Reply With QuoteSo much more to fishing than the fish I always reckon, they're nice to have but aren't the only thing that makes a weekend
Hi i haven't posted a report in ages, so i thought i'd go about it in a different way this time. This trip report is in a diary format which means it has a lot more detail of everyday camping/travelling life than most reports. Since there haven’t been many reports lately I thought a more in depth trip log of all the small things that go on in a trip might give people a mental picture of how good fishing trips to our great dams can be.
Hopefully it will get more people excited about their future trips as spring isn’t far away. Magazines have limits on how many words you can submit which limit’s substance & creativity as the first thing that is usually cut is the good old Aussie sense of humour section. The great thing about the net is it’s flexibility for people with different writing styles, which is bloody great.
This report is not all just about fishing so if you don’t like reading about Aussie Camping, fishing, travelling, animals & what goes on back at the camp with Grey Nomads or kids, then this report might not be your cup of tea. For me it’s all gold, Aussie Culture at its best and I treasure every moment on these trips with new & old friends. I hope you enjoy the read.
Friday: A few mates & I planned another trip in winter for a brainstorming weekend which also helped to make sure we got to the Barra Lakes every month this year. Driving in to Lake Monduran I saw the usual setups of grey nomads, 4wd with caravans, the odd campervan and a few people tenting it in the wide open spaces of Monduran Caravan Park.
Kids Are Our Future: It was great to see a few families with kids running around & I bet their thoughts were a million miles away from the DVD Players and Computer Game sports that are now mainstream everywhere we look these days. Sport without getting off the couch or leaving the house – now that’s interesting, and even worse you don’t have to be social and interact with others. No you can just stare at the computer screen and shut the rest of the world out as if nobody else existed. This sport won’t exactly keep up our reputation as being bronzed Aussies – that’s for sure!!!
No wonder there are people now walking across busy roads with head phones plugged in and they don’t even bother to look left or right because if you hit them you will be in the courts quick smart.
All this is not a good thing to keep our Aussie Culture Going e.g. getting outdoors and meeting new characters, sitting around a campfire with old friends or new friends you have just met in the camp or at the ramp. Teaching our next generation about the outdoors, starting a fire and keeping an eye on it, how to cook and teaching kids to respect nature etc.
The Fishing: I eventually got out on lovely Lake Monduran & fished for about 3 hours for no result. I had a good look around and explored without throwing too many casts. No excuses here I would have loved to catch a fish on my first cast, but that didn’t happen. The first few hours of every trip I make sure I appreciate the relaxing surroundings of our great Barra lakes and I try to slow my thinking down, smell the lake air, feel the warmth of the sun and look around at wide open spaces. The feeling of being back on the water was magical, and I slowly began to relax after rushing around all month like most people do these days.
Food: I went to Gin Gin to buy some cow from the local butcher. I got 2 roasts, 2kgs of sausages, 1kg of Rump Steak and 4 Rib Fillets. As usual the boys provided first class beef & the cuts melted in your mouth after a stint on the BBQ.
Warning: As I set up camp 2 people kindly trotted down to say G’day and to tell me that 30 screaming kids would be camped behind us on the weekend. I thought I’d risk it as they would all be so tired after the day’s activities & I thought I’d still get good nights sleep. As it turned out they were all adults from around Australia on some kind of adventure trip which would have them on kayaks paddling up Lake Monduran. Like fisherman in blue shirts, you could spot the members of the Adventure group a mile away, hiking shoes, ¾ pants, sleeveless jumpers a beanie and a headlight was standard issue. I bet they thought the same of us, with our flanno’s, footy jerseys & track pants & bare feet or thongs as standard issue. Although I did try and crack out the singlet to pretend it was summer but that didn’t last too long… as it was damn cold.
