Marlo in East Gippsland, Victoria put on a spectacular show for the second day of the Hobie Fishing World Championships today with well over half the competitors getting on the board.
Richard Somerton took the lead today with a 2.6kg bag, pushing his total weight to 5.61kg for the first two days of the tournament and putting him 820 grams ahead of the nearest competitor. In other fisheries this would be considered a comfortable lead, but this is Marlo and anything could happen.
Richard said he was getting pretty nervous early on until he struck a pattern working the snags and picked up a couple of good size bream and then moved on to a rock wall to get his third 10 mins out from the finish.
When asked about is 820 gram lead he said “that a good lead in Marlo is 2 or 3 kg and that tomorrow is going to be pretty tight, hopefully I can get out there again tomorrow and strike the same pattern on the rock walls and we’ll see how it goes. Regardless, I’m loving the competition, it’s been great fishing in Victoria for some big black bream and the Pro Angler 14’s are just incredible.
Chris Burbidge (AUS) came in second place with three solid fish in the bag and when asked said he would need a solid 4kg bag tomorrow and just hope that Richard doesn’t continue his form from the last two days.
In a field of 106 kayaks, Team USA seemed to have a plan on the water today, working as a team, all were at the Power-Pole starting line early and in formation on the North side of the line.
Thursday’s leader Justin Carter (USA) broke away and is currently in 5th place after picking up a 690gram bag. Justin went up river and tried a repeat of what worked at Bemm, working the cover of fallen trees and pitching like he would for Bass but struggled for the first couple of hours only managing to get two in the bag for weigh in.
There are strong 40+ km per hour winds predicted for the East Gippsland region tomorrow but there is talk it may back off a bit and everyone can get out and have another good day on the water. However, this is Victoria and anything could and usually does happen, we will just have to wait and find out what happens in the morning when the Bureau of Meteorology issues their next round of warnings.
