Tournaments

Crompton cruises to St Helens with Day 1 bag

Mark Crompton missed the first two rounds of the Daiwa BREAM Series this year because his new boat wasn’t ready. Instead of rushing it, he focussed on getting it right for the Tasmanian leg of the tour and hit paydirt in both of the events.

After winning a paycheque in the Derwent, he finished first at St Helens in Georges Bay and christened the new Mercury-powered rig in style.

In the process, he won $3,000 plus an extra $250 for being the highest placed Mercury owner.

Here’s how he did it. Mark Crompton and his son, Alvey, check one of dad’s winning fish. This is what all breamers want: cash, novelty cheques and a cool Joseph Urquhart trophy for the mantelpiece.

Jesse Rotin bagged out in all Tassie boat events as a non-boater.

COMPTON’S BIG BAG

Day 1: 5/5, 5.38kg

Day 2: 5/5, 4.09kg

Day one saw the lake fish as well as we have ever seen it fish in the history on ABT visiting, with a majority of the field registering a limit over 3.5kg. There was only one 5kg+ bag, though, and that belonged to Crompton, with a mix of flats and rack fish giving him a 1.1kg average and a half-kilo lead over the rest of the field.

“I made my Day 2 plan on the morning, where I chatted to some kayakers about to launch and I bribed them with a couple of packets of BaitJunkie plastics not to fish the bridge. I was the first boat out and knew I could get a decent fish or two there,” Mark said.

The plan worked to perfection, with his first stop yielding a kilo-class fish from the pylons.

“After that I fished around the boats near the bridge and ended up with four fish. There was a real session under the fish and chip shop, with a boil of trevally being fed, but there

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were a couple of decent bream in there as well,” Crompton continued.

Leaving the start zone with 4 fish, it took him a couple of stops to fill his bag with the 5th. After a few small upgrades, he thought that his 4kg class bag wasn’t enough to get the job done, but in the end he easily outdistanced a consistent Alan Lister by over 500g to take the trophy.

Crompton’s main pattern involved flicking soft plastic stick baits on the flats, in particular the Hurricane Sprat, which he fished on a TT 1/24 and 1/32oz jighead with a prototype Daiwa rod, Daiwa Revelry reel and Saltiga braid.

Crompton’s a particular fan of the Daiwa J-Thread fluorocarbon (main line) in 4lb as leader for the setup. He uses 2.5 rod lengths.

“It’s a complicated, simple technique, that’s more than letting the lure sink to the weed and then flicking it up,” Crommo continued, “I have boxes of the same bait graded in different hues of the same colour and I work out exactly what the Brendan Ayres landed the Buck-n-Big Bream of the event. A 1.62kg monster that made him $500 richer.

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David Shanahan transitions well between kayak and boat events and is currently leading the Non Boater Angler of theYear race. fish want on the day.”

Nobody can argue with the results. LISTER’S

CONSISTENCY BAGS SECOND

Day 1: 5/5, 4.65kg

Day 2: 5/5, 4.26kg

ACT’s Alan Lister is an arborist by day, but a real contender on the Daiwa BREAM Tour on the weekends. Indeed, his four events that he fished on the Tassie Tour (two boat and two Hobie kayak events) results in four top 10 finishes – a remarkable feat.

Two of those finishes were second places, the most recent of them the final event of the tour at St Helens.

Each day, Lister started just metres after crossing the start line and bagged several quality fish in 3-16ft of water using a jighead rigged ZMan motor-oil grub and a

BOATER RESULTS

Full results at abt.org.au

Place Angler

1 Mark Crompton 2 Alan Lister 3 Mario Vukic 4 Adam Crick 5 Steve Pryke 6 Peter Nord 7 Byron Hill 8 Shane Ling 9 Josh Williams 10 Peter Breukel

Fish Weight(kg) Payout

10/10 10/10 10/10 10/10 9.470 8.910 8.580 8.070 $3,000 + $250 Mercury bonus $1,500 + $125 Mercury bonus $1,000 + $75 Mercury bonus $750

10/10 8/10 7.840 7.160 $600 $500

Hurricane Sprat on a 1/8oz TT 1/0L jighead. After the tide rose more, he ventured to the flats to fill his bag and upgrade. His bags each day were over 4kg.

