This summer just gone I really gave the lures a crack for the first time and was catching up to a dozen 25cm plus models in a 2 hour session from the dinghy casting into snags and trolling the flat areas round Basso/Guildford. My best advice is to persist with it and your username is very apt because it may well take 420 casts to crack the code. I don't even take bait with me anymore and have only come home empty handed about 3 times from March to now but it's been hard work.

Love the thrill of trying to get a stonking bream out of the snags with your $22 lure on a 1-2kg rod and 1000 reel while trying not to snap your 6lb braid and leader.

 Yeah I love the idea of it too. I'm nearer to the lower reaches and I'm hearing more about whiting on lures which sounds really cool. I found a little pink 60 / 70mm long bibbed minnow style lure washed up at Woodman's point covered in that calcium-like crap that grows onthings after a while underwater. Took it home, scrubbed it up and replaced the trebles good as new ! I think whoever was using it would have been targetting whiting perhaps. 

Do you tend to find the bigger models live upriver ? I'ts been a long time since I've caught bream in the river, and I used to use prawn near Freo Traffic Bridge, and a few other spots between there and Bicton - but the blowies piss me off too much to bother anymore.

less but  better lures are the way to go IMO

lot of the cheap ebay ones dont swim or the  terminal tackle on em is suss

 Yeah, the simple traditional style metal slices are the best quality ones of all the ones I got.

Soft plastics work a treat in the river for bream and flathead, further upriver you go the less hassle you get from blowies.

For hardbodies usually the more you spend the more likely you are to catch.. the ebay lures don't swim that well from experience
Atomik do some nice bream lures that won't break the bank otherwise the trusty SX40 and Khamsin are always good go to options

I got a few jigheads and I'll try some SP's. I've caught flatties with them, but I haven't caught bream with them yet. Can you fish jetties with them and is it the same bottom technique, hopping them around every now and then ? 

 If you wanna get bream on surface you gotta fish early mornings as the sun comes up, say before 6am. This is when the bream are feeding surface from all the bugs that landed overnight and you would need to focus on flats areas hard work but very well rewarding. Small shallow divers are also the go over the same areas. Now the weather is warming up the bream will nail artificials more than bait. As for the whiting you want a surface lure that bounce and splashes on the surface moved fast. This immitates a fleeing prawn which is what the whiting feed on, mandurah is the best place for that. As devhay said atomic lures are great value, their shallow or mid crank in muddy prawn is a slayer, best tips for bream are low tide focus on drop offs windy with rising tide focus on flats calm hot sunny and still focus on snags and structure and deep water. If your starting with placcies go the zman grubs, great beginner placcie on a 1gram squigy hook and 4lb fluro leader 1m+

 Cheers man, I'm probably more focused on whiting for feeds, but bream for the challenge. For the whiting this should be done in shallow water right ? I'm thinking of having a go at South Beach or Coogee. 
What about tarwhines, can you get any of them when targetting the black bream as bycatch with vibes etc ? Haha. 
I'm gonna be getting a small, sensitive combo more suited to smaller fish so cheers for the zman tips too.

 If you want whiting on artificials try look for areas that are mostly sandy but with broken patches of weed, no deeper than say 1.5m but focus on 1m and search estury inlets and areas like freo around the traffic bridges, you get some ripper flatties in that area too, and if you drop some blades and vibes around the old traffic bridge there is bound to be some tarwhine there ive seen absolute horses come from that place on mussles. As for tarwhine by catch you do get em mainly down river tho I did get a few at maylands last week. Best of luck!