There has been plenty written on the subject by scribes more qualified than I, but maybe a few thoughts here might help other anglers from the southern states make the jump to light speed from bass, bream and snapper to serious barra.

Firstly a word of warning. A serious dose of IBD or impoundment barra disease ( Awoongaritis Calcarifer) is not to be underestimated. I only went for a look and I have had three trips in four months. After the first trip I traded the Outback in on a new car at about 70 grand. I have spent another few grand on wood, wire, paint and tools to build lures for impoundment barra. More money went on custom made Ian Miller rods and new fancy Shimano reels with computers inside and flash drags. Most of Santas elves have been diverted from Christmas presents to weave enough 30 Kilo braid to fill my reels.

I don't want to fish for any of my local species any more - bream don't jump, wreck your tackle or leave holes in the water as though small elephants have mysteriously fallen from the heavens where your lures should be.

These days I just drive the 22 hours to Awoonga, fish day and night and absolutely destroy myself - then drive the 22 hours back home to build more lures, practice more knots and bore anyone I know with tales of epic strikes on fizzers and monumental bust-ups in the sticks.

Jason Wilhelm with the ultimate Awoonga barra - 123 Cm caught casting in the daytime.

The bird flu only kills you, at least your missus and kids get a bit of an inheritance - but after four months of IBD I am a mumbling mess with a rapidly plummeting bank balance and I can only utter short sentences that finish or start with the word barra. It is a filthy addiction and the fishing can be really tough as well, but some days are still gems. On the last trip with Chris Wright we caught 23 fish in one day - all on cast lures, which sounds okay until you add that we started fishing at six thirty in the morning and finished at three am the next morning to do it.

As I tried to sleep after that epic I started to actually see things that weren't there and I had to have a lay day to recover. I tried to get a bit of help from Slick that night as the horror show played out because the hallucinations scared the hell out of me, but he was having a bad barra dream himself and trying to climb through the window in his sleep so I just waited until the phantoms stopped parading around the room and eventually passed out.

I had to sleep all the next day to recover.

If you still want to try your luck I will try to help you, but don't blame me if you get IBD.

If you start from Melbourne , the best way to find barra Heaven is to take the Hume Highway to Yass. Then go through Boorowa, Cowra, Dubbo, Wellington, Molong, Narrabri, Gilgandra, Canowindra, Moree, Ghoondiwindi, Miles, Taroom, Banana, Theodore, Biloela, and then on to the Dam. This is a long way even if you only travel from my place at Merimbula.

Chris Wright with a fish just over the magic metre mark caught on a Sqiodgy slick rig.

My advice is to do the trip in easy stages and to only drive ten or twelve hours a day. On my first trip I drove it in one go with a couple of hours of sleep on the side of the road but I was stuffed when I arrived and because of that the fishing was even harder to manage.

You will probably want to tow your own boat up, but there are a couple of things you need to check first. Put new wheel bearings in your trailer. Do not ask your garage bloke to check the bearings - ask him to put new ones in both sides of the trailer. It will be bloody hot out through the back road and you will be able to make a pretty good speed on the straight bitumen track. High speed and heat are a deadly combination that will wreck even slightly suspect wheel bearings. Every boat trailer in Australia has either a buggered stop light or a bung indicator - fix them before you head for Awoonga - getting squashed by a truck is not much fun.

There is a Caravan park at the dam or you can stay in Motel accommodation at Benaraby about ten minutes from the boat ramp, or even in Gladstone itself if you don't mind a 20 minute drive. I am a bit of a pussy these days so I stay in the air conditioned motel ten minutes from the lake.

We found a great breakfast spot called the Coffee Club in Gladstone which is on the left on the main road in from Calliope. There is another good feed at the Sand Bar at Tannum Sands - meals start at 5.30 Pm so you can easily eat and still get to the lake for a good night session.

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THE FISHING

Neil Brown with a 110 Cm Barra.

Local knowledge is the key to success just about anywhere and any small success I have enjoyed at Awoonga is due to Jason Wilhelm - there are plenty of genuine gurus of Awoonga but this bloke lies on the sharpest nail bed and his Indian rope trick is longer than anyone elses. Jason won the Awoonga round on the Barra competition circuit and deserved to win it - the guy is good. Then again he has the worst case of IBD on record and refuses treatment. Worse than that he is a carrier and instantly infects anyone he meets. When I first went to Awoonga I just did what Jason told me to do and I caught fish because of it. Any lures I mention or techniques will just be Jason hand me downs although I will take the blame for the wire leaders and Jinkai crimps.

