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Also the Rapala suspending lures are great with 30 second pauses make for irresistible Bait in the trees. The Tropic Angler Floaters are great in the spindly timber like the lantana as you can pull them down into the snag, suspend and they will bounce back up to the surface and you can walk them through the snags once again.

These lures are great but my most successful way to fish is with the soft plastics. These lures have it all; they have the movement the feel and the smell of a recognizable bait fish. I use the soft plastic as my go to method and the former I use when it’s not working and we need a change in course. The new Slick Rigs are great but they have taken advantage of the good times and reduced the number of lures in there packets from 6 down to 4, but on the positive side there are softer product that swims well. The slick rigs are best with an upgrade to include a stinger hook and you generally won’t miss fish. The storm bait and switch still works great and can be best improved with a stinger hook.

Trolling has still been productive and is very popular with plenty of boats on the dam at night. Plenty of good fish arches are appearing in that three to five metre zone on the side scan and sounder so the fish are definitely there.

If you need a new brag mat we have a new locally made one for sale in the bottle shop at Gin Gin for $15.00 this is with a 50% discounted price and these are especially made for Lake Monduran Barra as they extend out to 1.5m long.

This summer has been a cracker on the barra but offshore things have been tougher with the smaller Black marlin basically swimming past us this year. Plenty of good heavy tackle Blues and black marlin have been caught in over 100m this year. For the travelling angler there are plenty of small blacks are on the bite at Sunshine Coast and Gold coast Port Macquarie and good catches of stripes as far south as Ulladulla. Maybe next year will be better for us up here.

Rob Wood

14/01/10

Good rain has fallen around the dam this year and is most welcome by the farmers and fisherman a like. For any one that has been to the dam lately will have noticed the dry dusty conditions on the properties around the dam, with a ring of green grass where the water level has continued to fall. The recent rains won’t make much of an impression on the dam’s capacity but it will maintain it for an extra couple of weeks. With  future monsoonal weather happening in the tropics we may have a low pressure system form and dump some rain in the months ahead.

All going well we should be able to catch fish very regularly right through to May before things slow down some more and the very testing winter fishing starts. Winter fishing can be tough but find the right conditions and it can be very rewarding.

Interestingly I was talking to a DPI officer recently about Paradise Dam and he informed me that there are not a lot of barra in Paradise Dam but he went on to say that they have some barra with electronic tags. He has followed these fish on a regular basis and I was amazed when he told me of some of the distances these fish had travelled and when he would move up on one with boat it would swim deeper to avoid detection. This would add light to some of the theories that are around regarding fish travelling to the wall in rain periods or when there is a lot of water removed from the dam. A Recent kill off two years ago with cold weather killed a lot of the fish at paradise dam. I have heard that they are keen to develop a local stocking group down that way but the powers that be are concerned about effects to existing natives such as the lungfish populations etc.

It would definitely be great to have another dam in Queensland stocked with barra but would certainly eat into SIPS funding. This may take an injection of government funding to replenish the dams in Queensland as maybe the SIPS won’t be enough with out an increase in licence fees. It would be smarter to have Stocking Groups step away from wasting money on bass in predominantly barra fishing dams and put the money back it what the consumer paid for. With not many people fishing for bass in barra producing dams and the most of the permit money coming from barra fisherman it seems imperative that they return barra to the water. If we don’t do this we will deplete stocks off barra. This is extremely noticeable in the difference in the fishing at Lake Awoonga Compared to Lake Monduran with the later being under increased fishing pressure fishing has become tougher.

Lake Awoonga has its own hatchery and doesn’t use SIPS funding to stock its dam, it has over 3 million fish and also some huge mangrove jack.

When fishing Lake Awoonga points on a good night you can catch up to 10 or more fish due to the population of fish that will move into these feeding area at Lake Monduran you would be lucky to catch half of these. For newcomers to barra fishing this can make it even tougher to find barra.

