2024 Compleat Angler Bathurst Inland Series
Round 4 - Windamere Dam
The final round of the Compleat Angler Bathurst, Inland Series, has been run and won at Windamere dam over the weekend.
With weather patterns not consistent with that, of mid October, the cold weather and wind, made for a slower bite than we would usually see at this time of year. The guys who went out hoping for that hot edge bite, found it hard to put a pattern on these finicky fish, with patches of larger model fish coming in on jerk baits, Soft vibes and blades, this technique though, unfortunately, wasn't going to bring the consistent number of fish required to compete at the pointy end.
308 Yellowbelly where registered over the week end, with the majority of the top teams, claiming their fish on the trusty Burkley Gulp Minnow Grub, fished vertically over the top of active fish. None done this better than the winning team, Jigheads - Brad Gardiner, Neil Hodges and Warren Gardiner, who's score of 5820mm for their 10 best fish was a cracking effort in the hard conditions. Jigheads skipper Brad Gardiner saying in the post event interview, that their key to success was to concentrate only on the larger fish. Fishing in the very back end of the dam, the boys would constantly move around their selected bay, until they would find the large fish they wanted to target, and then concentrate on getting their lure in front of these fish and getting them to eat.
2nd place (5715mm) went to team - Wrong Animal - Jeb Bishop & Truman Goonrey, and 3rd place (5630mm) was Deadliest Catch - Zac Sullustio, Justin Hoy & David Brown, these teams also fishing in a similar style to our winners.
The biggest Yella for the weekend went a mammoth 640mm to David Brown from Outcast Fishing.
Our Wilson Fishing, 2024 Team of the Year and Runner up Team of the year, where also announced at the events presentations, with no surprise in a contest between Jigheads and Loomsys Fish N fix, as these two teams have been hard to stop all year, with Jigheads (299) narrowly holding of Loomsys Fish N Fix (296) for the top spot.
Another great weekend was had by all participants, as we head into our end of year break, and start to move our thoughts to the 2025 series kicking off in March 2025.
Keep an eye on our gallery section over the next week, for our next episode of Angler talk, where we run through the weekends event, with the guys from Day Release, (Josh & Jake Kopp, & Brendan Everett), as they open up and give some some really valuable insights into Inland tournament fishing.