There will be some pics here somewhere of Jason with a 123 Cm Barra caught lure-casting during the day - I guess that says enough about his ability. The only reason I went to Awoonga in the first place was because Jason told me bad stories - apparently he took a birthday party of thirteen year old girls to the dam and they all caught barra over a meter - then when he told me both his sister and even his mum had caught meter barra as well I just had to go. My mother told me never to trust strangers - if only I had listened.

There are two ways to catch fish at Awoonga - trolling, and by casting lures. I have never caught one trolling so I wouldn't have the first clue about how to do it. I have no prejudice about trolling for Barra and I might try it one day, but I just love casting for them so much that I always end up sticking with it. If you want to troll for them, articles by Warren Steptoe, Schultzy, David Green and plenty of other good guys are easy to find in the mags.

If you want to try casting for the fish you definitely have to have persistence - it can be tough but rewarding when the big crunch finally comes. There is not a lot of science about my day time lure casting on Awoonga - I just cast lures for hours at anything that looks remotely like a barra spot. Timber, weedy bays and points have all produced fish for me but to be honest there is a hell of a lot of casting between hits. At night the fish are on the chew a lot more and they are a lot easier to hook.

Squidgie slick rigs.

I doubt that the fish are all that fussy about the lures they eat but I caught fish on Reidy's B52 both during the day and at night - on a large Mars lure at night and on a Richo's lure during the daylight hours. The fish will eat a range of plastics and on the last trip we caught them consistently on Squidgie slick rigs. Mattie Mott fishes the dam a lot and brains them on the slick rig Squidgy in the drop bear colour.

If the weather is hot the fish seem to take deep lures better during the day - I guess they just like to stay down in the cooler water to feed. At night the fish take fizzers and lures that stay near the surface.

I just can't help myself when it comes to designing lures and I have made a few prototypes for Awoonga. Our soft plastic Squidgies have gone alright so hard bodied lures called 'stiffies' ought to walk out the door. The advertising angles are limitless - how about get a 'stiffy' on in the morning and go hard all day? Any way the lures are working well at the first stage and the barras seem to love a slim fizzer with an asymmetrical blade. Maybe we will call it the traveler. This fizzer is a little quieter than some but it still attracts the fish and its thin profile looks a lot like a garfish. This fizzer walks the dog and seems to have a bit better hook-up rate than most.

Continued...

We also have a floating bibless minnow that weaves along just under the surface like a stunned boney bream. This lure has been a killer and has a great hook-up rate. It is also a fairly quiet lure that works well on glassy calm nights when the fish are a bit shy. We call it the jerky windy lure because you can either fish it on a straight wind or jerk it so it zig zags. Not exactly a catchy name but it does catch the hell out of the fish.

A floating bibless minnow.

Both of these lures use owner extra strong number 2 trebles and either owner hyper wire rings or halco triple rings. Do not throw any lure in the water at Awoonga without the owner hooks and the good rings. Pats Tackle World at Gladstone has the good stuff and both Pat and his staff will help you - they are all good guys and you can trust their advice.

I just know that you are already looking at your barra lures and thinking that the hooks and rings look pretty tough and that they will do the job. They won't. If you are an experienced barra angler on other waters take particular notice because these fish are not like the ones you usually catch. Change the hooks and rings for the real thing or you will pay the price.

Awoonga barra are beasts. There is a myth around that impoundment barra don't fight but I suspect that particular notion was thought up by someone who has never caught one. On my first trip my mate Neil Brown threw a B 52 into the water off the first point we tried and a fish nailed it and jumped over a meter in the air - water flew off every fin and the fish got into the air at least six times before we netted it. This fight was more like that of a small black marlin than any barra I have ever caught and it really surprised me. Browny had the jelly knees and just watching that bit of action made the trip for me - what a blast! Awoonga fish have bulk and they are also fast - real fast - for mine they rate with genuine salt water speedsters like marlin and wahoo on a short burst. The bottom line is that these impoundment barra will bust your tackle in an instant if there is a weak link anywhere. Unfortunately there usually is a weak link - especially if the tackle has been rigged by someone used to smaller less powerful fish. Even experienced anglers usually get smashed until they wake up and take extreme care in rigging. I suspect that trolling is slightly more forgiving on tackle but when you cast a lure into the jungle, the fights can be brutal and the fish will definitely expose a weakness.

I admit to being a fanatic on rigging and my mates run for cover when they stuff up because any failure in tackle has to be exposed to a Spanish inquisition. I just have to get to the bottom of any failure and do something to fix it. If you stuff up the same way twice then you get burnt at the stake.

A Solid Barra.

