SIX TEAMS SHARE BREAM MEGABUCKS BOUNTY

At a perfect weekend of breaming in Forster, NSW, six teams shared in a $22,500 cash bonanza. And, on a weekend where Forster reasserted its claim as 'home of the biggest bream in Australia', the all time ABT Big Bream record was broken again - a 1.99kg fish caught by AFC Champion Angler Chris Wright.

In fact, the www.sportsfish.com.au/ Blakes Marine team of Kaj Busch and Chris Wright stole the show on the first day of the tournament, bagging a 10/10 bream limit of 7.14kg and pocketing $5500 for their day's work.

Their bag, anchored by Wright's monster bream, easily kept last year's MegaBREAM winners, Ross Lamotte and Chris Martin (10/10, 6.75kg for $3,000) at bay, while the Wiggle Fin Action Disc team of Mark Mangold and Scott Towner (10/10, 6.24kg) grabbed third place on Day One, earning $1500 for their efforts.

When exploring the various oyster racks in the main maze of channels between Wallis Lake and the three river systems that feed into it, Wright finally admitted that they 'were lost' when they spotted the 1.99kg bream feeding on top of a rack.

"Those are the sort of fish that you always cast at but never hook," Wright said. "I pulled the lure across in front of it and let it drop down and it was unbelievable - the fish just followed it down and klunked it!"

Team member Kaj Busch also explained that he lost a similar sized fish earlier in the day."Every time I come just reaffirms why the breaming here is so good," Busch said on stage. "Big, mean bream and miles of oyster racks - you guys who live here are lucky buggers indeed."

Wright and Busch targeted racks that were close to deep water and fast current."We fished the shady side of the racks and used a pretty fast retrieve, swimming the lures just under the level of the racks and tempting the bream out that way. We didn't let the lures hit the bottom," Wright explained.

Their secret weapon for the weekend was the #2 Squidgy Wriggler in Bloodworm colour, fished on a 1.5g Squidgy Finesse jighead. Bushy used a Millerods Bream Brawler and Shimano Stella 1000 with 10lb Squidgy Braid while Wright used a Bream Buster Finesse, Sustain 1000 and 4lb Fireline to great effect. Both added some 12lb Berkley Vanish as a leader.

"$8000 isn't bad for a day's fishing," Bushy remarked when it became obvious that Wright's 1.99kg Big Bream would stand for the weekend. Everyone agreed.

However, the skins format of BREAM Megabucks means that Day Two is essentially a whole new event, and three different teams took advantage of the fact at the final weigh-in on Sunday.

The Attack Boats team of Trent Butler and Drew Griffiths (10/10, 6.39kg for $3,000) led the skin until the last bag of fish weighed, where the Howard Homes/Culprit team of Andrew Howard and David Otway presented the biggest bag of the weekend to take the cash (10/10, 7.70kg for $5500). Team Mako (John Schofield and Kevin Gleed (10/10, 6.31kg for $1500) finished third.

"It was an exciting session in more ways than one," said Howard as he explained the day's events. "One of our watches was still set to daylight savings time, so we really struggled to get our limit.

We landed a really nice fish - our 10th - at what we thought was about 15 minutes to go and started racing back. When we realised that we were coming in an hour early, we raced back and upgraded several times with kilo-plus fish."

Howard and Otway targeted racks in clearer water around Wallis Island with both hard-bodied and soft plastic lures. Attack Minnows and OarGee Lil' Rippas in gold/brown colourations, as well as 2" Culprit Swim Fin Grubs in a variety of colours, did the damage.

Using the hard-bodies around the racks, David said they used faster retrieves when the water was flowing quickly and slower retrieves when in slower flows. They swum the soft plastics over weed beds with a slow roll to keep them off the bottom.

Both used Millerods - Howard a Bream Brawler and Otway a Bream Buster - both with 4lb Fireline and 10-12lb leaders. "I do a lot of fishing at Forster and it really is a fun place to fish," Howard said.

All of the 30 teams managed to weigh bream over the weekend and take advantage of the hospitality offered by the Forster Beach Caravan Park and their magnificent Reef Science live display of all the bream caught.

More information on the BREAM tournament circuit can be found on www.bream.com.au or by calling Simon Goldsmith on 04-BREAMING during business hours.