Our wet week at Awonga last month had fuelled my enthusiasm to chase some more BIG barra – so we arranged to head back up on the full moon again in October ……….
The week leading up to the full moon is often hotly debated – but never poorly attended !
We started our first afternoon in a bay that had produced two out of our three fish last month. Anchoring in close enough to allow us to reach the weed edges with slick rigs. I had a couple of solid bumps before coming up tight on our first fish of the Trip – resulting a lovely 93cm fish
That was the beginning of the best BOOF session I have seen at Awonga – with Treno landing his PB not long after at 88cm. I also pulled the hook on another good fish after a number of jumps & steaming run back into the weeds
With another freezing cold snap rolling through on Thursday ( Coldest Oct day in Qld in some time apparently
). We quickly worked out that we needed to find warm water & focused on fishing the afternoons/evenings in shallow windward bays casting slick rigs up until dusk – then switched to trolling into the night. This lovely 96cm fish really gave a great account of itself & christened my new Stella 5000SW & T-Curve Snapper spin combo loaded with 30lb Power Pro.
Treno lifted his PB again with this speedy 95cm model that fell to a Classic barra 150 bleeding mullet.
My next fish was this chunky 105cm fish that fell to a Classic Pro-Alternative & really performed in amongst some lilies.
Our last night on Saturday was perfect – got back up to around 28c for the day & we found some 24-25C water to fish. We anchored in a lovely bay that ticked all our boxes & after an hours casting I missed a solid strike just on dark that proved to the the only bite for our last casting session
Quite a few fish could be heard boofing right up the back on the bank in amongst the lilies & sticks – we just couldn’t reach them. We started our evening trolling ritual around 7.30 & got our first bite at 10pm – taking straight to the air we quickly worked out it was a good fish in the moonlight. It steamed of towards two large trees with Treno motoring us in quickly. She then turned , jumped twice more & steamed off again towards a big weed-bed surrounded by lilies. That feeling of tension before snapping off each Lilly stem was awful as Treeno again motored us in quickly to clear her. Next she jumped twice more back out of the weeds into clear water before drowning us with her tail when being netted !
They truly are an awesome fish when they get up around 110cm +
I dropped another nice one about an hour later that jumped off on the third leap – which was a fitting way to wrap up our night. It was pretty tough fishing over all with our final tally going 93, 88, 96, 95, 105 & 110 for our 4 days. We learnt plenty this trip & now have the bug bad – I am sure the lake is going to seriously fire up in the next few weeks with some stable warm weather
Can’t wait to get back up there – How Good Is Awonga !
