Hervey Bay Barra?? Real or myth?

[jim_farrell]

if you are after barra, don't risk a bad trip by not going north enough. Go to Awoonga/monduran or rocky, at least. No further south. You can get them, but usually by accident or by guys who have fished areas for years. If this is still to far there is a fish farm north of brisbane.

[bay_firey]

Lanks

I reckon I know exactly where they were caught

[mitch_05]

can you guess where we got them? the last photo should give it away

just before the first corner at the northern end

i personally have never caught a barra in the bay but also have never targeted them. i do know of people who say they have caught one around the ungowa area along with a couple of jacks.

[Jitlands]

Use the boat ramp downstream from Howard, not the one near the highway
Submerged rocks southern bank downstream

[gogecko]

What about Eli Waters?
The guy who runs the tackle shop in the shopping centre told me they get barra in the canal systems there. I did get a chance to fish it. That was last summer.

Can any locals confirm or deny?

cheers
Andrew

[mitch_05]

What about Eli Waters?
The guy who runs the tackle shop in the shopping centre told me they get barra in the canal systems there. I did get a chance to fish it. That was last summer.

Can any locals confirm or deny?

cheers
Andrew

cant do either as personally have never caught any barra in there. i do know of some big fish being in there though.

[lanks]

eli waters is the canal all the photos were taken from andrew.
i only lived and hervey bay for six months and discovered eli waters 2 weeks before we moved back to brissie, so all these fish were caught in the last 2 weeks. wish i had found it sooner. my mate lost a mangrove jack there that was at least 60cm, now that would have been a good photo.

[gogecko]

thx lanks, thats helpful info.My missus is pushing me to move to hervey bay in the next few years. I see theres a cheap block of land going to auction on the lake..... So its all landbased? I hear you cant put a boat on the lake system, only canoes?

cheers
Andrew

[mitch_05]

I hear you cant put a boat on the lake system, only canoes?

unless you have a boat you can carry there is no way a boat can be put in unless you have a block on the lake. i do know of people who put a boat in there and did not get in trouble but they had to pick it up and carry it to get it to the water edge and also didnt have a motor on it

[lanks]

you dont need a boat gekko, just put a live mullet onto a hook and let him swim out. we would set up a couple of rods back off the drag and just wait. you dont get a lot of hits , probably only 1 or 2 hits each hour, but when you do they are always quality fish. there is an under ground pipe line that feeds the canal from eli creek and near the top end of the run in tide you can see a massive boil at one end of the lake as all the bait (prawns, mullet, herring etc) gets washed into the lake with the run in tide. it only runs for 30 mins - 1hour but this is the time we saw the most activity from the feeding fish . one day i was sitting waiting for the next bite when i noticed something slowly waving from side to side just out of the waters surface and near the waters edge. i slowly moved closer trying to get a better look and saw a 1metre barra just sitting in the shallows at the edge of the canal looking back into the drop off to deeper water. he got spooked and shot away but was awesome to see, he looked like he was ready to ambush the next poor fish that came past.

[gogecko]

thx lanks, I knew about the pipe. We have a coule of lakes here on the goldy that are fed by pipes from a river. You get some quality fish, as they tend to get trapped in these lakes, and grow very fat. I reckon they know the way out, they just choose to stay cos they get lazy.

So you catch the mullet in the lake too, just wait by the feeder pipes for the bites?

Looks like I might be moving up there in a year or 2. A block on the canal is only 150k ATM. What a life, barra and jacks at the back door, boat ramp down at Pt Vernon.....Weve got family in Mary, but I wasnt keen on Mary. This would be a good compromise.

Did you fish the bay at all? What do they get out there?

Andrew

[lanks]

no you arent allowed to catch the mullet from the actual lake as there are signs up saying no netting. we used to get them in the cast net from eli creek, one of the few places in hervey bay that you are allowed to throw a net. all my fishing was land based as i didnt have my boat then but there were still lots of fish to be caught. plenty of oversized flathead from the beach boatramp in front of the restaraunt at point vernon at high tide, plenty of tuna of the urangan pier and my favorite place was to catch the barge over to kingfisher bay resort jetty on fraser island to catch large bream and golden trevally.