Kinchant Dam Barramundi
Luke Galea
Fishing Writer And Local Personality
Luke Galea is a Mackay based angler and a regular writer for multiple fishing magazines including Fish and Boat, freshwater fishing and the now defunct Modern Fishing. He’s involved professionally with fisheries management and the promotion of fishing tourism through the “Hooked On Mackay” initiative, is on the Frogleys Offshore Pro Angler team and fishes Kinchant Dam regularly.
Luke’s Top Tips For Luring Kinchant Barramundi
- Before fishing, take half an hour to find the fish. Use your sounder to locate structure such as weedy points, as well as baitfish. Kinchant doesn’t have much hard structure, so look for points, weedy structure or the recently deployed Fish Attracting Devices throughout the dam. Feeding birds such as pelicans are also a good sign.
- Barra fishing is good year-round in Kinchant Dam. Fishing is easier in summer but in the winter months some excellent fishing can be had by fishing smart. Using wind and natural heat holding structures is a good way to find barra in the cooler months.
- Smaller lures tend to work best in Kinchant Dam. Impoundment fish are often well fed and may not be able to digest a large food item but can be tempted by smaller items.
- It pays to cut your motor a couple of hundred metres short of where you intend to fish and position yourself with the electric motor. Kinchant fish can be shy, especially in the cooler months when their senses are heightened.
Luke’s Tackle Selection For Kinchant Barramundi
- It saves a lot of time to have several rods and reels rigged with different lures, ready to fish. Luke has 2 baitcasters and 2 spin rods readyÂ
- Luke uses 5ft 6″ Samurai refraction baitcast rods in both the 12-16lb and 16-20 lb line classes. He couples these with Curado or Chronarch baitcast reels, 30lb braided line and minimum 60lb leader. He uses baitcast gear for fishing weedless plastic and hard body lures where accurate casting and close quarter combat is required.
- His preferred spin rods are Sumurai Elevates 10-20 lb and 15-25lb with 4000 or 5000 Stradic or Sustain for stickbaits and soft plastics. He uses this for longer casting when the fish are finicky and noise is an issue.
Luke’s Top 3 Lures For Targeting Barramundi In Kinchant Dam
- 60mm Atomic Semi-hard Vibration Bait are awesome jigged on laydowns and submerged structure in deeper water. They emit a strong vibration and the semi-soft structure gives them a natural feel to fish.
- Bassday Sugar Pen 95mm stickbaits are great for Kinchant Barra over the weedbeds and are one of the lures that works year round, but are a good choice in the winter months.
- Bassday Sugar Deep Barratune is a 90mm suspending twitch bait that’s best fished with at “twitch-twitch-pause” action and remains suspended in the strike zone on the pause.
Episode 593: Great Sandy Straits Autumn Fishing With Ryan Holdsworth
The Great Sandy Strait has almost unlimited barramundi, mangrove jack and threadfin habitat….. you just need to know how to fish it. Fortunately, today’s guest Ryan Holdsworth gives his tips freely and will put you on the right course to success!
Episode 591: Mackay Headlands Barramundi With Jono Clark
Jono Clark is probably best known as an gun impoundment barra angler, but he also chases barra (and a ton of other species) in shallow water on headlands. Today he gives us the good oil on how to go about putting some solid fish on the deck.
Episode 581: Chambers Bay Runoff Barramundi With Tristan Sloan
The barra fishing in NT during the runoff period is legendary and today’s guest has had plenty of opportunity to experience it. Tristan Sloan shares his tips and advice for one of his favourite runoff barra haunts – Chambers Bay!
Luke’s Sponsors
Frogleys Offshore are the Australian distributors for Atomic Lures, Sumurai Rods, Gamakatsu hooks and Bassday lures.Â
Lowrance Australia supply high-end marine electronics for fishermen, including the HDS12 side scan fish finder with Live View technology that Luke uses.
Shimano Australia sponsor Luke for reels, including his Stradic and Stella spinning reels and Curado and Chronarch baitcasters