Local Wildlife: An Owl flew in late at night as I was writing my trip diary and I didn’t move at all, however the over engineered senses soon alerted this great hunter to my presence and off it flew as gracefully as it entered the kitchen area – that was a cool moment in the quiet cold of the night. As I was typing away I could hear the symphony of snoring from the tents near the camp kitchen, then I heard a kid say “whaaattttttt” to the other kid in his tent, ahhhhh the school holidays, scenes like the Griswalds go to Wally world were being played out at parks all over the state… It’s a sure thing, like seeing a flappy tarp hanging off the back of a ute on every fishing trip. It’s guaranteed & good for a laugh…Even better if it’s just being held down by some surplus Telstra rope…golden…
The Weather: The weather was ok but cold at night and the water temperatures reflected this as the temp for most of the dam was around 18 degrees Celsius.
Most important note was that the last 10 days the temperatures were in the mid twenties and it wasn’t that cold at night. Temperatures had started to drop.
Tackle Shop Talk: Called in and said hi to Jacky & Foxy. Foxy was out (probably fishing or dodging work)and Jacky was busy with a shop full of customers as usual. I forgot what I went in there for and of course ended up buying something. I heard one guy saying “ I want black frogs because the Barra can see them 30+ feet in the murky depths of the dam” and I shook my head thinking of the visibility down that low in the dam. The next guy came in and wanted another frog, by this time I had to get out of town it was all too much “serenity now”. After seeing this I thought the fishing scene is really messy, people are lost & I’m going straight back to camp to write this trip up from a travelling anglers perspective to hopefully help someone out, a report they can relate to, full of hard times, good times and a few laughs shared with mates.
The interesting thing was that nobody at the tackle shop pushed them towards this decision; they already had their minds made up before they got there. I’m not having a go at anyone here ok I’m just reporting the trip In a field diary format and this is what happened. It’s current history, so I’m writing it up. The buyers were not members on this site but do read magazines so we can’t help them on here, but future printed articles have the ability to help them out. Food for thought anyway.
Outdoor Kids: A few groups of kids were around kicking footie’s and generally finding ways to have fun. They were seen chasing after each other playing tiggy and having a good old laugh.
Aussie Campfire: I Went bush and tracked down some good iron bark to keep the fire going and to build up a good supply of coals for cooking. Bad weather was coming from the west and keeping the campfire going was going to be as harder challenge as catching Barra in bad weather. My mate Johnny arrived and we shared some great yarns for hours around the campfire, mainly on the Impoundment Industry and how lucky we are to fish these great Barra dams. Luckily for him he was a quiet sleeper as i had a nicely cooled bucket of water around 4 degrees in temp to be deployed in his direction if i heard the dreaded camp site noise "ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz".
Saturday
I woke up to the sounds of birds energetically chirping away, then tried to get back to sleep but had no chance. You know how it is once you start thinking about fishing!!! The crows also had something to do with it and the adventure bound crew were doing their early morning exercise routine to wake up….I thought a cold bucket of water thrown in their tents would do the same thing, as they would be forced to move to stay warm…. Or the good old Northern Territory method of “throw a goanna in the tent and shut the door!!!. That’ll wake em up”!!! I must admit the cold water and goanna wake up calls did cross my mind, but only for a fleeting second - then I laughed at myself and thought “you grumpy bastard get your ass out of bed”!!!. You could say I got out of bed like an old steam train, slow to start, even slower to warm up, but when I got going I could talk about barra & fishing for another 18 hours!!!
Feel free to add to this story if you have seen or heard of different ways of waking mates up on fishing trips!!!
I forgot to mention a couple of mates from Birssy rocked up yesterday and bunked down with swags next to the fire for the night. As they left camp for a dunny run I thought it was time for a practical joke so I threw about 5 good sized spuds in Shermo & Scotties swags. When they returned the boys didn’t even notice the spuds and without fuss proceeded to roll up their swags – spuds included…. I thought to myself that it would be interesting if it was summer and they had just rolled up their swags to put away for a few months in the summer heat before rolling them out on their next trip to be greeted by the smell of fermented potatoes’ smelling like bucket of hot prawns in summer. Luckily it was the first day of camping and it was winter….
