the bottom as possible and right under the fish’s nose.

There’s a reason Wilson sponsor the BARRA rounds and that’s because their gear just works, as the boys proved. They used a bevy of Bone and Venom rods paired with ATC Combat V2 Baitcast reels, spooled up with PE 3 Venom V-line braid and a light, yet strong, 40lb Wilson FC leader.

RESULTS

Full results at abt.org.au

Place Team

1 Anita Barra/Humminbird Robinson/Wilson

Fish Weight(kg) Payout

10/10 149.55 $1650

2 Wilson Fishing Luckus/Cornelius 3 Casting Mayhem Mears/Press 8/10 114.25 $750 6/10 71.63 $500

4 Venom Dixon/Meredith 6/10 57.25 MOLIX prize pack

5 Fishing Monthly Morgan/Williams 6 Family Affair C. Sohier/L. Sohier

5/10 55.32 MOLIX prize pack 3/10 43.55 PROLURE prize pack 7 TolgaTraders Browning/Burns 4/10 42.47 KEITECH prize pack 8 Compleat Angler Cairns Bezuidenhout/Bruggemann 4/10 40.77 TOADFISH prize pack 9 Imakatsu/Dobyns Rods Maclean/Slade 4/10 33.57 TOADFISH Prize pack 10 Thumb Lock McLaren/Torrisi 3/10 26.60

Big barra and broken records

After three days of fishing pressure, most anglers could be forgiven for thinking that the all-nighter was going to be a grind. Well, that was certainly not the case with the fish firing up big time making for one of the most action-packed scoreboards we’ve seen in a long time.

The top three teams didn’t record a fish under a metre with the round one winners, Team Anita Barra/ Humminbird, extending their winning streak, bringing in one monster of a bag in which their smallest fish measured 110cm and, once again, writing their names in the history books.

On the warpath armed with their Zerek Fish Traps again, they weighed the heaviest five fish bag ever recorded in an ABT BARRA event, which included three fish at 110cm, 112cm and, the kicker, a whopping 116cm for a total of 94.85kg.

Scan the QR code to see the Winning team interview

Despite scoreboard pressure from the whole top five, they held their composure to hang on for their second win of the season by a touch over 10kg.

They used the technique they had found in the first-round targeting fish out wider off the weed edges, mainly using the Humminbird Mega 360 to follow the fish around.

All the bites came after dark with some of the bigger bites coming at around 3am when they hit a patch of fish they couldn’t get to bite all week until they finally worked them out.

If you look at the Humminbird sounder configuration on Liam’s boat, it’s a wonder any fish can hide at all. Without a doubt it is the heart and soul of the vessel and a large part of their success.

The two front sounders are Helix 10s with one dedicated to Mega Live Imaging and one for Mega 360, each with their own Rob Payne engineering pole. The two units complement each other perfectly with the 360 ideal for finding schools of barra and structure and the Mega Live for then singling out fish to target.

The rear two are also Helix 10s with one unit solely for mapping and the other for down and side imaging for finding structure and fish while idling around.

Liam’s 420 Renegade is just about the ultimate impoundment barra fishing tinny. “The good thing about it being a shorter boat,” James explains, “Is that you can move around the entire boat easily if they decide to play up.”

Now with two unanswered wins to kick the year off, Liam and James head back to their home impoundments around Mackay in good form and gunning for that coveted Team of The Year trophy they so narrowly had to give up for 2021.

BARRA MAYHEM FOR MEARS AND PRESS

Tamworthian Adam Mears was a long way from home for his first BARRA Two from two! Team Anita Barra/HUMMINBIRD secured back-toback victories and set even more records in doing so. The team used a refined soft vibe technique to bag some XOS barra.

Captain Redbeard, aka Adam Mears, made the journey from Tamworth to fish his first ever barra event with team mate Joe Press. They were rewarded with a second place in the Tinaroo all nighter.

event, teaming up with friend and Tinaroo local Joe Press, fishing as team Casting Mayhem. They finished 3rd on the podium in the first round and went one better in the second round as they refined their soft-vibing technique.

“Like a lot of other teams, we were really working hard to try for an edge bite but it wasn’t until I got our first good bite for a few days on a Jackall Transam that we decided to stick with that,” Adam said.

