Snow at a weedbank on the first morning

On the 15th of September The club had its first Trip to Lake Awoonga . Situated at Benaraby south of Gladstone, Lake Awoonga is Australia’s premier Barramundi Fishery with Barramundi in excess of 1 meter common.

Now I am not making excuses but with the recent record cold weather, the Barramundi were observed to show characteristics of fish still suffering with the cold weather. By that, I mean they would come out and have a look and even grab and run with the fly but a lot of the time we were unable to set the hook. We did however find some big fish that did boiling behind our presentations . The guys using conventional gear did well although those who used a slowly retreived hard body lure got the same results we did (lots of Looks). The successful technique was a steady fast retrieve over the weed beds with pre rigged soft plastic . I was fishing with Trevor Burgess a calliope local and successful Barra tournament angler. After being two fish behind I delved into the dark side of soft plastics before returning to fly after it looked like I was going to suffer a serious arse wooping.

 I think the thing to take away from this is that you can’t stick to your game plan ,

The Type area that hold fish

impoundment fishing is such a thinking man’s game and successful anglers no matter what you style are the ones who have the ability to adapt to your conditions. Maybe designing a fly that has plenty of movement and can be striped fast (maybe even double handed) is what is needed in these conditions, similar to a squidgy slick rig. The fish that were caught were defiantly the result of a reaction bite and not an impulse to eat, this is something we as flyfishos don't often consider in our match the hatch approach.

Impoundment Barramundi fishing on Fly is still very new and these fish are not consistently caught on fly yet. This provides a great challenge for us as a club and as fly fishermen, as it is well possible. For me personally as you can see from the photo the only way is up from this tacker.

 I will be back, and a big thanks to Trevor Burgess for standing in for Johnny Mitchell who couldn’t make it for the guest speak on Saturday night, it was very informative .

Some photos of one particular area we were fishing

Report Chris Adams