Berkley Pro Team wins Qld Open.

Words Chris Britton, all pics from the ABT team.

QLD Open Round Up

It was always going to be a difficult task to defend a QLD Open title, especially with 15 other teams stacked with top anglers from QLD and NSW gunning for the title, and whilst it was a super close finish Anthony and myself came out on the right side of a 70gram differential for an unexpected but much celebrated 2^nd QLD Open title. I have given a brief rundown on our 3 days below and some techniques used.

1^st Day – On the first day we headed to the northern end of the bay, fishing both St Helena and Mud Island. Both islands had been fishing pretty tough in the lead up, but a 3kg limit in 40 minutes on the pre-fish day was sufficient to justify the “all or nothing” bet that is fishing in the Bay. What a difference a day makes!!! A South-Westerly influence had a massive impact on conditions and cleared the water up unbelievably. By mid morning, we were still without a fish, and starting to feel a bit ill. As the tide rose however, we slowly started to graft out a bag, and we were pinning our hopes for a big fish on the second half of the run-up. Whilst we got 1 reasonable fish over 30cm to the fork, it didn’t really happen and we headed home with a limit of 2.25kg, and sitting 8th. The approach we fished St Helena and Mud was fishing 3 inch minnows in Lime Tiger on very light Finesse heads – 1/20 and fishing them very shallow across the rough bottom, looking for a reaction bite -backed up with 4lb Trilene or Vanish leader, fished on Protactics and Abu 802 Cardinals.

2^nd Day – We needed a re-think and decided to abandon Plan A and go to Plan B which we knew had more fish in it, but we were not sure if the quality was going to stack up. We still headed north but not as far, not going past Cleveland Pt, where we fished surface lures for a couple of smaller fish. The gear was the same as before, but we were using Stren Magnathin on the surface lures to help with buoyancy. We then headed off for a milk run of spots on the lower bay Islands fishing larger minnow hard bodies. We filled our bag out, but our best fish came in the last half an hour or so, where we upgraded the entire bag for a limit of 2.71kg. This was the biggest bag for the day and moved us up to 5^thand 500gms behind the leaders.

3^rd Day – We decided to replay Plan B and do it all over again. We knew that we would probably need around 3kg for the day to have any chance of making up the differential. The day panned out similar to the day before, although we left our northern spot with a limit, albeit small. However, our milk run delivered results earlier than the day before and with a couple of hours to go we had a good limit. We still thought we were 1 good fish short at least and spent the last hour looking for another 30cm + fish. It didn’t happen and we thought that would cost us. The banter at the ramp suggested it was going to be very close. It looked like we had the largest bag again, but we were not confident that it was at least 500gms better. Back at the weigh in, we were the 3^rd last to weigh, and the bag went 2.89kg, which we were ecstatic with. The second place team went next and fell 70gms shy, which left the team that had led from the start to weigh in. The required weight was 2.41kg, and looking at the fish, it was too close to call. The reaction of the crowd was enough to tell us that they were short and when the scales lit up at 2.30kg, it was all over and we were the champs again for 2008!!!! It was quite surreal, but very exciting.

Whilst it was great to win the title, it was even better to fish the 3 days with my mate Wish. We generally only fish together once a year, and we had a ball for the 3 days, which in no small part helped, as we both tend to fish well when we are having fun, and we had plenty of laughs.

Anyway, looking forward to a threepeat next year!!!!

Chris Britton