My main spot was a flat in the back of Molting Bay where I threw a LuckyCraft Flash Minnow, but my non-boater, Tani Konsul, was crushing me on a

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Zipbait Rigge 66.

At the end of each day, I’d finish on a flat near the mouth close to deep water that was too shallow to get a boat on. I’d make long casts with the wind and hold the rod high to find the balance between keeping the lure in the water and getting it snagged.

The bream here were big and mean, with several burying Alan in the weed. On Day 2 it took until this last spot to bag his 5th fish.

Alan’s outfits consist of a mix of Daiwa Aird, AirdX and Excelers matched with various rods, including a 7” G2 Loomis. He fishes 10lb Castaway braid and Sunline Shanahan was another angler who fished all four Tasmanian rounds, kayaks and boat. After a strong finish at the Derwent, David stepped up to win his first non-boater trophy at St Helens, refining a flats pattern in the process and leading the non-boater AOY in the process.

Fishing with Zane Wyatt and Shane Ling, Shanahan explained that part of the motivation for fishing as a non-boater was the opportunity to learn from his boaters, and he drew two locals who knew what to do.

Fishing a Murasame Shane Ling and Jordan Armstrong enjoyed their time catching Tassie’s big black bream.

Canberra arborist, Alan Lister scored a couple of second places on the Apple Isle – one in a kayak and one as a boater at St Helens.

In 2022, non-boaters are fishing for a three-fish limit.

FC 4lb leaders.

“I’ve loved Tassie since I started coming here in 2016,” Al concluded, “Where I got a second place in the Derwent comp. It’s been good to me.” SHANAHAN WINS AND

TAKES AOY LEAD

Day 1: 3/3, 2.89kg

Day 2: 3/3, 2.83kg

Victorian David 6’3” rod with a 2016 Certate spooled with 6lb Silver Thread braid and 4lb FC Rock leader, Dave used the popular Hurricane Sprat 75 in machete colour, rigging it on a light HWS jighead to slow down the sink.

“I was afraid of getting snagged in the weed all of the time, so as soon as it hit the bottom I’d pop the bait back up,” he said. And the bream liked the method.

David and Zane fished the front of the system on Day 1 and David landed just 4 fish. On Day 2, he and Shane had just one fish each at 3pm (end of session was 5pm), but a drift across the edge of the racks and into open water gave him several important upgrades.

After four events, David now leads the non-boater Angler of the Year race with 387/400

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points, with a gap of 15 points over the everconsistent Stuart Walker.

Lister’s pair of 4kg+ bags reflected his consistency across the entire Tasmanian tour.

BUCK-N-BASS BIG BREAM

Brendan Ayres landed the event’s Buck-n-Big Bream on Day one of the events at 1.62kg. It ate a Squidgy bio-tough bait on a clear flat to the south of town. He won $500 and some Buck-n-Bass gear for his efforts.

Place Angler

1 David Shanahan 2 Jesse Rotin 3 Stuart Walker 4 William Thorpe 5 Michael Sammut 6 Neil Kelly 7 Xabi Kumar 8 Allan Lavell 9 John Parkinson 10 Jarrad Stevens

NON- BOATER RESULTS

Full results at abt.org.au

Fish Weight(kg) Payout

6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 4/6 5.720 5.210 5.110 4.950 4.680 3.990 3.970 3.940 3.940 3.550 Daiwa pack Daiwa pack Daiwa pack Samaki pack Samaki pack Atomic pack ProLure pack Rapala pack Ecogear pack Keitech pack

Crick wins with day 2 Derwent bomb

Try talking to Adam Crick about Ralph’s Bay in the Derwent ABT Daiwa BREAM Series arena and he goes all quiet. Mention a camera and it’s like he doesn’t speak English anymore. It’s a big, open bay to the south of Hobart that’s been fished by plenty of ABT BREAM competitors over the years but has been mastered by only a few.

Adam Crick, however, has been known to drop a massive bag on the scales on the second day of a Derwent BREAM event. He’s done it before and he did it again in 2022, adding a near 6kg bag to his Day 1 total to win the Daiwa sponsored event by nearly a kilogram over his closest rival.

