Tournament fisherman and ABT founder Steve Morgan has opened the 2026 Daiwa BREAM Australian Open with a clean Day One limit, banking five bream over the 30 centimetre measure in Sydney Harbour’s eastern reaches on a mix of Cranka Crabs, Eco Gear Aqua soft plastics and a single decisive stick minnow.
The Daiwa BREAM Australian Open is the centrepiece of the ABT national bream calendar and runs over three days, with Morgan working through the opening session in the Eastern Harbour zone. Speaking to his audience after the bell, Morgan was characteristically understated about the performance, framing it as solid rather than spectacular.
"Well, it ended up being a great day for the first day of the three days of the Daiwa Bream Australian Open," Morgan said. "This was the commute to work. Spent all day in the Eastern Harbour, and caught fish on a variety of baits. Got a couple of big ones on Cranka Crabs. Got a couple of really nice fish on Eco Gear Aquas. And my fifth fish over 30, which is what you need in the open, ate a stick minnow."
In ABT bream format, anglers carry a maximum of five legal fish per session and minimum length applies, putting a premium on upgrading dink fish into kilo-class specimens before the weigh-in. Morgan estimated his day at around 15 quality fish landed, well short of the high-volume days he has produced in the harbour in the past but featuring a quartet of upgrade fish that fundamentally shaped his bag.
The early action came on the Samaki Realistic MS40 long cast crankbait, a finesse hard body that Morgan said he had previously been lukewarm on but was now reassessing. The first bag-filler came on a colourway he had previously written off.
"A little bag filler to start off with on the Samaki Realistic MS40 long cast, in a colour I don't really like — but I'm liking it more now that something ate it," Morgan said.
The key big-fish session of the day came on the Cranka Crab, a fastidiously sculpted treble-rigged crab imitator that has become an enduring tournament staple on the bream circuit. Morgan landed two of his upgrade fish on Cranka Crabs, including one that ran him through structure, around boats and into multiple rock cracks before he could subdue it on what he described as effectively two-pound line.
"Now that's that's cheating seeing them off the edge like that," Morgan said as another upgrade settled into the net. "There was a lot when they were fighting over it."
A second purple patch followed on the Eco Gear Aqua, the slim profile soft plastic that has long held a place in elite bream tackle boxes. Morgan dropped the bait beside a bow-waving fish in shallow water and described the take in vivid detail.
"Big one. Got him. Get out of there," Morgan called as the rod loaded up. "Shaking his head the whole way out — got the Aqua wedge in his mouth."
The fifth and decisive fish came on a stick minnow ate in the closing minutes of his session, the kind of opportunistic finish that defines tournament bream fishing where moving a single centimetre on the measuring board can be the difference between a top ten finish and missing the cut.
Morgan resisted the temptation to overstate the bag, repeatedly pulling himself back from declaring fish kilo class and instead estimating sizes in the 700-gram bracket — the kind of conservative reporting that has long made his weigh-ins read as honestly as they fish.
"He's probably a good 700 grams, maybe," Morgan said of a late upgrade. "Get in there, boy. He's pretty well hooked."
The message from the Day One footage is that Sydney’s Eastern Harbour is fishing well enough to reward anglers who can rotate through multiple bait styles, work boats and structure efficiently, and exercise the patience to upgrade rather than fill a bag on small fish. With two days still to fish, Morgan’s split-presentation approach — crankbaits to find them, crabs and aquas to convert the better ones, and a closing stick minnow to seal the limit — sets the template for the chasers behind him on the leaderboard.