LAKE Awoonga near Gladstone in south-east Queensland became a very popular destination for Australia’s anglers in the mid to late 2000s due to the quality of the impoundment’s stocked barramundi that often topped a metre in length.
Impoundment fisheries generally enjoy an early boom period when stocked fish make the most of the available food source and put on size rapidly. This was definitely the case with Lake Awoonga, with the waterway producing the sort of barra that regularly graced the pages of fishing magazines and websites like this one and put the impoundment on the sportfishing map.
Unfortunately, Awoonga’s barra fishery suffered a major blow during the Queensland floods of 2010 when the lake flooded over its dam wall and an estimated 20,000-plus barra were believed to have followed the flow into the Boyne River below.
Suntag has now released its report into the Lake Awoonga barra from 1985-2014 which makes for interesting reading.
Read the article and related reports at: http://suntag.org.au/the-awoonga-barramundi-story-1985-2014/
