Thursday
Arrived at Monduran with Kyle on Thursday morning to be greeted by still but overcast conditions. Police and paramedics were at the ramp in the process of recovering a truck that someone had driven off the cliff in SDA bay. Steve B was one of the paramedics in attendance but with the recent inflows into the dam it was quite clear that he would rather have come fishing with us....
We headed up the system absolutely gobsmacked by the huge increase in water levels since our January visit - the dam was 4.2m higher than 4 weeks earlier! We headed into south B and tried a few favourite spots but most had changed so dramatically that we had to re-adjust our approach. No hits at all. Deeper into south B past Pepper Point the water had already gone off with the decomposition of plant matter so we headed to Quad Point in north B for still no action. Drifting islands of weed were still causing a few headaches...
Rain set in that afternoon so Kyle & I decided to work the main basin until dark. We worked the newly flooded grassy banks where we could see the occasional barra cruising around with their backs out of the water. Kyle hooked up on our only hit for the day and called it for a catfish before it jumped near the boat. It turned out to be a 43cm barra - the smallest we have seen at Monduran. Kyle was happy though as it got him off the donut and made it eight consecutive successful trips to Mondy for him!
Friday
We headed to the first cut-through to fish the treetops that were all that was left of the island when Brian (BR65) and Chris (NAGG) came by. They were headed to Jacks for the surface bite. Brian told us he dropped a nice fish at No Secret Point the day before so we vowed to head up there later in the morning. I dropped a small barra boatside but it went quiet after that so we headed to No Secret with a short stop on the way behind White Rock.
We tied off on Brian's focus tree as the bank was 20m further away. After 25 minutes or so my red and gold Ridgeback Scud is monstered by a good fish. I yell "I'm on" just and the fish re-emerges and ejects my lure with a headshake....oops, I forgot to set the hook!
I changed to a gold Xrap and 15 minutes later I experienced the strangest barra capture I've ever had. My line started to pull away from me as a barra gently inhaled the lure and swam on unaware - I struck hard and the barra leapt clear of the water 15m to my right and at right angles to where my line was pointed! This beast had swum around one of the floating islands of weed. My line had passed through the centre of the weed island and the barra was leaping crazily to my right.
With absolutely no control I kept the pressure on and the barra dove under the weed island. The next five minutes were a crazy blur of untieing to discover the electric was clogged with weed and inoperable, paddling to the weed island and frantically pulling weed off my line not knowing if the barra was still there. My leader eventually came into sight so I reached down for the next handfull of weed and grabbed the barra by the nose! It went ballistic and drenched Kyle and I in weed and muddy water. Eventually Kyle got in a great net shot and I welcomed my first barra aboard for 2010 at 103cm....woohoo! A couple of quick pics and this very tired fish was revived and released successfully...
A SE change blew in at lunchtime and the afternoon session only yielded one huge catfish to me. Brian & Chris joined us for a real beer (Boag's) and a chat about tactics that evening....
Saturday
The weather cooled considerably on Saturday and the dam had come up a metre or so overnight. We tried quite a few spots for not a single hit all day. We couldn't even raise a catfish...
Sunday
We decided to try Bent Tree Point in south B and, while the water quality was good and the bait was there, the barra didn't want to play. With just two hours left we headed back to No Secret where Kyle got monstered on his favourite bomber after 20 minutes. This big barra just headed straight down for the deep water and rubbed Kyle off on the submerged grass after about 5 seconds. I managed three big catfish (Catfish King!) before it was time to head home.
We took a few pics to show the water rise and discovered that the level had risen by 1.6m in the four days we were there....
Last four pics attached are No Secret Point in north B, what's left of the main basin island and two pics of the dirt boatramp...
All barra action was on shallow running hardbodies. Plastics and deeper running lures caught catfish only, and frogs & fizzers went untouched...
Not our best trip but we had some action and finished with a fish each and dropped a couple more....
Regs
Pete & Kyle
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Originally Posted by Pete62
