Fly fishing the Wide Bay and Burnett

The Queensland Government groups these waters as its Wide Bay-Burnett fishing trail, which it describes as reaching from the Sunshine Coast north to Bundaberg, a mix of farm country and coast. These waters sit in its northern and inland part. The Burnett River is the spine: it passes Gayndah, where a weir holds it back, and reaches Bundaberg, where a barrage is the last wall before the tide. The other seven sit on smaller rivers and creeks, and on every one of them it is the lake behind the wall you are driving to fish. Cania is the scenic one: the trail guide places it in Cania Gorge National Park.

Around Kingaroy. Gordonbrook Dam is the closest, on the Stuart River at Wooroolin about 13 km north-west of town, and is now stocked with Australian bass and Mary River cod. Lake Barambah, the water behind Bjelke-Petersen Dam on Barker Creek, is about 30 km north-east and takes bass, golden perch, saratoga and silver perch; the trail guide calls golden perch its star fish. Boondooma Lake, on the Boyne about 64 km north-west, is the best known: fourteen and a half square kilometres of drowned timber, grassy bays and rocky points, stocked with bass, golden perch and silver perch.

Around Monto and Gayndah. Wuruma Reservoir, on the Nogo River south-west of Monto, carries the longest list here, bass, barramundi, golden perch and silver perch. Lake Cania, on Three Moon Creek north-west of Monto, is the saratoga dam of the region. Claude Wharton Weir backs up the Burnett at Gayndah and is stocked with bass, barramundi and golden perch.

Towards the coast. Lake Monduran, behind Fred Haigh Dam on the Kolan River west of Bundaberg, is stocked with bass and barramundi, and the trail guide sends you to the standing trees along its bays and inlet. Ben Anderson Barrage, on the Burnett at Branyan just west of Bundaberg, is stocked with barramundi only, though the trail guide says bass and golden perch turn up because they are stocked upstream; freshwater catfish, bony bream and sea mullet are recorded there too. Lake Lenthall, formed by Lenthalls Dam at the head of the Burrum River north-west of Maryborough, takes bass, barramundi, golden perch and silver perch, and in 2022 the trail guide called it the most southerly barramundi water in Queensland.

Bass are the fly angler’s mainstay. On Boondooma they push bait into the edges at first light and in the last hour from October to March, boil in the wind lanes, and hold in the standing timber through the heat. A dark Woolly Bugger or a baitfish pattern worked slowly along the trees, or a popper popped and left on the surface, on a six or seven weight with an intermediate line, is the Boondooma approach. See streamer fishing for the basics.

Golden perch sit deeper and slower. Count a smaller fly down along the drop-offs and the old river channel, pause long in the retrieve, and stop it dead when a fish follows. The trail guide says they come on in spring and bite best in the evening.

Saratoga are surface feeders with a hard, bony mouth that makes them difficult to hook. The trail guide’s advice is a quieter corner early in the morning, and to look for them deeper in the shade of overhanging trees once the day heats up. At Cania it reports good shoreline fishing for saratoga of 40 to 50 cm along deep trenches among the timber, which is fly water you can reach from the bank.

Barramundi, in the trail guide’s words, herd bait along rocky foreshores and headlands, so fish those first. Monduran’s standing trees are the other place to start.

For a first trip, go to Boondooma. It has the most written about it, it fishes from a boat or the bank, and the bass are the right fish to learn these lakes on. If saratoga are why you came, go to Cania and walk the timbered shore. For barramundi, Monduran is the obvious choice, and the trail guide lists professional guides who take charters there, worth the money on a first visit. Gordonbrook suits a short evening from Kingaroy.

Saratoga are the early fish: the trail guide picks August to October, mornings first. Golden perch come on through spring. Bass are on the surface from about October to March, the warm months when Boondooma’s edges fish best. The trail guide rates Barambah for every season. Boondooma hosts an annual fishing competition in February, according to the trail guide, so check the date before you plan a quiet weekend there.

Check Queensland’s current freshwater rules, and whether the dam is in the stocked impoundment permit scheme, before you fish.

Sunwater owns seven of these storages and posts current facilities and alerts for them. A line on the map is not access permission: use the formed public areas, and obey gates and signs.

Further north the trail continues into Central Queensland, and South East Queensland lies to the south.