Martyn White | Thursday, 3 October 2024
When I was home, I picked up new bladders for my tube and replaced my old heavily patched ones. The new ones seem to be heavier than the old ones and the seams have more overlap, maybe they go a lot of returns on the old ones. Hopefully this will solve my chronic puncture problem.
So fully buoyant and optimistic about staying that way, Chuck and I did a night run out to Kasumi to fish first light from the tubes. The weather is starting to cool a bit, it's still warm enough for topwater bass, but we're running out of days before the winter. I started fishing before Chuck did, and to be honest I spent the first 45mins unable to see my popper. So I stuck on a little, bright white foam bug that I could just pick out in the predawn grey. Immediate blow up and missed fish.
Next cast I had another blow up on the bug and hooked up with what I thought was a bass. Unfortunately during the fight it turned into a weird bream looking thing.
As the light hot up a bit, Chuck started fishing too. He was set up with a hopper dropper rig in the hope of picking up a big, late-season bluegill. He got into immediate action, except all of the fish were these weird bream. They look kind of like a skimmer bream, but bigger than any skimmer I ever saw and more similar in profile to a bronze bream.
Neither of us had ever caught or even seen one before. So we had to do a bit of internet snooping and it turns out they're invasive wu-chang bream from China. I was amazed at how aggressively they attacked the topwaters, they look far more like a fish that you'd catch on maggot on a size 14 fished under a waggler float. When I switched back to a big hair frog they were boiling at it but it was just too big for them to eat, which was fine because I wanted bass, not those weirdos.
I didn't catch any bass, but I suspect that was more to do with the weed growth than the bream. It was just too thick, even if the fly came through the cover it wasn't on the water until it dropped off the edge. There are a lot mullet in the system at the moment too, next time I'll probably be on big streamers rather than bugs, it's definitely time, the conventional guys are starting to break out the big swim baits. I'd like to get a few more topwater fish before it gets cold, but we'll see.
I'm pleased to report I managed to fish all day without a single puncture. Quite a rarity for me!