Visited Bremer Bay for the first time this week and was keen to know where the good fishin spots were. Staying at the Bremer Bay Caravan Park which is very good and clean. Met some older gents at the fish cleaning area opposite the caravan park and they mentioned that the Wellstead Estuary has some some good sized bream and some extremely large ones have been caught there in the past. The estuary is currently closed and has been for a few years apparently but does open up to the bay when the water level rises. They were cleaning their catch at the time and they said that the bream weren't biting much at the moment and they "only got half a dozen each". There were three of them and that makes 18 fish. If that was classifed as "not biting much", it sounded like a good invitation to me. They said the estuary was quite shallow and had a lot of rocks. They had a small 3m tinnie and we have a 4.2m Stacer so with the engine up a little, we should be ok. There is a boat launching ramp on Bennet street which looked ok so I pondered whether to take the boat out. Meanwhile, Bill (the bloke staying next to us in a Caravan) said he had been to Bremer 3 years ago and seen people bring in big bream from the jetty so I decided to give the jetty a go the next morning.

Got to the Jetty (which is located on Bennet street just down the road from the general store - there is a small parking area there and then a very short walk to the jetty). Nice jetty, just wide enough for one person with rod holders conveniently located on the rail. Got started at 6am with my rods with paternoster rig, small sniker and 1/0 suicide hooks using the coral bay prawns. Nothing happened for first hour. Not even one bite got me thinking that there were no fish in that Estuary (or at least not many or not here). Decided to change from Prawns to strips of herring. Caught some small herring the day before to use for bait. Scaled these and cut into small strips (5mm wide by 25 mm long) and threaded onto the hooks. Cast out as far as my small rod would cast directlyin front of the end of the jetty. Wait 5 min, 10min then small tap, tap, dont strike - you know the drill with bream - tap, tap, small pull then strike softly and feel the weight. Could tell was a good sized bream but strangely did not fight all that much, not like the bream I have been used to at say Lights Beach - Denmark or Sydney for instance. Just a few short runs and then came to the jetty and lifted up easily - 35cm and nice and fat. Over the next 2 hours caught 6 ranging between 32-35cm (along with one suicidal crab caught on the hook). Filleted these and had them for lunch the next day with the family. Delicious. Next day, repeated the routine and got 6 of the same size. Caught 6 more and released them. I experimented a little with the hook size and strike time to try and avoid the bream swallowing the hook. Increased the hook size to 2/0 and strike a little earlier so the fish are hooked in the mouth.

The bream here are large and patient. Generally, you have to wait around 5-10min between fish for the next bite. This is just like bream in an estuary and you have to be patient but know they are there and checking out the bait. Don't move the bait around and leave a little slack on the line. When the first tap,tap comes, don't strike and be patient. I had to leave after 3 days but am convinced there are some very large bream in there of the 40-50cm range.

P.S I also put out 2 crab pots and got 10 crabs all up - all females released (where are all the males?)

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