Like the winning team, they too found that the edge fish were not playing the game and instead chose to target the fish out wider.

“We’d make a long cast parallel with the bank in about 30ft of water just outside the weed edge, let the lure hit the bottom and give it short sharp hops off the bottom the whole way back to the boat,” Mears explained.

“We just did this as we kept moving between two points they were feeding on.”

The moon rose at about 7-8pm and was the major bite time for their session, with most of their fish falling within the hour or so either side of it.

Although they had both rigged up, the vibe of choice for Mears was a 95mm Fish Trap in GS1 colour while Joe fished its bigger brother the 110mm model in pink eye colour.

Mears used a couple of Shimano Sustain reels in 4000 size, one with 50lb Powerpro braid paired with a Millerods beast buster for throwing the 110mm vibes, and one spooled with 30lb braid paired with a custom model Millerods Barra vibe – a one off model dedicated specifically to soft vibing barramundi – for the smaller 95mm vibes.

A fan of the Wilson rod and reel range, Joe used a couple of Venom and Blade n’ Tails rods paired with ATC Combat reels.

“I copped a spray from Joe for fishing too light after getting rubbed off on 60lb leader so I changed to 100lb Nitlon Fluorocarbon pretty quick,” Mears’ joked, “I didn’t get busted off after that!”

All up, they caught eight fish for the night with an average length around the metre mark.

RESULTS

Full results at abt.org.au

Place Team

1 Anita Barra Robinson/Wilson 2 Casting Mayhem Mears/Press 3 Venom Dixon/Meredith

Fish Weight(kg) Payout

5/5 94.85 $1650

5/5 84.17 $750

5/5 78.32 $500

4 Imakatsu/Dobyns Rods Maclean/Slade 5/5 70.75

5 J & D AYES NFZ Hayes/Mayes 6 Fishing Monthly Morgan/Williams 7 AboutTown Bait &Tackle Detenton/Mulcahy 5/5 70.55 5/5 57.22 5/5 48.11 MOLIX prize pack MOLIX prize pack PROLURE prize pack KEITECH prize pack TOADFISH prize pack TOADFISH prize pack no prize

Braden Schuch hits the pinnacle of BASS

Each year the BASS Grand Final is a culmination of the hard work and efforts of the most consistent performing boaters and non-boaters on the 13 Fishing BASS Pro Series, representing the pinnacle of bass fishing success in Australia.

As well as officially crowning the 2022 AOY Champions, we also have the pleasure of giving away some fantastic sponsor prizes, including the big one, an Alloycraft/Mercury boat, motor and trailer package to the tune of around $50,000 that goes to our boater champion.

This year anglers travelled to the Clarence River at Grafton on the NSW Northern Rivers where the heavy rainfall have seen the rivers flooding almost weekly. It wouldn’t be a Grand Final without a bit of adversity, and it was with a 1ST PLACE BOATER Braden Schuch 5/5 fish 5.188kg

One of the most consistent performers on the BASS pro circuit, DAIWA Staff member Braden Schuch, has been trying to take out this event for some years now and in 2022 he has made it his year, sneaking in ahead of second place by just a few hundred grams. He admits to not following the scoreboard throughout the day and was pleasantly surprised, if not a bit shocked, at the end of session one to learn that his bag of 5.188kg was the only 5kg+ back of the session and enough to cinch the lead.

“I don’t like to follow

Scan the QR code to watch the Boater winner interview A fairytale finish to the year for Clarence Local Beau Eveleigh winning the non boater category. He punished the bass on Maclean Reef with his finely tuned crankbaiting skills.

Brad Wickson was on fire on the Maclean Reef, using his active target to hunt bass with a crankbait and land himself in second place amongst the boaters.

heavy heart that ABT had to abandon the second and final day of the Grand Final due to severe weather and flood warnings, after an already wet and wild pre-fish/ first session.

As such, our day one standings became the finalised results and Braden Schuch From Daiwa Australia took home the amazing boat and motor package from Alloycraft, while Beau Eveleigh in the non-boaters took home the massive $4000+ Tackle pack. the scoreboard throughout the day, but I couldn’t believe that someone hadn’t knocked me off. This place always produces big fish and I thought for sure someone would bring a 50cm in,” said Schuch.

He laid the foundations for a successful comp with a good pre-fish, fishing the arena right before the pre-fish ban and locating the areas where the fish were sitting.

