Gladstone Fishing Report

The story below is written by Stan Konstantaras and involves MPFC Competitor Mr Mahi Mahi using the obvious pseudonym "James". The psychological warfare has begun!

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The call went out as our March 2011 Barra trip approached. Once again we had booked Jason @ Barramadness, but the lead up was not looking good. Our planned fishery at Awoonga had flooded in Dec 2010 and thousands of barra had been washed over the dam wall when it flooded. How many survived and would the dam or river be fishable when it was our turn was a mystery. Jason had assured us that he would call the trip off if the fishing was not up to scratch and save us the $$$, so we waited with baited breath.

 

Jason has started fishing the Boyne River as the dam was still not fishing well - read DEAD!. The Boyne R is below Awoonga Dam.

 

He put his clients onto some good meter plus fish that had survived the spillway and were now living in the river. The week prior to our arrival I started getting text messages from Jas - " last 4 day charter 55 barra " then a few days later " best day ever, 31 barra in one day, 27 over 1 meter" ...............I was dreading the mocha and had the river run it race. It had been touted all over QLD since January as the premier barra fishery in QLD.

 

Now to cut a long story short, remember that 31 record barra day - well on the third day of the charter the gods looked favourable upon me and I nailed 27 fish, with Mitch and James chipping in for a new daily boat record of 52 fish. We did fish hard for 10 hours to get them and made 1000's of casts, but we did nail 52 fish, with conservatively 45 fish over the magic meter mark.

 

This happened on day 3 of the trip, for the first two days we caught 15 fish per day and were constantly schooled by Jason on how we should be fishing the lures and when we did it wrong he stepped us showed us again and kept us focused. I still cannot believe how critical technique is to these fish. One wrong move and you did not get a fish. Simple as that. A huge number of boats watched us smash fish after fish but could not cotton on to what we were doing and how we fished the lures. We had many boats snipe us all day, with boats even stopping on the exact spot we were casting at, but it did not matter. Not technique, no focus, wrong lure, no fish......

 

You could not wipe the smile of James, Mitch and my face with a shovel, this was a eye opening, mind-blowing trip.

 

Throw in the fact that the Holiday Park managers where our Cabin was situated were chefs and doing the catering for us off a special Barramadness menu, we were in heaven. Green Chilli Mussels, Wontons in Thai Curry Sauce, Beef and Guinness Pies, Massive steaks and Shanks in meals the size that I could not finish kept us well content. Throw in a few Crownies and it was all smiles.

 

 

Now the million dollar question.......which lure worked?

 

Maybe next week I will post a video that gives it all away.

 

Cheers

Stan

 

ps: It pissed down.