Unlikely angler lands “monster” 42cm bream at The Entrance

A TOURIST who does not like fishing and who did not even know what bait she was using, has landed what is being touted as the largest bream ever caught on the Central Coast.

Michelle Bell, 48, of Freemans Reach, landed a 42cm bream that many locals believe is the biggest in living memory. Picture: Supplied

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IT IS enough to make diehard anglers weep.

A blow-in, who does not like fishing and who did not even know what bait she was using, has landed what is being touted as the largest bream ever caught on the Central Coast.

And what makes it even more remarkable is she caught it in the middle of the day in the shadow of The Entrance Bridge — an area regularly “smashed” by anglers.

Michelle Bell, of Freemans Reach, north of Windsor on Sydney’s outskirts, was not intending to go fishing on Sunday but decided to join her sister anyway.

After getting some blokes to help them launch their 5m tinnie the pair set off about 10.30am.

The fish after it was gutted next to a tape measure. Picture: supplied

Using an Ugly Stick rod her husband bought her two Christmases ago and some bait “either prawn or chicken” that he had prepared and frozen she said she got the shock of her life when the reel exploded in her hand shortly after noon.

“It was scary because the rod reel was dragging,” she said. But after her sister tightened the drag the 48-year-old reeled in a monster 42cm yellowfin bream.

“It must have come in on the incoming tide or something,” she said.

“I was excited but not overly. But when we got back all the locals were saying it was the biggest they’d ever seen.”

Ms Bell, who has had a caravan at Canton Beach Tourist Park for the past 11 years, has frozen the whopper until she heads home tomorrow­.

“I can’t wait to show my hubby,” she said.

“I don’t go out fishing all the time, I don’t like fishing but my sister was going out and she would have been going out alone so I went with her.”

The pair were fishing on the western (left) side of The Entrance Bridge. Picture: Christine Bennett

A NSW Fisheries spokesman said the area west of The Entrance Bridge was hugely popular with anglers and said the fish would have to be “very old” because it was a slow growing species.

“It’s surprising because that area gets smashed all the time,” he said.

According to the Australian National Sportfishing Association, the most recent record for a yellowfin bream is 1.5kg caught by Anthony Thorpe in Wallis Lake in 2002.

The NSW Fisheries spokesman said that a 1.5kg bream would measure about 39cm from the nose to the fork in its tail.

Ms Bell’s fish measured about 40cm to the fork.

But the mother of all bream according to the Australian National Angling Records still remains a colossal 4.45kg, 57cm-long, brute reeled in by Stedgley Horace at the Camden Haven River in 1984.