Starting the day on the Lawrence ferry, Braden was throwing a Prolure Clone prawn on a 1/8oz Daiwa Baitjunkie jighead to ‘match the hatch’, imitating a prawn.

“I noticed when the ferry would take off it would stir the prawns up and you’d see them flick across the surface, the bass were sitting under them feeding.”

He positioned himself to where he could cast tight to the ramp and around the submerged ferry cables once the ferry took off. Almost straight away this yielded the events Big Bass, a 43.5cm fish. It wrapped him around the cables before he could wrestle it out over the top with no dramas thanks to the new 10 lb X-Link fluorocarbon leader from Daiwa.

As well as the new leader, Braden ran some other new Daiwa spin gear, including the new Infeet AGS model rod paired with a 2500 Revelry and J-Braid Grand.

Junk fishing became the flavour of the day after the bite died at the ferry, however there was one bait that stood out above all else – a Daiwa Steez Spinnerbait.

However, this isn’t an out of the packet Steez. Braden ties an orange flare to the skirt and swaps out the kicker Colorado blade for a bright orange blade, making it a lot brighter lure.

“I don’t know if it actually does anything to them but it’s definitely a confidence bait for me on the Clarence,” remarked Braden.

His set up for spinnerbait

Scan the QR code to watch the Non-boater winner interview Schuch’s Big Bass came off the ferry cables at Lawrence and weighed in at 43.5cm or 1.593kg. It fell to a shrimp imitation soft plastic rigged on the new Daiwa BaitJunkie jighead.

BOATER RESULTS

Full results at abt.org.au

Place Angler

1 Braden Schuch 2 Brad Wickson 3 John Noble

Fish Weight(kg)

5/5 5.188 5/5 4.854 5/5 4.800 4 Mick Johnson 5/5 4.561 5 Keeghan Painter 5/5 4.329 6 Collin Robinson 5/5 4.254 7 Adrian Melchior 5/5 3.895 8 Mike Nelson 5/5 3.821 9 Nick Anderson 5/5 3.804 10 Brett Hyde 5/5 3.770

Payout

Alloycraft/Mercury package fishing consists of a Daiwa TD Zero 722MLXB paired with a Steez A Baitcast reel, spooled with J-Braid Grand and 10lb X-Link FC leader. The key was to pitch the spinnerbait in tight to the reed edges and slow roll them back out to the boat.

The final touches on the bag came from a bank he found in pre-practice a few weeks prior.

“I found an otherwise pretty featureless bank but

during the floods a heap of timber must have washed down and was sitting on the bottom out off the edge,” Braden said of his final spot, adding “The reason I knew it was there, was thanks to the Humminbird Mega 360 up the front, which I use to find the structure the fish are sitting on”.

A 3/8oz Pros Factory Motion jig rigged with a Berkley Maxscent Creature Hawg trailer dragged over the deeper timber in 10ft of water was all it took to secure the final upgrade from a 23.5cm fish to a 39.5cm fish.

Steve Morgan called it the $50,000 upgrade and he was right on the money there, as the final upgrade shot him into the lead which he would go on to retain.

Only catching 6 fish for the session, Braden definitely played the quality over quantity game and it paid off in a big way. We look forward to seeing him defend his title in 2023. the weekend after he hooked a couple of really solid fish, and seeing even more on the Lowrance ActiveTarget swimming around.

The AciveTarget on his Lowrance units played a major role in how Wickson approached the reef. As the fish moved up and down in the water column, he changed between two lures to target them effectively.

Scan the QR code to watch the Event Highlights

“When we first arrived there was bait jumping everywhere and the bass were chasing them up high pushing them out of the water. The fish were fired up, we had double hook ups all morning,” he explained.

With the fish high in the water column, Wickson chose an Ecogear SX40 suspending crankbait in in front of the fish’s nose like an injured prawn.

“They really only wanted the suji shrimp, they wouldn’t look at any other colours that I tried,” said Wickson.

An electric motor failure nearly put him out of the comp just days beforehand, however thanks to the boys at Fish n’ Bits who got a new Lowrance Ghost on his boat, he was able to make it. Lucky they did, as the Ghost ended up being crucial, holding him on Spotlock on the reef for most of the day.