Feel free to add In a few hi-jinks you and your friends have gotten up to on a camping trip or 2!!!
Camp Kitchen: I was writing away when 2 kids from the snoring tents last night came up to do the washing up (reluctantly). They brought along a little dog called Tully. Tully had to go everywhere with them, and Tully kept pulling on the lead because she wanted to head over to the amenities block and have a shower, yes that’s right the dog wanted a shower….She didn’t get her wish, much to her disappointment. I later found out that Tully was one of 5 dogs and she was the lucky one that got to go camping for the week, she could have been renamed Lucky!!!!
While Lucky dined out on T-Bone Steak leftovers, the odd snag off the BBQ and whatever else the grey nomads did to spoil mutley. Mean while the rest of her crew were jailed back in Brisbane living on a diet of windy tin dog food starting with the letter P and sounding like Owl. At times you meet some dogs that aren’t as dumb as they look. I picked Lucky as a smooth operator and I bet lucky would jump in the back of the car as soon as she saw the esky being filled with goodies to go camping, thus keeping one step ahead of the other mutts in the pack. Nice work Lucky, I bet we have all come across dogs like this in our time?? Feel free to add to this story if you have met a smart dog or 2 while travelling?
Still writing at the camp kitchen I met a travelling grey nomad couple and as it turns out he was on a station right next to where I was in the NT, how small the world is at times when a Victorian I met at Lake Monduran (Gin Gin) who did some work on the neighbouring station to me in the NT, ahhhh you have to love the Aussie Travelling Way of Life. You get to meet all kinds of people that have amazing life experiences to share & we can all learn a trick or 2 from an old timer.
In Camp Activities: Birds chirping in the background, a family was playing ball games with their kids and loving it. Another group of 4 kids were just chasing each other around the park having fun. The result was un-tamed laughter every 10 seconds, it was great to watch kids enjoying themselves by making up their own fun & thinking for themselves.
The Weather: On the slide getting a bit worst compared to the previous 10 days of relatively hot and calm winter weather. Fish totals in the camp were at zero with the exception of a great 56cm 2.2kg bass landed by a happy angler. There should be photos at the kiosk by now for all to view. Night time temps were in the low single figures. That front cold front from WA was getting closer.
Friends: The Taylor brothers (Cy & Kerrin) rocked up from Peter Faust country and after the usual tackle talk and slanging that goes on we helped them unload. They brought more fishing gear than china could produce in 50 years!!!! But they can really use their gear so we cut them some slack as between the 2 brothers & their fishing partners on 2 boats in the AFC series they caught something like 20 out of the 28 fish caught – Geeeseeeee/Crikey that’s good in anyone’s language considering they didn’t fish their home turf and both had boat troubles (engine etc) in one of the legs. Not to overlook the fact that they did all this as teenagers!!! I’m still shaking my head about that last point…
As you can see we were never going to be doing 10 hour+ days of fishing, we just relaxed and eventually got our backsides in to gear for a recky and a spot of fishing.. My electric was on the blink so I was under paddle power by rowing with one oar. This doubled as a good fat burning exercise to make up for eating all that beef and washing it down with a cold drink or 2. I’m sure the other boats that passed me while I was rowing must have thought I was crazy!!!! “whats that fool doing” or the good old aussie saying “ hey look at Old mate will ya, stuff that for a joke” etc etc…
Fishing: So far on this trip I have remembered to put the bungs in!!. As we got to the ramp a guy yelled out "ooiiiiiii" from a motoring boat in the main basin. It turned out to be Trev (Awoonga) ha you can't keep that guy away from any barra dam. He was at monduran for a spot of fishing and pulled over for a yarn or 2. We kept it to 2 as we all wanted to go fishing. I Worked my ass off fishing 3 locations for ages to no avail. I scored the dreaded and often unreported donut. I know most of you on here would have heard of all the stuff I’m about to list below. However visiting readers to the freshwater Barra section might not have so I’ll throw it in anyway. None of it is rocket science but there might be some good info in it for the travelling angler so here goes.