We have extracted as Adam just loves the ABT novelty cheques.” They’re better than a trophy,” he said. He’s got a few now.

Liam Carruthers makes the Tassie Tour a family affair.

much information as we could for this report.

Day 1: 5/5, 4.68kg

Day 2: 5/5, 5.99kg

The Derwent event was an event of two, different days. A little breezy and cloudy on Day 1 and sunny and calm on Day two. The conditions on the first day didn’t pay massive rewards for Crick. Weighing a little over 4.5kg, he sat in 7th place.

When the river calmed off on Day 2, Ralphs still had a little breeze and the sunny conditions suited Adam’s sight fishing style. It was game-on with big bream biting jerkbaits in the clear water.

“I probably saw 90% of my fish eat the bait in the clear water,” Crick said, “and Ralphs always gets a little bit of wind, even if it’s calm in the Derwent, so the conditions suited me on the second day.” Ralphs Bay specimen. Locals call it “Issac colour”. And the one tied to his winning rod had copped a fair hiding.

“It’s a pretty standard twitch-and-pause technique. The slower the better,” Adam explained.

It’s Crick’s second ABT win on the Derwent and we’re sure he will be a force in future visits to the island.

WYATTS FIRST

LIMITS PAY OFF

Launceston’s Zane Wyattdidn’t catch a limit on any of the four tournament days the last time ABT visited Tassie in 2020 - just before the great COVID toilet paper rush. The Mercury dealer from CJ Marine upgraded his boat for this version and had done his practice.

His remarkably consistent sub-5kg limits

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Nobody could argue as he dropped 5.99kg - including the 1.50kg Buck-n-Big bream onto the scales and registered another 7th to first place effort. Crick’s tackle included a BX Custom 7’, 2-4kg rod (a little heavier than most), Daiwa Steez reel, Sunline 10lb braided line and 4lb V Hard fluorocarbon leader. And the bait was a Smith Panish DD in a colour replicated from a

Scan the QR code to watch the Non- Boater Winner Interview Rhys Harris reckons that the Derwent is the best river in the world.

Launceston Mercury dealer, Zane Wyatt didn’t catch a limit the last time ABT visited in 2020. In 2022, his opening event yielded 10/10 and second place!

Place Angler

1 Adam Crick 2 Zane Wyatt 3 Steve Morgan 4 Declan Betts 5 Dylan Loh 6 Mark Crompton 7 Steve Pryke 8 Josh Williams 9 Peter Nord 10 Alan Lister

BOATER RESULTS

Full results at abt.org.au

Fish Weight(kg) Payout

10/10 10/10 10/10 10/10 10/10 10/10 10/10 10.670kg $3,000 + $500 Big Bream 9.790kg $1,300 + $250 Mercury bonus 9.710kg $900 + $125 Mercury Bonus 9.13kg $800 + $75 Mercury bonus 9.090kg $700 8.980kg $600 8.840kg $500

topped the field of anglers who stayed in the Derwent river itself.

Day 1: 5/5, 4.90kg

Day 2: 5/5, 4.89kg

Apart from being theMrFix-It for the boat side of the tour, Wyatt milked fish fish from a run of spots up the Derwent river proper - between the Tasman Bridge and Otago. Most of his bag fish

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came on jerkbaits - including the ZipBait Rigge 70mm in a purple/orange belly colour.

He fished with non-boater Champion, Jarrad Stevens on Day 1 and ended up finding a ‘magic pontoon’ that afternoon.

“We pulled up to this spot and Jarrad said that it looked ideal for an EcogearAqua,” Zane said, “trouble was, he didn’t have one. I did, though and he showed me how to use them. Jarrad pulled a great fish off it on Day 1 and I caught two, key upgrades off it on Day 2.”

Who Shares Wins.

Zane’s gear consisted of a Black Hold NS1 Micro (7’, light) with a Daiwa Luvias 2500S LT reel loaded with 8lb Siglon braid and a 4lm Siglon FC Rock leader.

“I concentrated on banksearly that were in the shade. With the tide high I found that the fish would stay up and biting longer in these conditions,” Zane continued.

