Queensland Wild Bass Mayhem

As much as I love to fish the dams for bass, you can't beat catching them in their natural envoronment. In Queensland, few bass anglers take advantage of the great wild bass fishing on offer. Many of these quality Australian bass have escaped from impoundments when the dams have spilled over. With so many mature bass now swimming in the creeks and rivers below the dams, we have an awesome fishery just waiting for anglers to enjoy.
Finding bass in the river and creeks is quite easy during the summer months. The fish follow their natural instincs and head upstream. I decided to hit one of my favourite holes recently. I had given the fish a good spell of over 6 months so I was keen to see how responsive they'd be to our lures. Tagging along was my brother Kerry. It was Kerry's first trip to the secret hole and he was keen to see what I had been raving about.
We slid the bathtub shaped twin hull boat into the water and set off using the electric motor to the upper stretch of the narrow winding hole. There was plenty of duck weed floating on top which could make catching fish difficult. The duck weed tends to trap heat in the water and we were looking for fish in the cooler shaded water. Too much duck weed can make the water too hot and the fish hard to come by. The weed had blown into thick clumps and was quite broken along some of the better looking banks. My first cast that was able to reach to shaded bank was quickly intercepted by a healthy bass.
Wild bass fishing can produce some explosive strikes. Many of the bass can be seen as the rush out to smash a lure. We started whacking fish on beetle spins. The beetle spin consisted of a gold blade on a wire frame clipped onto a 1/4 ounce Nitro Dam Deep Jighead. These jigheads were fitted with 2.6" Powerbait T-tail Minnows.
The beetlespins were effective as we worked our way up the creek but on the return trip I thought the fish might be looking for something a little different. Wild bass can be so aggressive that on the first pass you'll sting most of the fish. When continuing to fish them, you can fool them with a different presentation or more accurate casts that find their way right into their home. I had the lure setup that would achieve both. I found success on a weedless rigged 3.5" Powerbait T-tail Minnow. Rigged on a 1/16 ounce weighted worm hook, the lure skimmed beautifully. It would skip cast all the way back into the guts of the overhanging bottlebrush trees and come straight back out over the limbs, roots and floating weed. At first the action was slow as Kerry continued to pick off the occasional bass with his beetle spin rig. Then the pattern started to unfold and I was soon buzzing the lure out of the shade and watching bass explode on it. One fish even leapt clear of the water as it nailed the plastic. The bass were so aggressive that they weren't missing the hook buried in the weedless rig. The skinny profile of the 3.5" T-tail allowed the hook to easily find its mark when the fish hit. The sun was now high overhead. This had created some excellent shadows below the overhanging trees to explore. Our lures were still working but we pulled out some hard bodies to try our luck. These floating lures could be tossed right back to the shoreside structure and twitched on top keeping them in the strike zone longer. Some bass nailed the lure soon after it landed while others drilled it after it started to swim. I recall one bad cast smacking the water with an almighty splash. It had landed in an excellent spot but made a hell of a noise. It didn't deter a hungry bass from launching clear of the water as it sucked the lure from the top seconds after the splash-down. After we'd finished the morning session, we had boated 22 wild bass. The biggest 4 fish were over 40cm to the fork of the tail. Kerry managed the biggest fish with a fork length of 45cm. What an awesome morning. And...... there are so many more spots just like it waiting to be found.

My wild bass tackle consisted of:
- Pro Tactic 7" 2-5kg spin rod
- 802 Abu Cardinal spin reel
- 6lb Spiderwire Stealth Camo Braid
- 15lb Stren Fluorocarbon leader