Winter in Gladstone part 1

The bottom of the spillway where Barra were
holding and had to be fished out

It was the middle of the school holidays so I went to Gladstone with my dad because he has work down there, the first day of part one I went to the Awoonga dam spillway where some large Barra had come over the top in the recent downpours. Previous to this I had only just watched the people from fishing dvd capture Barra at the spillway on flies and now I got to go there with my full kit of Sebile lures. The wind and rain was against us though with many Barra shutting down, the cool temperatures didn’t help either. When I got there I was greeted by Kurt Hutchby and other GAWB hatchery staff. It was late morning and not many fish were seen, then band my line was peeling off the spool and my drag was whirring away. It took ages to get this fish in but when it was at the rocky bank it turned out to be a massive sea mullet taken on a soft plastic, not something you see too often. The weight of it was insane and the fight was pretty amazing with Kurt even saying later the next day mullet would be the greatest sport fish if people could figure out a way to regularly catch them. After that a catfish was caught on a Sebile a cast and then nobody caught anything after that. Kurt went off to take some earlier caught Barra downstream and release them and whilst there a guy also helping caught three in five casts so the fish were back on, I got many hits on plastics but no takers so I decided to risk a hard body and see whether I could nail a fish before weed smothers the hooks. No chance. Everybody was packing up to go with not many fish that day because of the wether… but I wanted my Barra so I went for one last cast and twitched the hell out of the lure and bang a nice Barra climbed onto the lure. I got it in on my light line and was pretty please to get one when everyone else had given in for the day. I went back to Gladstone and fished the very dirty looking Auckland creek which is normally very clear, a few bream were caught and a Grinner as I was told the next day. I have attached a photo of the grinner purely because I laugh at it every time.



MY BARRA



cod on koolie

Grinner

Day two of the first part of my winter trip was even worse with the crystal clear Boyne river looking much like the murky brown of the Fitzroy River… target species were bream and the catch rate was nil. Even though the fishing was pretty bad Kurt still taught me a lot about how the fish act and were to look for and cast, showing me god lures and patterns and all that.

Boyne River at late morning after it had cleared up a bit

 I got back and thanked Kurt for his time and am eagerly waiting for my Tuesday Wednesday trip to get some more fish. Whilst waiting to get picked up and drive to Awoonga I caught some cod on a deep diving Koolie Minnow and at Awoonga caught only catfish, the lake is so vast and the wind was so strong there were literally waves In Awoonga dam. I have seen fewer waves at many beaches on the coast.

Keep coming back for more updates.

Clayton