Episode 555: Mallacoota Bream With Nikki Bryant

Nikki’s Tips for Fishing Bream at Mallacoota:

• When you get the lure into the snag you don’t have to twitch it straight away! Once you get the right cast in you need to leave it and wait for the bream to come out before you do anything. You don’t need to be in a hurry.
• Make sure you go and get into all the different little bays that are around Mallacoota, there’s a lot of them! They are the best places to hunt. An overcast day with about 5-10 knots of wind is ideal conditions to fish for bream in Mallacoota. Having the water around 18 degrees is perfect! The fish will be nice and active, especially flathead.
• When Nikki is fishing in Mallacoota, she brings along her samurai reaction rods which is a 7-foot rod. She’s got her 101 which is a 2-4kg and she’s got the 201 which is a 2-6 pound. Nikki runs a Daiwa Exist reel in a 2000 size. Nikki tends to run a 0.6PE braid which is nice and thin.
• Something that’s really important for flats fishing is eyewear! The most important thing to have is a good pair of polarised sunnies, any brand will do! Copper is a great lens colour choice but grey does the job on more overcast days too.

Best Mallacoota Fishing Spots:

• Mallacoota has essentially 3 sections, there’s the bottom lake, the top lake and then you can head up the Genoa River too. The two lakes are separated by a stretch called the narrows.
• Nikki loves the top lake; it has a lot of flats. There’s a huge flat called Palmers bank which goes right down to 1 foot deep. This top lake is a great place to start if you’re chasing bream! The top lake seems to have resident fish all year round.
• The bottom lake can be great all year round too, although you are more effected by tide when it’s open, which it is most of the time! Goodwin Sands in the bottom lake is fantastic for flathead and bream. An incoming tide is the best for the bottom lake, when the fish are coming back up onto the flats to feed. Nose in and go into a couple feet deep in the water and start throwing some lures in; surface lures are great in the morning and evenings but not so much in the middle of the day. Be sure to keep an eye on the water and watch to see if there’s any fish darting about.
• There’s snags all along the river as you go up, a great spot called double creek has some really rocky edges and snags.

Where to Start?

• When Nikki fishes this spot her first move is to go up to the top lake and do a lot of sounding to see where the fish are and what they’re doing, don’t throw a lure straight in as soon as you get there! Nikki tends to start on the flats first thing in the morning in the shallow water, then go to the snags after the sun comes up a bit more. Make sure to experiment using different lures and see what works and what doesn’t.

 Nikki’s Top 3 Bream Lures For Mallacoota:

• A soft plastic lure is a must have! Nikki uses a Hurricane Sprat 65 in the hatchet colour. A 232 Jig head is great for this lure. You want as light as possible with the conditions you’re dealing with. With this lure you want to let it sink to the bottom and then just a gentle lift is all you need when fishing the edges or even out in the open. Bream are more than happy to pick it up off the bottom or even on the way down! Take it nice and slow and really watch the line with the soft plastics. Once you do have a bite, lift the rod, and give it a good strike.
• A Hurricane Twitch 50 in either UV prawn or crystal prawn. Both have stripes on them, which is great for some contrast in the water. If you’re on the flats, cast it out and give it a good 3 hard twitches straight away and then leave it be. You can even slow roll them on the flats too which works a treat. You can also use this lure on the snags too, casting out and leaving it for 5 or so seconds and then a good couple of twitches, its deadly!
• A surface lure is great to have as well. The style doesn’t matter too much but the anticipation of the boil behind it, is bloody great to see! Make sure to twitch the end of the rod to get the action of the lure going and then pause it for a while. Black bream will prefer to go for a still lure that looks nice and easy to go after! Yellowfin bream tend to be a bit more aggressive, and they’ll love to go for a moving surface lure.