At the end of the day, though, he was stoked with his first, two ABT limits, a $1,300 paycheque and an extra $250 for being the highest placing Mercury owner in the field. STEVENS BACK TO WIN

Western Australia’s Jarrad Stevens had takes a break from ABT events, with nearly a decade on the sidelines, but the keen breamer couldn’t resist the temptation of Tasmania, which has always been on his bucket list.

Comfortable with black bream from the south-west of the country, Jarrad’s skills transferred seamlessly to win on his very first trip to the Derwent.

With the new 3-fish Declan Betts (left), Zane Wyatt (middle) and Steve Morgan (right) enjoyed the Mercury Bonus money.

All the way from WA to Hobart - Jarrad Stevens’ WA breaming skills held him in good stead on the Derwent. This was his first win from the back-of-the-boat.

non-boater bag, kicker fish are as important as ever. Jarrad averaged over a kiloper-fish on the way to his 6/6, 6.22kg bag.

Being a non-boater

Isaac Harris’ big Day 2 bag wasn’t enough to catch WA’s Jarras Stevens. means that you have to adjust for different locations and conditions each day and Stevens fished upstream on Day 1 and downstream on Day 2.

His kicker fish on the first day came off the same shagfilled pontoon that helped Wyatt to a 2nd place in the boater division, but most of fis other fish came on a jerkbait - in particular the shallow 70mm ZipBait Rigge in a silver/olive colour.

He made long casts with his Duffrods Crank-n-Bones Jr rod, Daiwa Freams 2000 reel and 6lb braid and two rod lengths of 4lb leader.

“It was important to make long casts - especially on day 2 in the clear water,” Stevens said, “and that bigger bait probably didn’t get bit as much, but it did get me the distance to get the bigger bites.”

And the results speak for themselves.

NON- BOATER RESULTS

Full results at abt.org.au

Place Angler Fish Weight(kg) Payout

1 Jarrad Stevens 6/6 6.220kg Daiwa Pack 2 Isaac Harris 6/6 6.130kg Daiwa Pack 3 Jesse Rotin 6/6 5.680kg Daiwa Pack 4 Simon Morley 6/6 5.580kg Samaki pack 5 Jack Morris 6/6 5.330kg Samaki pack 6 Ruth Beeby 6/6 5.320kg Atomic pack 7 Stuart Walker 6/6 5.220kg ProLure pack 8 Andrew Breward 6/6 5.010kg Rapala pack 9 David Shanahan 6/6 5.000kg Ecogear pack 10 Leighton Beer 6/6 4.800kg Keitech pack

Stevens concluded that the event was all about having fun fishing, rather than treating it as a serious tournament. Have fun, share the knowledge and the fish will come. Amen!

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It was fitting for the Mercury dealer to win the Mercury bonus. The top three Merc owners win extra cash.

BUCK-N-BASS BIG BREAM

Part of Adam Crick’s monster final-day bag included the $500 Buck-n-Big Bream. The 1.5kg, sandy coloured fish ate a jerkbait in Ralphs Bay and looked like a “solid kilo fish” as it slid into the net. It ended up measuring just over 40cm and anchored Adam’s bag.

Clarence River a post-flood success

The 2022 13 Fishing BASS pro AOY race is beginning to heat up with NSW angler Mitchell Cone winning his second event for the season, the Maui Jim round five qualifier on the Clarence River.

In a year that hasn’t seen him finish outside the top

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five so far, he’s managed to snatch back the AOY lead by a few points over good mate Matthew Langford – the pair alone have won every BASS qualifier this year with Langford winning three and Cone winning two, to make for one of the most competitive years we have seen in a while.

SECOND WIN OF THE

YEAR FOR CONE

Although he won’t admit it, Mitch cone can now consider himself a river rat through and through as he tore away from the field by almost 2kg in his second win for the season.

Typically the Clarence qualifier rounds have been won either in the far reaches of the main river or the Coldstream River, however this year due to recent flooding the fish have pushed further downstream chasing an abundance of bait in the form of prawns.

This made the decision to head downstream on practice day an easy one for Cone. “There’s two ferries downstream and everyone knows if only one ferry is running, the bass school up under the stationary one so that’s where I chose to focus my practice. There, and the reef at Maclean throwing blades,” he explained.

