We were fishing for Bass at the 2009 Albert Falls Classic as Team Fishing Adventures. This is a big fish tournament and there was 136 boats fishing this year, which is sad, compared to the usual over 300 boats, but shows the strain on the economy at present.
It was post front conditions which made for tough fishing conditions, the water temperature started out at around 14deg C in the mornings and went up to around 17deg C in the afternoons. Both days were clear sunny skies and absolutely no wind, which always makes for tough fishing.
We went with finesse style fishing using light mojo rigs and 4" finesse worms. Day 1 was very tough for us and we only landed 1 fish of 565gr (1 ¼ lbs). Mentally this is very tough, but you have to keep yourself going. On day 2 we did much better and landed 10 fish with the largest being around 1.15Kg (2 ½ lbs).
The competition was eventually won by Gordon Brown of Ranger Boats with a fine fish of 3.1Kg (6 ¾ lbs) which was caught on crank bait, and a remarkable achievement with a clear win head and shoulders above any other fish caught. Well done Gordon.
This is still a relatively small fish for the Albert Falls Classic and we were expecting a fish of around 4.8Kg (10 ½ lbs) to win, but with the post frontal conditions this was not to be.