I was Drifting, rowing then throwing a rope around a tree so I slowly worked each area for 1-2 hours each rotating presentations and styles etc. I had a few rods rigged with the lures/plastics & lure choices for the day ready to go. I didn’t make a sound for hours, tried depths from surface to 20feet, silent, wooden and noisy lures. Fast, Medium, Slow retrieves, Jigging, pausing and twitching then rotated presentations every 30+ casts. All this effort resulted in a nice donut for the arvo – the fish were too good today…The Little critters always seem to field a good team don’t they???…
Camp Fishing Report: Johnny Mitchell & the Taylor Brothers got 4 fish for the day from 100cm to 117cm’s & there were no other camp fish reports for the day. Have a read of those fish again before skipping to the next line. Yes they were 100cm to 117cm Barra - some people take decades to catch fish nowhere near this size!!! All were caught doing different things on different lures e.g. surface poppers, rattlers & plastics etc. We later found out that Trev and mates got 4 as well with the biggest going around 118cm's off memory with a few over 110cms. Well done Trev and crew hats off to a great effort.
The buggers caned me and I thought they did well to get them poor conditions when compared to the last week or so, as there was a cold front from WA had arrived sending temps plummeting. Top effort In my books, well done boys!!!. This was later confirmed by Steve B who shared an entertaining yarn or 20 with us around the campfire. Steve had a few fish in the bag earlier in the week and had noticed the fishing was getting harder.
That afternoon the change really rolled In and the rain started, bringing with it the cold…. Ahh don’t you just love fishing trips when it rains and all and sundry gets wet. I had visions of camping gear drying out for weeks, fanned out all over the back yard, hanging off the clothes line & neighbours fence all looking like a cyclone had hit and thrown s h I t hell west and crooked.!!!
So what did I do wrong? I used a lot of similar techniques but looking back I’m pretty sure I was not as good as the boys in spotting fishy areas on this day – and I wasn’t good enough to catch fish in the areas I was fishing as I would have to had to run a lure/plastic past a fish or 2 that day, but I wasn’t good enough to motivate a bite. You can be close but way off. Today I was way off.
Note: Not knowing the Monduran System like the back of your hand is a disadvantage and every day I spent on the dam I added to my knowledge, and only confirmed I had a long way to go.
Food For Thought For New Barra Anglers: While travelling & fishing I’m fortunate to have met barra guides, many comp anglers and I’ve been fortunate to have met thousands of social & travelling anglers over the years so I know how hard a days fishing on a barra lake can be. Tough Fishing is usually a standard issue pack you pick up at the boat ramp on your way out!!! How tough barra fishing In impoundments can be was hardly mentioned a few years ago, but thankfully reporting has changed over the last 18 months.
Tip for the travelling angler: Book trips lasting several days not just a quick smash and grab if you can, unless you are a local. Even better have a yarn to a local, they are nice people and generally are only too glad to help you out. You could do worse than to start at the tackle shop in town (Gin Gin), they are a good bunch in there and can fish too. Don’t be in a rush as you could be in for a yarn or 2!!! Have you ever had a travelling/fishing mate that could talk the leg off a chair? Maybe fellow net fisho’s could throw up a few names here for friendly debate!!!
We hope you enjoyed the first part of the trip. Hopefully it will have you planning your next barra trip!!!
Trev, Johnny, Cy & Kerrin if you have those pics handy feel free to post them on this thread.
Cheers Lyndon & Kel.
So much more to fishing than the fish I always reckon, they're nice to have but aren't the only thing that makes a weekend
Lyndon & Kel, Thanks for the great read, i really enjoyed it, seemed like i was there with you, good stuff. Nice to see some one else can appreciate our magnificient nature.
Hope to catch up one day at one of our Barra Lakes for a yarn or three.
Cheers,
John.
Hey Lyndon,
Great Report mate, condolences on the fishing!
