The various stocked impoundments around the country all offer excellent fishing. DAVID GREEN offers up some sage advice to help make your dam adventures more productive.
STOCKED impoundments have been one of the great success stories over the past two decades when it comes to the recreational fishing opportunities available to the modern angler. Regardless of whether the dam holds bass, cod, yellowbelly, saratoga or barramundi, the general principles of catching fish in stocked impoundments are actually all pretty similar. Dams make fantastic recreation areas for the communities that live around them, and for many country towns a visit to the local dams is a very common way to spend a weekend or part of the school holidays. Most have cabins, camping areas or nearby accommodation, and for many visitors fishing is very much a part of enjoying a holiday near a dam. But for first time visitors, catching fish can be a very frustrating business, even when conditions are good. And when conditions are bad, it is not unusual for every angler, regardless of experience, to struggle.
What I find very attractive about fishing in dams is that it is quite relaxed, the scenery is often brilliant, there’s a lot of wildlife and the fishing is generally pretty good. In times of drought when most inland watercourses are dry, the dams become an oasis for bird life. The whole experience, even though you fish a man-made waterway, immerses you in the natural world around the dam.
The first general principle of fishing in dams is that nearly all of them were formed by damming a natural watercourse, and the old riverbed forms the central deep channel of the body of water itself. For some reason unknown to me, the course of the old riverbed often plays a major part in finding fish. The fish, be they bass, barra or yellowbelly, definitely have an affinity to spending a lot of time adjacent to the edge of the old watercourse, and this is a very important area to find, particularly if you like trolling.
The second most important factor that controls the quality of the fishing is the water level. Unlike natural systems that may flood and then return to normal levels in a few weeks, dams tend to fill up and stay up, which is very different to any natural watercourse. Wildly fluctuating water levels in dams mean all the weed in the water may die off in a big rise, or die out if water levels drop precipitously. In dams where there is a lot of dead or dying vegetation the fishing is often tough as the rotting vegetation can have a drastic effect on the oxygenation of the water. A dam that has a very stable water level for a prolonged period generally fishes well. In periods of flood, where the water invades the surrounding grassland, the fill is often followed by great fishing, particularly in dams stocked with bass, as they gorge themselves on food from the flooded grass. But after a few weeks, as the underwater and bankside vegetation rots, the fishing generally gets tough. When dam levels are low, the simple idea that there is less water between the fish may well hold true. I’ve had great fishing in places like Cania, Copeton, Awoonga and the Hinze dams when levels were as low as 5 per cent capacity.
When you’re on a family holiday to the dams, there are always a lot of competing tasks to do that can interrupt your fishing. I don’t know of any dam, regardless of the species of fish I am after, that fishes very well in the heat of the day. The best bites are often at dawn, dusk, or into the night. So if you plan your fishing time well, you will have ample opportunity to do all the other activities that go with family holidays. If you set your alarm clock for an hour before dawn, you can be back with a few fish by breakfast.
A boat makes fishing a lot easier, as many dams have a perimeter of weed that makes it very hard to fish from the bank, but it all depends on the type of dam you’re fishing. In the smaller dams a modest tinny will get you to all the good spots, and the degree of fancy technology you carry is up to you. An echo sounder, even a very small, cheap one, is a very important tool for any boat that fishes on a dam. Sounders tend to work better in freshwater than in salt, and small screen budget models actually produce great results in the dams. The sounder lets you find the old riverbed, spot fish and makes life a whole lot easier. If you’ve got a bunch of curious kids on board they’ll be glued to the screen looking for fish.
I’ve found that the lessons you learn on one type of fish in dams also tend to work on other species. A lot of the tricks we used for years to catch bass in some of the more southern dams we fished also worked well on barra in the more northern dams; it was just a case of adapting to bigger fish. Nearly all the fish that are stocked in dams are voracious predators so in theory they should be fairly easy to catch and will feed on the available baitfish. If you find the bait, you’ll find the fish. The key to catching almost all impoundment species is to put a lure that looks similar to the available baitfish in an area where the bait schools up and the fish feed. Sounds simple really!
Different dams have different types of baitfish, but the dams that have bony bream as a forage fish definitely have bigger bass, barra, cod and yellowbelly. Bony bream are the “meat and potatoes” when it comes to dam fish tucker, and these plankton and insect feeders can often be found in massive schools out in the main dam basin. Bony bream also grow quite large; I’ve seen some that would give a kilo a nudge. Just about every dam that produces 50cm plus bass or metre plus barras will have plenty of bony bream in it.
Most dams have camping areas, and there are generally quite a few people fishing. I like to always talk to most anglers I see to share information, and I’ve found in the camping areas around the dams that people are friendly and give freely of what they’ve learnt when it comes to fishing information. In general, when a dam is fishing well, everyone will catch a few, and when it’s shut down the fishing is tough for all players. Barometric pressure plays a part in this as well, and a relatively high and stable barometer produces the most predictable fishing.