Knots are a critical part of rigging - first you have to select a good knot and than you have to tie it well. My opinions on knots are probably a bit extreme and I hate some popular knots with a passion. My main hate targets are knots that are very strong and do the job well most of the time, but then seem to break or come apart every now and then for no apparent reason. These knots might fail rarely but it always seems to be on the fish you really want to catch. The knots I favour often break at lesser percentages of total line strength but they always break consistently. You can add super glue to a knot in an effort to make it more reliable but then the question has to be asked - was the knot a good one in the first place if the super glue had to be added? The fact that a lot of good anglers might use a particular knot cuts no ice with me - it wasn't too long ago that every human on the planet thought the world was flat - they were all wrong. To get a run on my line a knot has to have a better pedigree than Pharlap, and a drunken idiot, blind in one eye and riding a uni-cycle in the dark down a steep hill in a fog, should be able to tie it with one hand. Without falling off the uni-cycle or spilling the beer he is holding in his other hand.

Continued...

Not all fish at Awoonga are big - but racking up a tally of small ones is still a lot of fun as Neil Brown demonstrates with this double hook-up.

Scotty Mitchell put me on to the slim beauty to join braid to a mono leader and I have never had one fail as yet. I don't know if Scotty can ride a uni-cycle but he can tie a slim beauty and I thank him for showing me how to do it. This knot also passes through the guides well in continuous casting situations and is dead easy to tie. I love this knot because it just seems to almost weld together and it has held up even when hooked fish have become snagged for extended periods and dragged the leader backwards and forwards through the sticks. The slim beauty is my favourite for a braid to mono leader connection.

Jason uses a perfection loop to tie his lures to his mono leaders and I haven't seen any of these fail. Seems to be a good knot. I guess I have spent too much time gamefishing and I prefer to use a Jinkai crimp to loop my leaders onto my lures. I like the Jinkai system even if it is a little slower than tying a knot because I know the system is as close to one hundred percent as it is possible to get - and if you use the right crimp, the Jinkai crimping tool and a jinkai leader, then it will be right on the money every single time. I am not all that fond of the Spanish inquisition myself and I try to avoid it at all costs.

If you tie a double, the slim beauty still works, but I like to use fairly heavy braid and use the slim beauty without a double. The best braids are often waxy and slick as well as very thin for their breaking strains, and to be honest I haven't noticed much difference in the way fish take the lure between the heavy braid and the lighter stuff. This approach sort of flies in the face of my usual theory that fishing as light as possible will generally produce more strikes. Interestingly when I last talked to my mate Dave Green, he revealed that he has gone in completely the opposite direction and reckons he does get more fish on lighter braids. Greeny is a gun fisho so I guess the only way to test the two theories would be to both fish out of the one boat for a daylight casting session to see if the breaking strain of the braid influenced the amount of strikes. Sounds like yet another good excuse to get to Awoonga Greeny! Dave also has a near terminal case of IBD and he is a bloody doctor - if he can't find a cure what hope have the rest of us got.

I like heavy braid for a number of reasons. The first is because I want to really be able to influence big fast fish. You can catch a big barra on very light tackle even in bad country if the fish makes a mistake - I want to catch a big barra in bad country when he doesn't make a mistake.

I have been using some Japanese jigging braid that is labeled in Japanese so I have no idea what the stuff is all about. The only thing I can read on the spool is 31 kilo. Come to think of it, all you need to know about braid is that a cunning Japanese person made it to catch amberjacks and yellowfin tuna, it is skinny as hell and it breaks at 31 kilos. Maybe I can read Japanese after all.

On our last trip Slick used some jig man 50 pound braid (see requirements listed earlier) and it worked very well. I have used fins braid in fifty to good effect and there are certainly other braids out there that work well. I have also seen braids that have dodgy knot strength, fuzz up, just break at low strain, split under pressure, and some that are just plain bad all round. All these dodgy braids said they were good on the packet - they lied. In the higher breaking strains I really favour a braided product over a fused one. Actual braid is thinner and more flexible so it casts better and fishes better. Fused lines are too stiff for my liking in heavy gauges.

If I use the heavy braid I can tie the slim beauty direct to my leader - this means I get a lovely neat knot every time. Because of the heavy breaking strain I also can afford to lose a little strength by avoiding a double. I have been using low profile baitcaster reels and when trying for distance I still manage a backlash every now and then. The heavy braid is dead easy to pick out, especially at night, and is unlikely to be damaged by the tangle. Lighter braids are much harder to unpick and will surely be weakened by a bad backlash.

Continued...

