paul.kenny

It depends how the fish are feeding. The most reliable retrieve is to lift and drop, like a hopping motion across the bottom or dropping down a ledge or a sand bank. I find a very slow roll works near structure like oyster racks when targeting bream that are hard against the structure. I hope this helps.

Great alternate catch when the kingies aren't about .

Great session Rob, looks like you have found a reliable part of the river. I assume most of the fish are being caught whilst trolling behind the kayak.

Thanks for sharing your story fellas....I felt like I was there right beside you all. Sounds like a great day despite the challenges .

Hi Poddy, Great to see you are using your long service to good effect , no better way to do it but fishing trips with family and friends. I am surprised that fishing at Glenbawn was tough at this time of year, do you reckon it was the weather or a change to their feeding habits? Nice EPs from your trip to St Georges Basin, gotta love the way those little blokes (and no so little in your case) put up a good fight. Thanks for sharing you experience. PS the boat looks excellent. My new boat should arrive at the dealer next Friday for fitout, I can't wait to see it.

Sounds like a great session to get back out in the canoe.....gotta love how the bass hit those lures.

Great session fellas.......Stewy has those mid week sessions sorted. Looks like you worked quite a large part of the Georges River and reaped the benefits of knowing where the fish are biting at different stages of the tide. I reckon that red belly black is a resident of the M5 bridge, I have seen him a couple of times and on both occasions it was during spring.

Thanks Jew Stalker, it was a great trip and something you can look forward to in the future......I know I am already counting down to my next trip in late 2013.

Thanks for sharing Paul, I reckon you would have had a sore arm after one and half days of casting a fly . Nice colours on that Rainbow.

Thanks Poddy, you will need to take your boys up for a road trip to give them a crack at the Barra......you might need to wait until December so you can target them with surface frogs . We find the novel competitions help to keep us focussed and provide some humor on the tougher days. I am hoping the larger fish appear during our next trip late next year. Cheers, Paul

Thanks Grant! Can't blame you for going to the Swanies grand final. We will let you know about our next trip, but it won't be until late November or early December next year. We are thinking about a trip through Monduran Dam for a week then up to Kinchant Dam for a week. A week is a must to work out the fishing pattern........we should also have worked out our structure scan as well cheers Paul

Thanks mate, we really enjoy the trips away......great way to bond and sufficient time to work out how the impoundments are fishing. Cheers Paul

Thanks Hodgey, Bassboy and I always look forward to these father and son (& dog) trips. It was an excellent way to farewell the old boat. Cheers, Paul

