EUNGELLA DAM

Perched high in the rugged mountain ranges behind the Queensland coastal port of Mackay, beautiful Eungella Dam can justifiably lay claim to some of the finest sooty grunter fishing on the planet.

“Like running over a house brick with a lawn mower.” That’s how I like to describe the jackhammer intensity of a big sooty grunter crunching a slow-rolled hard body lure fished deep in the sticks. I certainly can’t claim to have invented that delightfully colourful description. To the best of my memory, I first read it in the promotional material for the original Spiderwire braided line several decades ago. But it remains a wonderfully apt metaphor to convey the bone-jarring, tooth-rattling, eye-crossing impact of a solid, unexpected strike on braid… and few freshwater fish do it better than Hephaestus fuliginosus: the sooty grunter.

While their natural habitat consists primarily of the freshwater reaches of coastal river systems in our tropical north, sooties also thrive when stocked into man-made impoundments or dams. Just like bass, Murray cod and yellowbelly further south, sooties tend to grow much faster and reach larger sizes in these food-rich, still-water environments than their brethren living in nearby rivers and creeks.

Before barramundi populations reached a critical tipping point in vast Lake Tinaroo, on the Atherton Tablelands behind Cairns, that huge lake was much better known as a prime sooty grunter fishery. These days, with the barra more dominant, sooties tend to lay low in dams like Tinaroo. The same certainly can’t be said of picturesque Eungella Dam, located in the high, craggy ranges west of Mackay. Eungella can quite reasonably lay claim these days to being “sooty central”.

While Eungella (pronounced “young-gella”) has also been well stocked with barra, its elevation and relatively low water temperatures across a big chunk of the year make it a rather challenging barra fishery, and have tipped the scales firmly in favour of the more temperature-tolerant grunter.

Eungella can’t claim to be home to the world’s biggest sooty grunter. That honour goes to Tinaroo, with a stunning 6.17 kg tank landed by Brian Seawright back in 1997. However, Eungella certainly produces its fair share of fish over 50 cm and 3 kg every year, as well as prolific numbers of hard-fighting nuggets in the 40 to 50 cm range. Better yet, it’s a year ’round producer of these great fish, although the strike rate definitely drops off from late May until August, when water temperatures bottom out and the overnight air temperatures around the dam frequently dip into single digits. Make no mistake… it gets seriously chilly up in them there hills!

Built in 1969 to supply water to nearby mines and power stations, Eungella is an attractive and varied body of water with plenty of fish habitat. The broad main basin features extensive weed beds, flats and food rich margins, as well as stands of lilies, while the upstream reaches leading into the Broken River are sheltered from most winds and more suitable to smaller craft like kayaks, although land access is difficult due to locked gates and private property. However, it’s the middle reaches of this lake — with their abundant standing trees — that attracts the most attention from anglers chasing sooties, and with good reason. Lures fished both vertically and horizontally through this timber produce the lion’s share of sooty grunter caught here each year.

Sooty grunter respond to a wide range of fishing techniques, all the way from soaking a bait to flicking a fly. On the lure front, there are many overlaps with bass fishing in terms of both tackle and techniques, and just about any offering capable of attracting a strike from an Aussie bass will also work well on sooties in the right time and place.

Rather like bream in the salt, grunter have incredibly eclectic tastes when it comes to tucker. While they’ll happily dine on all sorts of smaller fish, shrimps, yabbies, worms, insects and the like, they’ll also eagerly consume fruit and seeds that fall from overhanging trees, not to mention some seemingly less palatable “manna from heaven”. The close association between sooties and roosting cormorants or other waterbirds is well-known, and is based primarily on the fish’s willing propensity for dining on “recycled baitfish” in the form of bird poop!

One of the more common tricks for identifying the best stands of timber in a dam like Eungella is to seek out the roosting trees favoured by cormorants. This includes those currently occupied by the birds, as well as trees recently vacated, but still clearly marked, thanks to an obvious layering of dried and drying droppings. Lures or flies are then cast under the roosting branches and allowed to sink through the water column, typically being hit “on the drop”. White or pale-coloured soft plastics and fluffy wet flies are especially effective in such scenarios, for fairly obvious reasons!

At other times and in different locations, sooties appear to cycle through various levels of activity and aggression, just like most of our freshwater natives. They may be sulkily hugging the bottom, schooled up and suspended in mid-water, or cruising up high while actively hunting. Catching these more active fish on surface lures such as little cup-faced poppers and crawlers can be especially exciting, and is often at its best early and late in the day, or under the cover of darkness.

At times, deeper presentations may be required, but it still pays to work the various levels, especially around standing timber in deeper water. Southern anglers up to speed with proven yellowbelly and bass tactics such as “grubbing the trees” will have a walk-up start to this style of vertical fishing.

Spinnerbaits, blade baits, mumblers, soft plastics, hard and soft vibes and diving plugs or minnows all have their place in the sooty fisher’s kit. When choosing hooks for these lures, bear in mind that while sooties don’t have overly large mouths, their jaws are very powerful and they can make short work of lighter gauge hardware. Small, extra strong singles, doubles and trebles are definitely the way to go, and it often pays to run stingers on your spinnerbaits and chatterbaits.

So, how hard do sooties hit and fight? As comedian Tom Gleeson likes to say: “HARD!” I rate them right up there alongside Aussie bass as our toughest freshwater targets on a gram-for-gram basis. A big bass may be a tad quicker and cover a little more water during an encounter, but for sheer muscle, grit and an uncanny propensity for wrapping your line around structure, sooties possibly have the edge. Don’t underestimate them. That said, your bass gear (fly, spin or overhead) will do the job, and there’s no need for barra-strength leaders on sooties. They respond positively to a little finesse in exactly the same way as any other fish, and there are days when dropping leader diameter will definitely win you a few more hits. Five to eight or perhaps nine kilo nylon or fluorocarbon leaders are generally about right, but set your drag as tight as you dare. Of course, encountering the odd stray barra on that calibre of gear and leader strength is likely to be “interesting”, to say the least, but if you insist on always going loaded for bear, you’ll hook a lot less sooties. The choice is yours.

If you’re a keen freshwater fisher, I very much encourage you to add Eungella Dam to your bucket list of destinations… I guarantee you’ll love it!

While you’re there…

In addition to three of the best stocked dams in the north (Teemburra, Kinchant and Eungella), and the extensive Pioneer River system, Mackay is the perfect base for exploring a broad range of salt and tidal fishing opportunities, including the extensive Net Free Zone (NFZ) to the north. Created at the end of 2015, this NFZ — which stretches from Seaforth to St Helens — has already led to measurable improvements in both the size and availability of popular species such as barramundi, salmon and javelin fish (grunter).

The only drawback with Mackay’s saltwater fishing is the size of the tidal range experienced in this area, which is the largest on Queensland’s east coast, exceeding six metres on larger springs. However, when the tides are unfavourable for saltwater fishing, or the south east trade winds blow too hard, there are always those wonderful freshwater options.

To find out more about Mackay’s many fishing opportunities and stay across all the piscatorial happenings in this fish-rich region, follow the Hooked on Mackay page on Facebook.