When it comes to buying the most effective lures, the tackle shop that is closest to the dam generally has the best information. It pays to have a general mix of lures for the species you chase, but the local tackle shop is usually in tune with the bite at the time, and I’ve found this type of advice can be trip saving at times.
If you’ve got kids and a small boat, trolling is a great way to fish. A sounder will find you the old riverbed, and the edges of this where it drops down deeply are usually productive troll spots. For bass we generally troll four rods with three deep diving hard-bodies like a Tilsan Bass, Rapala Shad Rap and a small Halco Poltergeist. We also troll a spinnerbait out long behind the boat. When my kids were little we caught hundreds of bass and quite a few yellowbelly using this method, and the little tackers really got stuck into some good fish by trolling and had as good a chance as their adult companions. In barra dams the same rules apply, but you need a bigger outfit and a length of 20 to 25 kilo leader ahead of your lure. Stacks of big barra are caught at times trolling the old riverbeds in places like Lake Awoonga and Lake Monduran. If you’ve got a sounder look for deep snags and get your lure over the spot where you mark the fish. As a general rule I like to let my lure a long way back behind the boat. If you’ve got a noisy two-stroke this can mean the difference between no fish and plenty.
SPECIES TIPS
Bass: Bass are found in more impoundments than just about any other species apart from catfish, and are great little fighters and not bad eating. In dams they behave very differently to their wild cousins, often feeding in the middle of the dam on baitfish schools. You need five different lure types to cover most of their moods. Bass bite well at dawn and dusk but can be quite active in dams in the middle of the day. At dawn we usually start by casting some surface lures such as small poppers, “walkers” and fizzers to the bank edges. When the sun comes up we use spinnerbaits or hard-bodied lures cast to the shallows, and as full daylight approaches we start to work deeper water, using spinnerbaits, Jackalls and soft plastics. A small, well-stocked tackle box that covers most of these options will keep you catching fish by casting for as long as possible. Just change lure type as the sun gets higher. If you like trolling, try the hard-bodies I mentioned previously. Good colours for bass include black, red, gold and metallic green. Changing your hooks to fine chemically sharpened trebles increases success, and always use a stinger hook on your spinnerbaits.
Yellowbelly: In some dams the yellowbelly and bass mix a lot, and it’s common to catch both species in the one spot. Yellowbelly respond to most of the lures used for bass, and fishing soft plastics, spinnerbaits and Jackalls around sunken trees, rock walls and deep sunken timber works well. Trolling rocky shorelines with deep diving hard-bodies is also effective. Yellowbelly tend to live close to the bottom and don’t roam the wide open spaces as much as bass do, so try to keep your lures deep. They are also suckers for baits such as shrimp and small yabbies.
Murray Cod: Cod can take a bit of catching, but they love boulders, big logs and deep rocks. Trolling big, deep diving hard-bodied lures that hit the bottom works very well, and large spinnerbaits can also be deadly. Cod often feed better at night, but it pays to get some good local advice. I’ve had good success with purple lures for cod. To catch cod in the dams, you need to put in the hours and keep casting at a likely spot for quite a while. Sometimes it takes dozens of casts to wake the fish up.
Saratoga: In dams such as Cania and Borumba there are good populations of saratoga, and nearly all of them fall to casting lures or flies. Saratoga bite best in the early morning or at dusk and tend to stay at the top end of small bays where they patrol the surface. Saratoga like small spinnerbaits and small surface lures that imitate an insect that has landed on the water. They are poor eating and quite delicate so they need to be released carefully, but on light tackle they put up a good fight and they nearly always jump.
Barramundi: There has been plenty of material written about catching barra in dams. The secret is to persist at it, stay confident and do a bit of homework before your trip. Lures like the Lively Lures Arafura Barra have worked well for me when trolling, but always carry a variety of sizes, colours and depth ranges. Casting can be done with the same hard-bodied lures you troll with, but make sure you have some soft plastics such as Squidgy Slick Rigs or Berkley Hollowbellys and some jig heads with you. The best casting spots are generally close to points in the dam, as the fish tend to move in close as they swim around these natural barriers. The side of the dam that the wind blows on to generally has the best fishing. Barra are perhaps the best of our impoundment species, and if conditions are good most anglers with a bit of nous will catch them. When they shut down almost no one gets a bite. The secret to catching barra in the dams is to work hard at it, and try to get as much information as you can from your fellow anglers. Dam barra bite best at night in most situations.
Wrap up
The stocked impoundments are great places for families to have a holiday, and all across the country dams offer good fishing opportunities. The above is just a simple overview, but, as I’ve found, if you learn to catch one species on a reliable basis, the others are generally pretty easy to find as well.
