A storage on the Boyne at Okeden Road, about sixty-four kilometres north-west of Kingaroy, fourteen and a half square kilometres at full supply. It is a lake, not a river; the Boyne is the other water. Open water in the main basin, drowned timber standing in the bays and along the old river channel, long grassed shorelines that flood and dry with the level, and rocky points where the wind piles the bait.

Sunwater owns the dam. Their page is the place to check current facilities, vessel rules, the storage level and dam alerts before you leave. A pin on a map is not permission, and a full lake last month is not a level for today; a drawn-down storage moves the timber and the weed edges you fish by.

Queensland stocks this dam under the Stocked Impoundment Permit Scheme with Australian bass, golden perch and silver perch, and the scheme’s profile for the dam lists those three. That is what was put in, not a headcount of what you will catch tomorrow. The survey record bound to the lake is a single tilapia from the 2000s, a noxious pest fish, which says more about how little the lake has been surveyed than about what lives in it, and reminds you that Queensland’s pest-fish rules apply to anything you catch that is not a bass or a perch.

What the fish eat is what a warm Queensland storage grows: shrimp and baitfish along the weed and the wind lanes, and the insects that fall from the timber. Bass hunt the edges; golden perch hold deeper and take a fly on the drop.

The warm months, October to April, and the edges of the day. Bass come to the surface and the edges at first light and in the last hour, and warm evenings are when a lake this size shows fish on the top. Golden perch move through the same months, deeper and slower. In the heat of the day the fish are down and along the timber, and the windward shore is usually the one with food in it: fish the lane, not the calm water.

Nothing here is gauged for anglers on this page. You are reading the wind, the sky and Sunwater’s storage level, and a lake that is rising over grass fishes very differently from one that is falling off the timber.

You are fishing a storage, not a stream. Cover water, and change depth before you change pattern. A six or seven weight with an intermediate line covers the bass along the timber and the golden perch on the drop-offs; a floating line and a popper for the surface hour.

For bass, a dark Woolly Bugger or a baitfish streamer worked slowly along the standing timber and the weed edges, with pauses; the take comes on the drop. A popper on the surface at first light and dusk, popped and left, popped and left. For golden perch, a smaller fly counted down along the drop-offs and the old river channel, retrieved with long pauses, and a fish that follows without eating is turned by stopping the fly dead. From the bank, pick the windward shore and the points and fish what you can reach; from a boat, work the timber methodically and leave a tree only when you have covered every side of it.

This is not a place to invent a river tactic. Fish the banks, the timber, the wind lane.

The authority listing puts the dam at Okeden Road, Okeden, about sixty-four kilometres north-west of Kingaroy. Confirm current access, camping and vessel rules with Sunwater before you go. A locked gate is the answer for the day. Standing timber and a big open basin make this a lake to respect from a small boat: the wind gets up fast in the afternoon and the trees are where it puts you.

If you are eighteen or over, you need a Queensland Stocked Impoundment Permit to line-fish this dam. One permit covers every scheme water, including this one. Under-eighteens are treated differently under the same scheme. Check the current Queensland Stocked Impoundment Permit page before you fish; fees and how to buy one live there, and this page does not print them.

Queensland size and bag limits still apply on top, and so do the state’s rules on noxious pest fish. Take those from the current Queensland recreational fishing rules, not from memory of another dam.