Sticking to the old adage ‘no run, no fun’, the current became a key factor for the weekend for when he chose to fish his spots. With the reef being located on a point, it had a lot more current than the banks did, especially in the mornings when the tide wasn’t running as hard.

As such, he chose to spend the first few hours His second win for the year puts boater Mitchell Cone on top of the AOY leaderboard after some other consistently high placings. Can he fend off good mate Matt Langford and stop the AOY three-peat?

The gentleman’s sport – first place non boater Adam Mears (right) shakes hands with second place Tommy Wood who briefly held the lead on day 2 but fell just short of chasing down Mears’ lead after his monster 5kg day one bag.

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of each session on the reef throwing a Damiki Vault 42 Blade in pink gill colour and filling his bag until the tide began to run hard and he could fish his good bank that he’d been saving for the right time in the tide.

In the last few hours of each session, Cone moved to the bank that he’d been saving and switching to an OSP Blitz MR crankbait in chartreuse colour, and was able to consistently upgrade as the tide began to run hard. “I was targeting shallow pockets of laydown timber, or what I like to call a ‘current break’, somewhere the bass can hold tight and wait for food to come to them,” he explained.

The technique required some casting accuracy tight to the structure with his Millerods Blade Freak and Daiwa Tatula 150 combo being is go-to. All the bait needed was a slow roll back to the boat with the occasional pause when it bumped the structure and when they needed extracting, 15lb Daiwa J braid and 12lb Daiwa J thread leader made sure they got to the boat.

Tournaments can be won and lost on a decision and Cone made plenty of the right ones. “I nearly didn’t make the move back

Second place boater, Steve Morgan came close to being able to call himself a BREAM, BASS and BARRA guy. Morgan actually used patterns found in the bream grand final on the Clarence River last year to fool the bass this year.

Place Angler 1

Mitchell Cone

2 3

Steve Morgan Nick Andersen

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Bill Latimer Simon Wilson Braden Schuch Anthony Duff Mick Johnson Brian Everingham Mark Lennox

BOATER RESULTS

Full results at abt.org.au

Fish Weight(kg) Payout

10/10 14.415 $3500 + $250 1st Merc bonus

10/10 12.864 $1600 + $125 2nd Merc bonus

10/10 10.953 $1200

10/10 10.876 $1000 + $75 3rd Merc bonus

9/10 10.770 $800

10/10 10.548 $600

to my good bank after I caught a 42 and 43 forker off the reef but I did go and ended up catching 6 or so more fish including the 45 fork length kicker,” he explained about the decision to fish his good bank late in the session. MORGAN JERKBAITS

TO SECOND PLACE

Steve Morgan’s already won a BREAM and BARRA event in the last 12 months and was keen to add a BASS Pro trophy to the list. Ultimately, though, he fell over a kilogram short of Cone.

“I saw on the leaderboard that Mitch hadn’t submitted a fish all day, so he was likely out of range, so I didn’t get too excited when I started driving back to the finish

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on top of the leaderboard,” Morgan said.

The live scoreboard allows competitors to know exactly who is catching what in real-time.

Steve’s plan was pretty simple – refine a pattern on the reef at Maclean that he’d sampled at the BREAM Grand Final in December 2021.

“In the BREAM event, I’d catch lots of bream on the shallow areas of reef if I could get a crankbait or jerkbait deep enough to

impact the rock. This was in 6ft of water or less. Cast into the deeper water off the edges and we were catching solid bass. Those fish were suspending in 10-20ft of water off the edges of the reef,” he explained.

He avoided the bass in the BREAM event, but reversed the pattern to catch them in the BASS version.

Spot-locking off the edge of the reef, he could see fish actively feeding – both off the surface and on the Garmin LiveScope. The freshwater and strong currents from recent flooding helped the prawns get stirred up as they got caught in the structure upwelling and both the birds and fish were taking advantage.

“I rotated through a few baits on practice day, but settled on a Daiwa Spike 53SP jerkbait in a couple of colours, suji prawn and brown suji UV. Cast them

Scan the QR code to watch the Day 1 Highlights up current and either roll or twitch them down across it,” he said.

