After 2 weeks of terrible weather i managed to score an afternoon off work wich looked to be slightly favourable.

The plan was to hit the upper reaches of the Swan River Perth W.A by foot and throw around a few of the berkley 3B lures. Now this time of year in the Swan is usually a bit early to hit it with hard bodied lures, with plastics usually the way to go , but with my favourite lure at the moment being the Berkley 3B walking stick 50 in hooch it was a very easy decision to make to leave it on and go "hard's".

We arrived at the spot at roughly 3pm to find the wind blowing slightly in our faces wich put a smile on my face. First cast 2 winds in and BANG the walking stick got smashed with no hook up, " spewin " i said to my mate Brett when all of a sudden it was on , the reel screemed as this fish went for cover but I managed to wrestle him out of the snags and a respectable 37 cm fork length fish was on the sand, a quick few piks and the fish was swimming away.

From then on in we were managing a fish every few casts and to say these lures were on fire would be an understatement. But it was not all as easy as 1,2,3 as we found that a specific retrieve was to be the deadly undoing of these fish and proved to be the difference from consistent strikes to the odd nudge. The retrieve we have found most effective on the 3B walking sticks is as simple as this. Two quick turns of the handle to get the lure down then slow the pace down so the lure is only just swimming, but here is the trick every 3-4 turns of the handle give the lure 2 quick short twitches in a downwards motion and then pause for 1-2 seconds then start the slow retrieve again, we would usually find that it was these short sharp twitches that would get the bream interested the pause would give them time to "stalk" the lure then the start of the retrieve and they would hit it hard!

We ended up wrapping the day up with a few more nice fish closer to dark. The one suggestion i can give though is carry a few different colours because if they are not hitting one mix it up a bit and try another no matter how silly the colour seems, as depending on many different factors be it water clarity, food source etc they will be eating different things .

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