It was the fourth and final round of the NSW BASSIN series to be held at Lake Glenbawn in the Hunter Valley.
The fish had been biting leading up to the tournament with some big catches and reports of 30-50 fish being caught by some boats. The late mail was that the fish were responding to ice jigs fished in the back reaches of the lake.
Having already qualified for the grand final earlier in the season fishing with my four year old son Oscar, it was an opportunity to fish with a good friend of mine, Toby Wilson, which would qualify me to team up with him in the final to fish for the ten thousand dollar prize money. We also had the chance to take out the Team of the Year if results fell our way.
With no pressure to achieve a result we decided to not prefish on the Friday and just go for a quick run in the boat in the afternoon and check a few spots with the sounder. Confident with what we had seen at two locations we were ready for the following morning.
After doing a presentation at the briefing on the new Rapala Jigging Raps, and giving away some t-shirts, hats etc. I offered a prize pack of 12 Rapala Jigging Rap lures, a Rapala shirt and a hat to the largest bass weighed in for the weekend caught on a Rapala Jigging Rap. There was a lot of interest amongst anglers about the new Jigging Raps and where to purchase them.
The game plan was to fish with W5 & W7 Rapala Jigging Raps; these are 50mm(9gms) and 70mm(18gms).
We headed off to our first location in the first session and pulled up to find fish on the sounder immediately. They were showing as active fish which is always a good sign. It didnt take long and we were putting fish into the live well. Toby was using a W5 in NP and myself a W7 in RFSH colours. We boated about 10-12 legal fish for the session weighing in a four fish bag of 3.58kg. This put us in second position.
Heading out again in second, our goal was to boat four legal fish knowing that the afternoon would be alot tougher fishing than the morning. When we arrived we found that the fish had gone to the bottom and spread out. It wasn’t until we moved to the second spot and i tied on a W5 Jigging Rap in the BLM colour that we started to catch fish. We ended up boating around 15 fish with half of them being under size and weighed a conservative bag of 2.82kg putting us in 4th position over night.
Heading out on the last morning we went straight to were we had caught our fish the previous afternoon and landed three fish in the first fifteen minutes. Toby using the Rapala Jigging Rap W5 in NP and me the W5 in BLM. After landing three in quick succession we dropped around five or six good fish and then it went quiet until i got our fourth fish which was only just legal but it still made a full bag. We went straight to our other location looking for an upgrade which i landed on a 1/4oz blade in greenback colour, it was a nice fish around the 1.4kg mark and a great anchor for our bag. Our bag hit the scales at 4.25kg our best for the weekend.
Unfortunately we fell 80grams short of the win but we were happy none the less with another good result. We also fell short on Team of the Year as the guys who had won took out the honors on that one also.
It was a tough weekend after all the talk of the fish being on the chew leading up to it. There were 57 teams competeing with us being one of only three to catch a full 12/12 fish limit.
All our fish we weighed other than one was caught on the Rapala Jigging Raps which i think says enough. These things really do work well when the fish are shut down. Thanks Rapala.
The Rapala pack was won by Daniel Quamby with a great fish of 1.1kg caught on a W5 Jigging Rap in the P-1 colour.
Regards,
Gregg Flett.
