lancer

What a great picture of the swansea bar. Lets use your red dot as a starting point. As you can see there is reasonably deep water on the right hand side coming along the sea wall to the red dot and the waves here are usually pretty good. The lighter area across from the red dot is the sand bar. In good conditions and flat water you can cross here but I would get into the routine of not doing it as one day you just need a big wave through there and you will get a breaker and thats not nice. If you go out from the red dot there is an island. Look at the white tip (on the ocean side) of the island, this catches the southerly swell and from this pic the sea is calm but it still generated a white end on the island. The warning here is that in a 1-2 metre swell a wave can be generated up to 3 - 4 metres coming around the island. This wave usually dies out half way between the island and the left hand breakwall. In behind the island the water is protected in a southerly. So if you go out, watch the waves around the island and go slightly left of the island and straighten up you should not have any problems. Coming in, again dont go to close to the island and watch out for the waves behind you.

The bar at swansea is one of the best on the coast in that you have a lot of protection from the south and the secret to there is not to go to close to moonee island. You go out on the right side of the channel and head left towards the beach and then straighten up. If unsure stay in the lee of the island and watch the swell as some big waves come round the corner of the island and this is where heaps of accidents occur. I have a 4.3 boat and regularly head 5 miles straight out to chase flatties. oh and remember to carry all the gear and wear life jackets across the bar and even though its not required once you pass the bar always try and have an inflatable life jacket on or a pf2 on as these let you move around and give some flotation in case of an accident.

Barry and Tiger You are spot on, the carp was thrown up on the bank of the dam after having its Gills were cut. Greenies would be offended noting that a fish was slit up and disposed of in this manner.

I just spent a lovely saturday on burrendong Dam near wellington and even though the dam is down to 20 % the big ramp is still in water and there are parts of the dam with still 80 ft of water. That being said if they dont get big rains soon the dam will be down to 10% and it will dry up very quickly as they need to let the water out for people down stream. We were trolling Mcgrath minnows down towards the Cudegong River and the first fish of the day was a 2.5 kilo carp. It certainly went. This was the second large carp that I have seen caught on a lure and this isnt good in that if they are taking lures then they are taking fish for feed when they get larger. This may also explain why the redfin are not as prolific as in the past in Burrendong dam. We only got one redfin of about a kilo where is in the past you would get cricket scores of them and the redfin could be caught just about anywhere. Other boats were not catching much and another boat told us that they have also caught carp on large stumpjumper lures. Overall it was a great day out.