Hooking bream on metal blades has probably now surpassed any major, revolutionary luring technique that the sport has ever seen.

That’s a big call when you consider the soft plastic boom and then the bio-friendly edible scented baits, but this blade phenomenon has surely now become the biggest thing in town. The Vic Bream grand final held here in the Gippsland Lakes was even more proof of that fact and I don’t think many of the competitors dared to tie anything else on, except a hunk of metal!

Mark Gercovich and Nick Murrell had an awesome pre-fish day to the Vic Bream Grand Final and actually broke all the rules by fishing shallow diving hardbodies on the river edges and open flats for some very big bream. They only had to find these stud fish the next day to give the tournament a real scare.

Sadly, when it came to competition time, the constant boat traffic put these fish down and they couldn’t find or jag them again.

In the end, Gerka said he had to go and join the ‘blade-fest’ and try a lucky dip in amongst the 30 odd boats crammed into the lower Tambo. But that’s tournament fishing for you – all competitors have got to do anything they can to get their bag of five bream per day.

I did a trip into the Tambo just after the comp and got 18 bream on my ever-faithful Micromax hardbodies but I had my work cut out however, dragging a few thumpers from the snags!

Maybe I should have also tried blading out in the middle for even better results?

I was also pleased to hook a nice run of bream in about a metre of open water and I weighted my small lures down with a bit of lead and fished them quite aggressively.

Mitch Chapman joined me on another day and used Squidgy Bugs on a resin head jig to land 15 bream for the morning and he also got some of those bream on Atomic Hardz bibbed lures.

I got seven bream that morning session and we were pleased to return a few fish between 36-38cm, but most of them were around 25-28cm.

So looking ahead, it’s now that time of year to get the prawning gear out and get your flathead lures sorted. The last few seasons on the prawns have been terrific and December usually sees a lot of smaller ones around, but you can still round up a good feed most nights.

Plenty of flathead are now being caught on soft plastics and plenty more will take baits meant for other species. The warmer weather should also see a lot more yellowfin bream turn up this summer.

The whiting numbers seemed to have crashed since the floods a couple of years ago but look for them to make a comeback as we head into the new year. The regrowth of some seagrasses in the lakes will also help their cause.

There are still a few salmon, tailor and trevally being taken on whitebait closer to the entrance and trolling small silver lures will also get you hooked up.

Also I hear crabs are now in plague proportions, so I wonder if a few gummy sharks would come in through the entrance and start feeding on them?