Leaders can be a problem. Lighter ones will draw more strikes but they are likely to be shredded by fish. Clear mono in about 60 Lb is about standard. I have used Jinkai and Penn 10x and both are okay until a fish swallows a lure and quickly chews through the leader. Most anglers just accept these occasional losses and get on with it. It is not in my nature accept losses that easily. When I first designed the jerky windy lure it was meant to give a good hook-up rate and having no bib, I hoped it would go down even on a front end strike. The first night I tried the lure I lost two lures and two fish because my leader was chewed through. The next two fish also shredded the leader so badly I was lucky to catch them. I am not too bright but I know that driving for twenty two hours to lose fish to a chewed leader is not smart - it just pisses me right off.

Bob Hellicar with a 97cm Barra

The next night I used twenty five centimeters of fifty pound black nylon coated wire between the braid and the lure. If there was a reduction in bites I didn't notice it and I didn't lose any more fish. Going by the amount of bark gouged off the wire by the end of the night I am pretty sure I would have lost more fish on the mono. As a bit of a control my mate stuck with the mono while I tried the wire and I had more action than he did. The next night we both used the wire and both caught fish. I know that the mere mention of the w word seems to freak anglers out but there is a fair precedent for a bit of black wire on barra. Col Cordingly has caught more barra than most and he has copped plenty of stick for using black wire traces. Cords might cop stick, but he has very few one-that-got-away stories.

There are many ways to beef up a leader - some anglers favour twisted mono, others use hundred and twenty pound braid for a leader and others go to two hundred pound mono. I guess you pay your money and take your pick. At present I am happy enough to use a couple of feet of 80 pound Jinkai during the day (sort of) and the fifty black wire at night. I did catch some fish on wire during the day but I will need more experience to decide if it puts the fish off or not. I just tied the wire to the braid using the slim beauty - it is a bit tricky but easy enough to do if you have a bit of patience.

Using your electronics to find fish when trolling is well understood but it is equally important when casting for your fish. I swear by my FURUNO sounders and my eyes are always glued to them to check the water depth and to look for fish or sunken structure that might hold fish. Water temp can be a useful guide to finding fish as well so an accurate guage on your sounder is imperative. I run two FCVL 600 Colour sounders and when I snap my front transducer cable on a log (which happens about once a year) I get really frustrated until I fix it. Leaving the electric motor and my comfortable casting throne to check the console mounted unit is a pain in the butt. On our last trip the sounder caught us plenty of fish especially in depths over 20 feet when we knocked them over on the plastics. The GPS is also a vital tool for re-locating deep snags.

Okay, so you have your knots sorted out, you have selected your lures and you are heading out to fish. Now how hard do you set your drag. Jason sets a big drag on the theory that fish that are hooked in the open are often near submerged timber and it is better to get stuck into them just in case. I was a bit of a disbeliever in this theory and tended to set heavy drags when casting into timber and lighter ones in the open. One night on my second trip we lucked into one of the hottest big barra bites I have ever seen and hooked about fourteen fish. We didn't break any fish off on medium drag settings but we only landed three! They just kept jumping until they threw the lures. Bad luck? I doubt it because Ian Miller was fishing not too far away and he hooked a similar amount of fish and only lost three. The only difference I could see was that Ian was fishing crazy almost locked up drags on fifty pound braid. Sure, Ian ripped some hooks out of fish but he really set the hooks into the rest and most of them stayed on. Since then I have fished heavy drag settings and had a pretty good landing rate. I just wind the star drag knob as tight as I can and let the fish pull drag if they can do it. Mostly they can!

My best memory of the last trip came when I was fishing snags in the daytime with my mate slick Wright - I came to Awoonga to catch bear and I was rigged for bear - I had the Ian Miller high roller rod - Shimano Calcutta TE reel - 31 kilo jigging braid and a black wire trace Jinkai crimped to the lure. The drag on the reel was screwed up as tight as I could get it and I couldn't pull drag off it. The hit just about pulled me off the front of my boat and then the fish pulled about twenty feet of line off the reel in three or four lightning lunges. Luckily the hooks pulled just as the fish reached a deep snag so technically I didn't get smashed. I don't know if the fisheries guys have snuck a few freshwater marlin into Awoonga but that is exactly what this fish felt like.

I have fished in a lot of places for a lot of different fish but I have never seen fishing like this - I have been rained on - starved - exhausted - scared by lightning - fried by the sun - smashed by fish - bashed by rough weather - bored by thousands of fishless casts - and turned into a pauper paying for petrol. I have also caught my biggest ever barra and had the time of my life.

I wonder if a moth knows it will be fried as it heads towards the flame - I know Awoonga will eventually fry me but the flame is bright and the flame is pretty .... As Arnie says in the movie - I'll be back.