Episode 428: Botany Bay Bream With Andrew Death

Andrew’s Top Tips For Botany Bay Bream

• Don’t fall for the myth that bream can only be caught at particular times of day or on particular tides. They can be taken right through the day and by adjusting your technique and fishing location can be taken on any tide, too.
• During October to November the bream in Botany Bay will transition from their winter habit of schooling up in deeper water. They’ll disperse a little more and move into the shallower margins to feed. Try places like Woolooware Bay or areas where there are rocky edges and weed flats as the weather and water warms.
• Launching from the Kurnell area is a good option, you can literally be over fish within 100m of your launch spot. The water clarity is excellent in Botany Bay, so use Google Earth to find some likely fishing spots as weedbeds, channels and other likely structures are all visible – just check how recently the imagery has been updated.
• Having a decent sounder with down and side scan isn’t critical to successful bream fishing, but it is very useful for locating bream.
• Perfect conditions for Botany Bay bream would be a high tide an hour before you plan to launch a kayak, overcast conditions and a little ripple on the surface. A warm day and a NE breeze in the afternoon often stimulates the fish to bite.
• On tough days, downsize your leader and apply Sax Scent on your lures. Sax Scent can also be used to make your line or leader float better or even to slow the sink rate of your lures.

Andrew’s Suggested Bream Fishing Tackle

• A 1-3 or 1-4kg Atomic Arrows rod is a good, economical entry level bream fishing rod. Coupled with a Daiwa 2004 spin reel loaded with 12lb Gosen casting braid and two rods lengths of 4lb fluorocarbon leader.

Andrew’s Top Lures For Botany Bay Bream

• The 38mm Atomic Bream Crank in Muddy Prawn or Matte Black colours in all three diving depths are great tools for bream fishing and can be “tweaked” by switching out hooks and are great in all diving depth options – Deep, medium and shallow. The deep diving version is perfect for fishing shallow water , especially over shallow racks (1-3 ft) as the diving lip digs in and allows the lure to bump along the bottom without getting hung up – you’ll need to upgrade to a 4000 reel and 10lb leader for this, and lock the drag. The medium diving version is great for working beneath boat hulls, working it just fast enough that it touches the hull. The shallow version is great to cast as deep into mangroves as possible and slowly sneak it out past the fish in very shallow water.
• The OSP Dolive Craw creature bait on a TT Lures #2, 1/28oz hidden weight hook is a great option all year round. It’s great around boat hulls and the gnarliest structure and eddies around pontoons. Andrew likes to cast the lure and count to 20 as it sinks. Most of the time the lure will get eaten on the drop.
• The 70mm Bassday Sugapen in the yellow striped colour pattern is a very good option for surface fishing. Being tail weighted, it can be cast very long and can be cast with accuracy. This lure needs as least a few cm of water depth as it sits tail down and will frequently get hung up in mangrove roots. The Sugapen can also be used on the flats, with varying retrieves depending on what the fish are responding to on the day.