Day 4 27 Sep: On Thursday morning we woke to a cloudless morning and headed back to Insane Bay. The action was a bit slower and this time Bassboy caught the lone Barra to lose the Hawaiian Shirt, whilst I caught a catfish to earn the Catty Hat for the remainder of the day (sorry no photos). We tested other techniques and lures to see if the fish had just changed their feeding behavior for no luck. It appeared that the clear morning and increased boat traffic in Insane Bay had slowed the bite. That afternoon we went back into explore Jacks. Once again we found a large flock of pelicans and cormorants actively feeding deep on bait fish they had shepherded into a bay. This time we approached quietly with the electric motor and we found a huge school of large fish below the bait. I dropped a large plastic into the school large fish and as the lure dropped to the bottom I felt a big strike and I was on. The fish fought hard with Bassboy and I thinking I was finally onto a 80+ Barra, only to be disappointed with a 60cm catfish…uuuurghhhhh I was keeping the cattie hat. I dropped the soft plastic again through the school of baitfish only to catch another large cattie. We decided it was time to move on. We worked further into the Jacks and found some very warm water and great structure. Unfortunately we dropped a couple of large Barra, with Bassboy losing a large fish very close to the boat whilst we were fishing in an extremely narrow flooded creek. This large fish hit his suspended lure after a long pause close to the boat. During this session I kept the cattie hat whilst Bassboy regained the donut Hawaiian shirt. Day 5 28 Sep: We decided to give Insane Bay a break and we headed straight to the Jacks to fish the structure we had found on the day before. We worked the structure hard and Bassboy pulled a nice little Barra out of a lay down lying parallel to a weed wall. He also caught a cattie from the same snag…….earning him the cattie hat. We worked deep into Jacks until we could go no further due to walls of drowned Tea Trees. Unfortunately I earned the donut shirt for the first time. The afternoon session was spent back in the Jacks for another afternoon donut for both of us, allowing me to remove the shirt. Day 6 29 Sep: As this was our last day we headed back into Insane Bay, departing the boat ramp well before dawn to be the first boat into the bay. This approach worked and I scored 2 nice Barra back in our new honey hole. Unfortunately the second Barra dived straight into a snag close to the weed wall and we had to work hard to get it out……Bassboy even donned his bathers to save the fish, thereby earning a shared catch and saving him from the Hawaiian shirt. This was to be our last Barra on the trip. We spent the afternoon session with Lindsay learning how to better use our Structure Scan. He was able to tune our Sidescan so well that we could clearly seen the outline of individual Barra and schools of catfish. With this knowledge we were able to directly cast onto the fish, unfortunately the Barra werent interested in our offerings whereas the catfish were……we caught 8 of them in a space of 30 minutes. Despite the lack of interest by the Barra we were still happy that we had finally learnt how to properly tune our side scan to clearly identify fish, if only we learnt this on day one!!! Later that evening we headed down to the river below the dam wall to try to catch more of the monster Bass we had caught last year. We focused our effort on surface lures and despite many good strikes we only caught the one bass….. a healthy 46cm fish. It was a great way to end the trip. Overall we caught 20 Barra, with five over 60cm (all released to grow into bigger fish), 1 Bass and more than 12 Catfish. It was an outstanding trip and we look forward to the fishing improving next year as the Barra feast on the abundant bait…….the look of contentment of our dog only highlights how great the trip was. This was our last trip in our Stessco Basstracker TSF430 and I sold it today in preparation for our new boat.