Recently he has been trialling a new set of ‘Standout’ Model rods from Legit Designs due to be released through JML Anglers Alliance next year. The model Wickson used was the SOS69ML at 6’9” in length and 3-6lb, he found it perfect for throwing the small suspending crankbaits. It was paired up with an Abu Garcia MGXtreme 2000 spin reel spooled with 15lb Famell Jigging braid and 12lb Yamatoyo Harris Fighter leader. their continued support of the ABT Bass Pro Series.

Beau had the pleasure of fishing on second place boater Brad Wickson’s boat down at the Maclean Reef where they had the crankbait bite tuned up.

Like Wickson, Eveleigh was also using the Spike 53SP in brown suji to get his bites, however it was later in the day when the bites slowed up that he switched it up and really came alive.

Eveleigh had one of the new 7’10” Millerod Crankfreak AU model rods paired with a 13 Fishing Concept Z Slider, which he had put aside with a Rapala DT8 crankbait tied on.

When the fish went down deep and the bites slowed, he changed it up from the spike to the DT8, which he would crank down to the bottom, bang it into the reef and let it pop back up where the fish would nail it as it was bobbing up off the bottom.

“It just stirs the bottom up so well and draws the fish in, and once they’re looking at the commotion on the bottom, if it bobs up past their nose they just nail

Soaked to the bone but you couldn’t wipe the smile off Braden Schuch’s face! A year of hard work and dedication goes into an ABT Grand Final win and the rewards are certainly something to smile about.

2nd PLACE BOATER Brad Wickson 5/5 fish 4.854kg

A spot that has proved a consistent performer the past few ABT BASS rounds is the Maclean Reef downriver from take-off. Brad Wickson is one of the few anglers with the know-how to capitalise on it, which he did on day one catching big numbers of fish right throughout the session to bring in a full 5/5 limit for 4.854kg.

Good success in pre-fish only bolstered the idea of where he needed to be for colour 525 – a type of shrimp pattern.

As the run-out tide slowed throughout the day and the fish slowed down, they moved down the water column to sit just off the bottom so a deeper option was needed. For this, he chose a Daiwa Infeet Spike 53SP in brown suji colour.

With the reef only about 7ft deep the whole way across, the Spike 53 was perfect for when the fish moved deep as it only dives to around the 5-6ft mark and suspends off the bottom right

1ST PLACE NON-BOATER Beau Eveleigh 3/3 fish 3.404kg

Grafton angler Beau Eveleigh charged ahead of the field to take out his first ever Grand Final win from the back of the boat. On home soil in front of friends and family, with a 3/3 limit for 3.404kg, he was just a few hundred grams ahead of second place Jake Hardie. Beau walks away with around $4k worth of tackle from a stack of different brands thanks to

NON- BOATER RESULTS

Full results at abt.org.au

Place Angler Fish Weight(kg) Payout

1 Beau Eveleigh 3/3 3.404 $4000+ Tackle pack 2 Jake Hardie 3/3 3.393 3 Bradley Turner 3/3 2.951 4 Rodney Thorpe 3/3 2.844 5 Cameron Hall 3/3 2.452 6 Tim Jones 3/3 2.393 7 Christina Tschutura 3/3 2.379 8 Anthony Melchior 3/3 2.370 9 Marcus Schembri 3/3 2.334 10 Sean Muxlow 3/3 2.269 Tony Neal took out this year’s Non-Boater AOY trophy after his consistent efforts all season.

it,” he said of his technique. “I would compare it to longlining in Somerset only you’re not fishing anywhere near that deep.”

He credits the 13 Fishing Concept Z Slider reel with helping him keep fishing through the extremely strong winds that got worse as the day progressed. “I could just adjust that magnetic slide cast control on the fly depending on how bad the wind was, and I don’t think I had a backlash all day.”

His set up for the Infeet Spike 53 was a confidence setup, one that he’s been using a long time and has a lot of faith in. It consists of a 702VLXS model TD Hyper spin rod from Daiwa paired with a 2500 Shimano Stradic and all of Beau’s reels are spooled with Sufix 832 and tied to that is Sufix Invisiline fluorocarbon leader.

He now has the experience from the back of the boat, perhaps in years to come we will see him step into the boater category and experience another Grand Final victory from the front deck? Only time will tell!