IMHO reading the water in a impoundment is where are lot of anglers are coming up short and limiting their catch rates. To be honest, it is quite easy to find fish, but a little more challenging to find 'active fish'!
It is why a lot of guys mention 'time on the water'.
There is a lot of info coming out now about finding barra in the impoundments and I always encourage fellow anglers to spend the time to find the 'active fish', absorb all the info available to you, make choices and learn - things do get easier once you build up your own library of learnings.
Some of my best days fishing have been when I haven't caught anything... but I found a piece of the puzzle which was the catalyst for future catches.
It just depends on how you measure success when fishing.
All the best
Matt C
I believe the last 3 replies sum it all up.
Thanks,
Johnny M
mmmm.... I feel like having a steak and kickin' the footy around after reading that.
Went to a friends place the other day and they were terribly excited about the new Wii computer game thing for their two kids ( some crazy thing that kids stand on and pretend to do sports ) Some folks just don't get it do they ?
We have a country so beautiful that it can at times take your breath away, and half the population is stuck inside infront of mind numbing pieces of electronic junk.
My family and I have chosen another path.
Thanks muchly.
Hi Lyndon & Kel,
Great report and pics. Sounded like it was a good weekend. We were there on the Wednesday and Thursday, we had hookups but didnt land any, we went home on the Friday, must have just missed you's. We fished Awoonga on the way home. We would have stayed at Monduran, but we had a bad experience thats why we left.
Hope to catch up soon,
Cheers Katie & Elaine
Lyndon and Kel,
Top work mate!! made an average fishing weekend into a good story, highlighting the enjoyment of life. When things are tough on the water, you sometimes forget to think about why your out there in the first place fishing next to someone with the same perspective and love of just doing it. Its the same for back at the camp. Some of the most enjoyable fishing experiences with mates and strangers dont involve fish...although they are an added bonus!
cheers Steve
Actually replied to your report on Sweetwater Lyndon......Great report Great piccies....cheers Whito
Lyndon ....... What a great read! (& pics) There's nothing like the appreciation of the whole process of a trip away ........ Be it sitting around the bush telly , beer in hand ...... while having a yarn to good mates or fellow travelers / fishoes - through to time spent on the water
As far as wake ups go ...... A couple of years ago ( Late Autumn up the Snowy mountains) ...... I made the mistake of telling my brother that we needed to be casting by sunrise
Imagine ...... being blasted out of bed to the sound of REVELLY (5am -4 Deg C)........ scared the crap out of me
Cheers
Chris
Hi lyndon n Kel,
good to hear from you guys again.Great read as usual,especially with the different format. hope to catch up with you guys soon.
Cheers Chewy, Andy n jode...
An epic read Lyndon and Kel. Took me two cups of coffee
You painted a larger than life mural of what communing with mother nature should be about.
As I was digesting your words, I could not help but think how I would love to take my puppies with me camping and fishing....just like Lucky/Tully. Would they love it?....you betcha they would. Would I trust them?.....not on your nelly
Thanks for a top read again.
We will be at Lake M on the weekend of 12 September. Can't wait.
Cheers
Paul
Ranger 188VX - "Sweet Chariot"
Lyndon & Kel, thanks for a great read and an awesome perspective on all that is Monduran and the travelling fishermans lot.
With our first trip booked for October the expectations on the whole experience grow, yes I hope to catch fish and yes I will be truly dissapointed if I don't but after reading your tread I can more appreciate the oppotunity that I have been granted, mates, new friends, the smell of camp fire smoke in my clothes again, mobile phone with a flat battery, eating when u r hungry, sleeping when u r tired and last but by no means least, fishing, the common thread to us all. Thanks Champ, great stuff. Cheers, Pete.
great read lyndon lov your yarns they are allways filled with greatt fact that people tend to forget that ss its not just the fishing but the hole trip that is what its all about look forward to a trip with yas soon
cheers
Thanks mate for a great read on the"whole" of a trip, its not just about the fishing, theres other things that keep us comeing back, good stuff
cheers
brian
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