Episode 254: Gippsland Bream With Kaj “Bushy” Busch

Bushy’s Top Bream Fishing Tips

• The deadliest technique to learn in black bream fishing is to pause a suspending crankbait. Bream can rarely resist this technique and by reading their body language you (and they) quickly know that they’re going to crunch your lure!
• Gippsland Lakes is a system in recovery, thanks to good management by Victorian Fisheries and local catchment groups. The fishing is steadily improving and will continue to do so for years to come.
• Bushy recommend super light line fishing for bream and reckons it’s not so scary once you get used to it – but light gear seriously improves your results.
• In his youth Bushy yearned to fish for American large mouth bass because of the massive variety of lures they can take. Then he discovered that bream will take all the same lure styles once you figure them out.
• It seems counter-intuitive but using light lines and leaders (1kg) in dirty water makes a huge difference to catch rates.
• Bushy reckons most of the theories about when to fish for bream are nothing more than BS. He recommends fishing for them right through the day and on any tide and moon phase. He especially reckons it’s not worth sacrificing a sleep-in for an early morning bite and prefers to hit the water later, after a hearty breakfast.
• In the late winter to early spring months the Gippsland Lakes bream are moving up into the river systems in preparation for spawning. Once they locate water of suitable salinity they’ll stay put and not move much for several weeks.
• If the fishing is tough, find some water 6ft deep with a good breeze and use a technique called “boogering”, which is described below.

Bushy’s Recommended Bream Fishing Tackle

• It’s not unusual for Bushy to have seven rods in his boat all rigged up and ready to fish, but that’s a hangover from his tournament days.
• For the weekend angler huge recommends a lightweight spin rod in the seven foot range with a whippy tip with matching reel, 4lb braid and light (2lb) fluorocarbon leader as the main outfit.
• For sinking plastics and crankbaits he recommends a similar setup but loaded with 3lb straight through fluorocarbon line – or even 2lb fluorocarbon.

Bushy’s Black Bream Fishing Lures

• A soft plastic lure is always a good starting point and Bushy recommends the 100mm Squidgies Wriggler or the 2.5″ Zman Grubz in Motor Oil colour. He generally fishes these on a 1.5 to 2g head, depending on conditions. Technique varies depending on the conditions and what the fish are doing. A couple of good techniques include hopping the lure gently along the bottom on a 2g head if the fish are deep or zig-zagging it mid water on a 1.5g head if the fish are marking mid-water. The other effective technique in the lake is called “Boogering” and involves casting long ahead of a drifting boat in fairly shallow water and starting the retrieve immediately with some hefty jerks of the rod, letting the lure sink between jerks.
• The 86 mm OSP bent minnow is a great bream lure that isn’t always effective, but is a lot of fun and at times will slay them. It’s a sub-surface lure that is best fished on a floating leader rather than a fluorocarbon leader – and if you replace the hooks make sure it’s with the exact same hooks the lure came with. Work the lure in sweeps with pauses between to allow the lure to return to the surface
• A shallow swimming Jackall Chubby is another effective bream lure in the lakes and can be fished on a simple slow roll over flats of in the rivers.