Bing Lee Sydney BREAM Invitational - Press Release

[Steve Morgan]

TEAM TRITON WINS BING LEE SYDNEY BREAM INVITATIONAL

IN front of a huge crowd at the Sydney Exhibition centre and in conjunction with the 4WD and Fishing Show, Team Triton weighed a 4.35kg bag of live bream to pip Team Evinrude E-Tec at the post and secure top spot at the Bing Lee Sydney BREAM Invitational.

With 10 teams representing 10 major BREAM tournament sponsors and the media, breamin’ was given a grand reception at the show, with standing-room-only weekend crowds witnessing the incredible quality of bream that Sydney Harbour occasionally offers.

TRITON TOP FIELD

Team Triton – Martin Bardetta and Ross Cannizzaro - started slowly, with a 2.77kg limit – over 2kg behind the first days’ leaders, Evinrude E-Tec’s (Mark Mangold and Scott Towner) massive 4.82kg opening bag, but consolidated to finish with 15/15 for 11.72kg, bumping E-Tec (15/15, 11.69kg) into second, while Lowrance (15/15, 11.12kg), Daiwa (15/15, 10.86kg) and Millerods (15/15, 10.43kg) filled out the top five places.

Triton team captain, Martin Bardetta, outlined the pair’s three days on the water.

“We usually have good results in Blackwattle Bay, so we headed in there for the first day, but the weather was shocking – the water was dirty and the debris was near-unfishable, so we moved around and managed to scratch out a small limit by 11am,” Martin explained.

“So, we needed a re-think on Day 2, and we headed up the Parramatta River to find some clearer water and current.”

Martin and Ross then proceeded to amass nearly 30 legal fish for the day, fishing a new technique to the ABT winners’ circle – drop shot.

“We fished a 6g sinker on the bottom with a 60cm drop from a three way swivel and then a two metre trace terminated with a Gamakatsu Worm Hook,” Martin explained. Their preferred baits included 2” Berkley Power Grubs in pumpkinseed and 3” Berkley Bass Minnows in pearl/watermelon.

Fishing various waters from Putney through to Gladesville, they found their best success came on steep drop-offs with current – in particular one that one that dropped from 10 to nearly 30 feet at Cabarita. Their second day limit finished at 4.60kg.

“Fewer fish came on the drop shot on day three, so we targeted pylons, jetties and the mooring piles for moored boats and fished 1/2gram Squidgy and TT jigheads with the same baits down deep – especially at the interface between pylons and mooring lines and the bottom,” Team Triton continued.

Ross and Martin used Strudwick SoftBodz Finesse and SicStik Pro rods with Daiwa Luvias and Shimano Sustain reels with 4lb Fireline and 6lb Siglon Fluorocarbon leader. They fished from a 17.5 foot Triton with a 115HP Mercury OptiMax engine.

E-TEC A CLOSE SECOND

After leading the event for the first two days, Team Evinrude E-Tec didn’t necessarily stumble on day three, with a 3.49kg limit, but lacked that final kicker fish they needed to take the title.

Even so, Mark Mangold and Scott Towner’s form fishing together remains incredibly good, backing up from a team win at the Lowrance Forster MegaBREAM event and winning cash at the Bing Lee Australian Open.

“We had our chances on the last day and Scott was pretty hard on himself for losing one kicker fish that crushed his jighead flat, but that’s fishing. I’ve rarely seen the Harbour fish so well – the fish are abundant and fat,” said Mangold after the final weigh-in.

E-Tec targeted the Sydney City stretch of the Harbour, focusing particularly on old broken down docks and similar structure.

“We usually use 1/16oz TT heads, but we upped them to 1/12oz for this event and fished a little deeper. Most of our bites came in the 4 to 5 metre range. We’d sink the artificial baits down the front of the docks and look for any variation in the sinking of the line. Most bites were pretty tentative,” E-Tec explained.

E-Tec’s favourite baits were watermelon and pumpkinseed coloured Eco Products ClioNexts and watermelon coloured 2” Berkley Power Hawgs. Both team members used Strudwick SoftBodz Pro rods (6’8” to 7’) and a combination of Shimano Stella and Daiwa Luvies reels. 4lb Fireline and 6lb Vanish completed their kit.

“Most days there were plenty of fish on offer and we managed to upgrade 8 or 10 times,” Mango concluded, “ and I think it’ll be a while before I see another bream as big as Scott’s 1.78kg monster that he landed on the first day!”

With standing room only at the weekend weigh-ins, plenty of Sydney anglers got to see the quality of fish the Harbour can produce.

Generally ABT BREAM events are open to the public. Check out www.bream.com.au for more details.




PLACE TEAM NAME Team Members D1F D1W D2F D2W D3F D3W TotF TotW
1 Triton Martin Bardetta and Ross Cannizzarro 5 2.77 5 4.6 5 4.35 15 11.72
2 Evinrude E-Tec Mark Mangold/Scott Towner 5 4.82 5 3.38 5 3.49 15 11.69
3 Lowrance Greg Silva and Toufik Hachem 5 3.92 5 3.11 5 4.09 15 11.12
4 Daiwa Clayton Gusmerini and Glen Helmers 5 3.29 5 3.67 5 3.9 15 10.86
5 Millerods Mick Collins and Ian Miller (Fri)/Dave Welfare (Sat/Sun) 5 3.56 5 3.37 5 3.5 15 10.43
6 Shimano Brett Wilson and Mark Dunphy 5 2.54 5 3.94 5 3.92 15 10.40
7 Bing Lee Greg Lee and Patrick Debattista 5 2.78 5 2.63 5 4.61 15 10.02
8 Mercury Andrew Homann and Bill Maguire 5 4.47 4 1.84 5 2.64 14 8.95
9 Ausbream.com Neil Ryan and Pat Morris 5 3.90 2 1.95 5 2.92 12 8.77
10 Ecogear Lance Sulkowski and Kris Hickson 1 0.48 5 3.35 5 4.37 11 8.20