Hi Raiders – buckle in for a long, but hopefully interesting and useful post, A week late but here is the final summary of Bassboy's and my trip to Monduran Dam for our annual Barra trip. Reading all of the reports and the lack of big fish being taken we knew it would be another challenging trip. We left early on Saturday 22 September for the long drive north to Monduran Dam, near Gin Gin in Central QLD. We arrived at Monduran Dam mid afternoon on Sunday and with excited anticipation set up camp and prepared the boat and gear for our first session on Monday morning. Once we had prepared our gear we spent some time speaking to fellow campers and Rob the guide seeking advice on how the fishing was going. Everyone confirmed that the fishing was still tough with most of the fish being caught at the top end of bays above the B Arm (about 10km from the ramp). Their advice was to get out on the water early as most fish were being caught in the first couple of hours of daylight using suspending lures, such as the Hank Tuned Jackalls. Additionally there was no evidence of any big fish (ie more than 75cm) being regularly caught. Consequently Bassboy and I decided to head up to Insane Bay, which had produced the bulk of our Barra last year. Despite the advice that suspending lures were the go to lures we still prepared the ripple shad soft plastics, which were the go to lure last year, and some surface frogs. We also established the rules for the trip: If you have a donut during a session you have to wear a Hawaiian shirt throughout the next session and if you catch a catfish you have to immediately don the catty hat (a green Bunnings bucket hat) until you catch a Barra. With the rules established we enjoyed a couple of beers whilst watching the park staff conduct a burnoff. Day 1 – 24 Sep: We headed out early to Insane Bay to explore and sound out likely locations. We found that the weed beds had grown substantially since last year and our previous honey-hole was filled with 8 foot of weeds. We noted the Guide working a large lay-down surrounded by a large weed bed, consequently we worked some likely weedy points and flooded shrubs with our suspending lures. We worked Insane Bay until midday for a couple of missed strikes, but found some likely weed walls and snags. We also found a huge abundance of bait throughout the bay. On return to camp I headed into Gin Gin to buy some more suspending lures from the local tackle shop and seek the owners advice regarding the fishing. His advice was the same as the guides and fellow campers….. fish deep in the bays with suspending lures using a retrieve and pause technique near weed walls and snags, with most fish being taken in the first couple of hours of daylight. That afternoon we headed out to explore ‘The Jacks’ but the session was cut short with a thunderstorm arriving mid-afternoon. Day 2 – 25 Sep: Once again we headed into Insane Bay, working the snags and weed beds along a wind blown bank with suspending lures and frogs as we moved deeper into the bay. We spooked a couple of big fish amongst the snags and had a couple of missed strikes on the surface frog. We eventually made our way to a weed wall we had found on Monday which immediately paid dividends….three small but feisty barra and a couple of more fish that threw the hooks. That afternoon we headed back into The Jacks as we had spotted a large gathering of pelicans and cormorants feeding on a large school of bait deep in a flooded creek marked on the map as the Rainforest. As we approached the birds flew off and we found many dead baitfish on the surface and large fish deep in the water column apparently feeding on the school. We worked the flooded creek for two hours but drew a blank and headed back to the ramp early due to more storms on the horizon. That night it rained on and off all night. Day 3 – 26 Sep: We woke to a cloudy and misty morning and despite the unpleasant conditions we headed straight out to Insane Bay for our best session of the trip. We moved into a non-descript bay within Insane Bay to fish a deep gully (10 ft) lined by steep weed walls. We caught 8 barra during a hot 2 hour bite, which only stopped when the sun broke through the cloud. The successful technique was to cast the suspending lures parallel to the weed walls and retrieving slowly with a number of jerks and long pauses of up to 10 seconds. We found that the fish would only strike the lures on the pause and the larger fish liked a longer pause. One of the fish spat out its breakfast and confirmed that our suspending lures were the right size. That afternoon we headed back out to Insane Bay to work our weed wall again. It was hard work but I was rewarded with a nice 69cm Barra, which was to be the largest fish of the trip. Unfortunately Bassboy dropped his only fish of the session and earned the ‘coveted’ donut Hawaiian Shirt. We also had the pleasure to meet a rather helpful local, Lindsay Burgess, who is a bit of a Barra fishing guru. He had sought us out to find out how we were catching the fish as he had heard about our haul of fish the day before. We shared some stories and he provided advice on how to better tune our Lowrance Structure Scan To be continued……….

My condolences PMAK, but a great way to remember your father and spend time with your sons.

Gotta love the EPs as a little sport fish......my favorite estuary fish in Sydney . It is great to see them slowly making a recovery in our waterways and am looking forward to seeing better specimens appearing over the coming years. Those who are just starting to target them should take note of the closed season and protect the breeding stock of this brilliant little Australian sport fish (there are some good threads on this forum that provides information about EPs and how we can help them to continue to prosper in our backwaters). Good on you Trung for releasing the EPs .

Hi Poddy, well done on getting Lizard Boy onto his first EP, hopefully it gave a good account of its self.......they are one of my favorite southern estuary fish . I hope you have some success at Chippo, there have been reports of bass hitting surface lures and I know how much you love surface lure fishing.

I just hope that the barra are that active when Bassboy and I head up to Monduran in two weeks time. I enjoyed watching the show and it was great to watch how the fish reacted to the different lures.

Sounds like a tough session, but at least you were out on the water. What lures were you using?

Great little bronze battler......be careful you will quickly become addicted, I know I have

Great fish Matt and I think we all wish we could start our day like that

What an absolute cracker of a wild bass and good onya for releasing it. I assume it gave a good account of itself and wasn't too sluggish in the cool water.....gotta love the bass.

Hi Snag, great to see you had a chance to be out with the family and have success. Very surprised to see salmon that far up the Georges, I love the way they fight on the light gear. I will need to give the upper Georges another crack now that the water has cleared up a bit and chase the bass and EPs.

I launch there regularly as it is the closest ramp to my house. It is a narrow ramp and at low tide your trailer will be on the sand. At high tide there is no where to tie up, as a consequence if you have a large boat you need to time your launch and recovery at mid tide. Parking can be an issue during summer unless you arrive early but generally ok during winter. I hope that helps.