Morgan caught around 15 legal fish on day one and a dozen on the final day. He delivered the presentation on a Daiwa Infeet bream rods (7’8” and 6’8”) and a combinations of Freams, Exceler and Exist reels spooled with 6lb Sufix and J-Braid with a 7lb Yamatoyo Chinu Harris leader.

“The LiveScope in Perspective view was pretty important for me,” Morgan said, “I could see the fish out to the sides of the boat and target them with confidence. Several times I could see the fish charge and eat the bait and that’s fun fishing,” he concluded.

MEARS MAYHEM ON THE CLARENCE BASS

Bouncing straight off the Corcoran Park dock and straight into first place, Tamworthian Adam Mears claimed his first ABT Victory from the back of the boat after a cracking day one bag to the tune of 5.003kg for just three fish. This put him leaps and bounds ahead of the competition for day two where he was able to fight off second place Tommy wood to win by over half a kilogram.

Mears’ day one boater Simon Wilson chose to fish the shallow reef at Maclean (the same reef as mentioned by Morgon) in the first session, a roughly 2m deep rocky section of river that the bass were hunting prawns up onto and feeding on with the strong current and dirty water.

To fish the shallow water, Mears chose a crankbait in the form of a deep-diving Jackall Chubby in brown suji shrimp colour. “The fish were facing into the current so I’d make a long cast up and across the current about 45º and begin a slow roll back in, bumping the lure into the bottom,” Mears said, adding that the fish were so actively feeding close to the surface sometimes they would eat the lure as it hit the water.

Tuning into this technique accounted for his whopping day one bag, which saw him break his personal best twice, the second time being a 1.910kg beast. “I’d never even seen bass that thick before in my life, I was over the moon,” said Mears of his Saturday bag.

He found the best rod and reel combo for the task to be a Millerods XFLC at 7’3” and 2-4kg paired with the smooth drag of a Shimano Stradic FL, which could cast a light crankbait a long way yet still have the power to turn those almost 2kg bass and get them into deeper water. 8lb Berkley braid and 8lb Ocea leader was the braid and leader combination for the whole weekend.

In line with what Steve Morgan had to say regarding LiveScope, Mears – fishing for the first time with it this weekend – found it a definite advantage when he could see the fish following his lures on his boater’s sounder.

Thanks to the hospitality of his boater on day two (local Anthony Duff), Mears was able to fill his bag in the last 20 minutes of day two to put himself back in front and take the lead gaining an automatic entry into the Grand Final back on the Clarence River in October. BUCK N’ BIG BASS PRIZE

The event’s $500 Big Bass prize went to Mick Johnson for his 49cm, 2.344kg giant that ate an OSP Dunk.

Mitchell Cone found a lot of his upgrades on a bank loaded with laydown timber, he just had to wait for the tide to pick up later in the day for the bite to heat up. A Clarence River pony, all it needs is a saddle! Boater Mick Johnson landed this 2.344kg fish on an OSP Dunk on day two to claim an extra $500 cash. This fish hit Mick’s personal scales at just a tad over 3kg.

NON- BOATER RESULTS

Full results at abt.org.au

Place Angler Fish Weight(kg) Payout

1 Adam Mears 6/6 7.753

2 Tommy Wood 3 Brett Castle 6/6 7.182 6/6 6.774

4 Tony Neal

6/6 6.671 5 Anthony Melchior 6/6 6.473 6 Benjamin Crispin 6/6 6.132 RAPALA prize pack + 13 Fishing Concept reel RAPALA prize pack + $250 1st place RAPALA Bonus Bassman prize pack $125 2nd place RAPALA bonus Maui Jim prize pack + $75 3rd place RAPALA bonus Molix prize pack Prolure prize pack Keitech prize pack Maui Jim vip card Toadfish prize pack

INDT 2022 World Sooty Championship comp

In the week leading up to the INDT 2022 World Sooty Championship Mackay experienced rain and gusty windy conditions, which are not ideal to stage the event.

However, the last 20km or so to the dam was dry and dusty. At Eungella Dam the MAFSA volunteers erected all the gazebos and control tent area with intermittent misty rain showers coming across.

