Team Venom Experience
Our experience (Shane Banks/Aaron Lawson/Stephen Booth) was completely
different from Day Release, but it was still an amazing and awesome time.
Day one we fished a spot called Banksy’s Bank. Now that’s not official at all,
just what we call the bank because it’s Banksy’s first and last stop. This
bank has two points and a rocky groyne in the middle stretch and we
found fish holding up on both points and in the middle rocky stretch.
Fishing a mix of blades and lipless cranks we bagged our limit of 10 fish
in two and a half hours and were straight into upgrade territory. Now
for Team Venom this had never happened so it was a very happy
team until we saw some of the fish coming in. And that meant a
game changer was needed and bigger fish had to be found.
We moved to a couple of spots where we’d landed some 4kg plus
models in prefish and slowly but surely started to pick off the
smallest fish in our bag. About 2pm I suggested we go have
a look at a bank that looked exactly like the type of areas I’d
fished for goldens at Lake Eildon in Victoria. The terrain was
fairly steep, rocky and littered with timber. It made blade
fishing a little scary to be honest.
After a tentative half take on my blade, Aaron hooked
up on a good fish that had to be landed by fighting it
between two trees. The fish was obviously a good class
of fish and Aaron did a sensational job guiding the fish
through the timber and into the net. And it was a
great fish, our biggest for the comp at 4.88kg or just
under 11lb.
We persisted with this bank for a while hoping for
another kicker but with a couple of hours left, we
moved onto a large flat where we’d caught good
fish before.
The flat proved to be a very good move for us
as we upgraded all of our fish below 2.5kg
and by the end of the day we needed only
3kg or better fish to keep upgrading. Day
1 had us in 12th position with a weight of
around 36kg.
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