The biggest problem when fishing lake monduran  in shallow water is boat noise and the more boats on the water, the more the fish will move out of the shallow bays and creeks and move into deeper water. No where is more evident of this than the southern arm of B when we fish this during the week with little or no boat pressure it will fish well. It only takes one tinny to come and sit within a 200m radius of my boat and its like ringing a bell on the water with constant hull slap is deafening underwater. Boat noise in some of the deeper areas like the channels has a limited effect so if you’re moving through the channels it’s generally accepted to move fast but if you’re in a shallow arm its best to keep speeds down not only for the barra fish but also safety. Boat noise and speed has come under the scrutiny of Fisheries lately with the faster American boats on the water and with certain jealous members of the fishing community continually ringing and complaining about the American bass boats speeding on the dam. So much so that the Fisheries thought it was a great idea to attend the Lake Monduran event of the ABT. With all due respects to fisheries they should have done their home work as the first question that the asked, was do we have any fish on board in a catch and release tournament. The speed limit on the dam is 40knts and they do have a travelling limit of 200m from other boats on the dam. The reality is that these American bass boats can stop from 100 km/hr quicker than a car can stop from the same speed. The reason that people buy these boats is they are cheaper and handle better than anything built on the Australian market and above all they’re extremely fun to drive. It’s amazing I hear the word stealth every where in relation to fishing for barra. I continually hear people banging around in tinnies ruining the fishing in shallow water for the rest of us and these are usually the same people who are complaining about the Fast boats making to much noise, it’s even more upsetting to see some of the local tackle stores jumping on the band wagon. I think respect to other anglers and boaters a like is more important on the water and ramp then anything.

The fishing in the rain has been brilliant to say the least at Lake Monduran but when the rain finished the fish disappeared. We went to the main basin and trolled one up a barra 100 metre of trolling. My son caught this fish a 109cm in the basin trolling and in deeper water sorted him out he was knackered by the time he had the fish to the boat. This adds some weight to the theory of the fish moving to the dam wall with rain, rising water and monsoonal conditions might encourage the fish to travel down stream to spawn. May be another piece of jigsaw puzzle but don’t rely on these theories as they are just that and there is so much more to barra fishing a lot of fish are caught in the heat of the moment the flick of bait the cast of the lure and a hook up at the end of the day it can be a game of luck.

The one thing that is obvious at this moment is the ever changing levels of the dam and with this has come some great fishing areas more so in the sticks as the fringing weed areas have disappeared. The areas to fish are the Shoaling areas adjacent to deep water so if you move around during the day fishing these types of areas you should catch fish. You should be casting to shallow water moving your lure very fast through the shallows and you may slow down depending on the water depth. Burning the lure does seem to work well at the moment but try slow rolling and hopping as they will all work.

Lure choices at the moment for me are 130 slick rigs in the new green colour for the slow stuff I like the storm bait and switch and hard bodies you can’t go past the Rapala suspending lures as they work out of the box.

I have revisited top water fishing with Bill Clarke’s Bugs these are great for when the fish shut down on the plastics and you can still see evidence of them feeding. The other thing I noticed are big fish are attracted to them when I have been catching fish in 90’s I throw out a bug and catch fish around 110 up. If things are quiet with your fishing its worth putting one on while your mates are still fishing plastics, this lure can act as a teaser creating a bite for your mate. One thing though use them sparingly as some days may turn fish off as they are very noisy in the water this is why I use the cockroach as it has one propeller and swims almost in a walk the dog fashion I use these lure with a short jerking motion like a popper increasing the rest period with every cast. I usually limit my cast to about 20 every hour returning to another option when peppering an area. If you have trouble finding these in your tackle store pop into our bottleshop as we have a limited supply in store. These fizzers are a great option for fishing barra sometimes its invaluable to break up your day with different styles to break the monotony of big days on the water. Just out today had a great session catching over 5 fish for the day with a 115 cm fish caught casting the shallows in B. There were plenty of small fish in the channels of the main creek near white rock fishing the tree-ed flats above the deeper channel.

The every changing environment of Lake Monduran will be a challenging arena to fish in the months ahead, watch this space for what’s happening or call and see us at the Gin Gin Hotel to bring yourself up to date.

Rob Wood

Game And Sports Fishing