Saturday morning, 100 anglers fronted up for the last of the registration and the briefing on rules. Then at 8:30am, 59 boats from 3.7m tinnies to full blown ‘BASS’ boats roared off up the dam as the general opinion was ‘fish the timber’.

By 9 o’clock, defending champion Nick Moore had two scoring fish for 805 points and Will Simms kicked off

Craig Birkett from INDT with World Champion Ricky Wetherall and junior champion Balin Tweddle. decided to stay in the main basin area and fish the points targeting fish he picked up on either side scan or down scan.

All eyes were on Ricky and Nick Moore, but Ricky managed three fish for the session while Nick most unusually drew a donut which let a couple of other anglers move up the ladder. Shane Snell and Geoff Newby landed one fish each but the big improver was Mick Slade who has almost always been among the top scoring anglers. Mick Slade scored two good fish for the session to increase his score by 860 points.

Meanwhile things were hotting up in the juniors with Darcy Mcfarlane adding two fish to his overnight total and Balin Tweddle bought in one for the session. Cohen Olsen scored two fish, one a 508mm

his tournament with a beaut 460mm sooty, for 460 points.

Despite that good start the fishing was very tough in the cold, windy and misty rain conditions. Most competitors found fish on their sounders or live scopes but the sooties were not playing the game.

During session one, 30 seniors and two juniors scored fish. Five seniors bought in three fish, and the biggest for the seniors was a 490mm sooty caught by Jack Hislop. Balin Tweddle presented two fish in the junior division scoring 791 points while the biggest sooty for the juniors was a 466mm fish caught by Darcy McFarlane.

Saturday afternoon, session two, saw Ricky Wetherall and Nick Moore get into upgrade territory having presented seven fish each by the end of the session. Only 46 points separated them at first and second place. In the juniors, both Balin Tweddle and Darcy McFarlane caught one fish to take their respective scores to 1209 and 805 points. Largest fish for session two was taken out by Dakota MRC Councillor Belinda Hassan releasing some of the 20,000 sooties stocked into Eungella dam.

Norgate at 476mm.

Sunday morning saw brighter weather and a slight easing of the wind and again most boats headed for the timber. Ricky Wetherall though specimen that was the largest fish for the session. Isaac Mcfarlane and Jesse Sheehy scored a fish each.

Final tallies were checked and rechecked and the INDT size of 389mm.

The most popular lure seemed to have been a white grub and senior winner Ricky Wetherall used either the grub or a Jackal TN60, while junior champion Balin Tweddle used either a pearl ZMan Grub or a green 80mm Raid vibe.

After session two on Saturday afternoon, 20,000

2022 World Sooty Champion angler was declared to be Ricky Wetherall with a score of 2581 and second place went to Mick Slade only 14 points behind on 2567. Shane Snell came in 3rd place with a score of 2449.

In the juniors Balin Tweddle emulated his older brother’s feat from 2019

All fish are kept live in an above ground pool at the event and William Swan places another one in the pool.

Dan Curry looks pleased with his 501mm sooty grunter caught in the INDT World Sooty Championship. sooty fingerlings were released in the dam making a total of 80,000 stocked this year. The very lively fish were again supplied by Bass, Barra and Barcoo (Redgate Fish Farm) and MAFSA enlisted Councillors Justin Englert and Belinda Hassan and what seemed like dozens of kids to help with the release. Fun times for everyone involved.

All competitors enjoyed the event regardless of the tough fishing and most will return next year. This was a great effort by MAFSA to organise and staff the event, and a huge thank you to all the sponsors. A full list of the sponsors can be seen among the posts on MAFSA Facebook page.

Planning starts now for the 2023 event, so lock it into your calendars. – Keith Day

when he took out the junior division champion with 1699 points with Darcy Mcfarlane runner up with 1597 points from Cohen Olsen on 889 points from two fish.

The full score sheet is available via MAFSA Facebook page along with plenty of photos and posts of the event.

Biggest sooty for each session was awarded as follows: session one, Jack Hislop 490mm; session two, Dakota Norgate 476mm; and, session three, Cohen Olsen 508mm. 52 anglers out of 100 nominations scored fish and a total of 141 fish measuring a collective total of 54,792mm gave an average