Episode 135: Lake Tinaroo Barramundi With Dylan Brier-Mills

Dylan’s Top Tips For Tinaroo Dam Barramundi Fishing

• Tinaroo barra have a reputation for being hard to catch. Fish in this storage have very tight bite windows and it’s much harder to catch fish outside of those times. The periods from 4-6am and from 4-9pm are typically when the fish feed hardest. 

• Fish in Tinaroo are mobile, so you’re likely to miss them if you move around too much. A good strategy is to figure out some good locations and then stay put and wait for the fish to come through.

• The tide changes on the coast are also good indicators of a bite on Tinaroo Dam. When tide changes in Cairns correspond with the the 4-6am and 4-9pm windows you’ll often find fish are active.

• Wind is a good thing on Tinaroo Dam, creating water movement and minor currents, oxygenating the water and stirring food items up. Areas where the wind is creating a little dirty water often fish well. 

• Fish the areas exposed to the wind, don’t make the mistake of fishing the sheltered areas. 

• Both the new and full moons fish well. Typically, the new moon fishes best during the daytime and afternoon and the full moon fishes best at night. However, the new moon can also fish very well around first light at times.

• Often there is a flurry of bites around moon rise or moon set. Definitely stay put for the half hour before the moon rise or set and keep waiting for fish to pass through.

• If you’re fishing the right times on a tide change and moon rise with good winds and don;t see any fish on the sounder you can assume that spot just isn’t a good one. Try a different spot on the next trip!

• There’s plenty of submerged timber in Tinaroo Dam and it holds a lot of fish, but Dylan finds them very hard to extract from those areas. The most productive areas to target are the plain, boring looking banks, points and bays.

• Use those less productive hours of the day to explore likely spots. Explore the lake using side scanning sonar, cruising along parallel to the bank. When you see 3-4 fish in an area, that’s where you want to sit and fish through the bite windows. If you don’t have side scan on your boat or kayak, look for wind lanes and areas where the wind has created dirty water and come back at the prime bite times.

• If conditions are perfect and you’re seeing fish on the sounder but not getting bites it can be worth trying small vibes or blades fished in small hops along the bottom. Alternatively, try casting a big surface walkers, even if it’s windy. Sometimes they can surprise you.

Dylan’s Tackle Recommendations For Barra

• Dylan likes 10-17lb Dobyns rods in both spin and baitcast models and finds these are adequate to stop quality barra, even if you’re occasionally in the timber. He uses Suffix 40lb braid because there are some submerged fence posts and other structure that can create havoc.

• For reels, Dylan uses Shimano Sustain spin reels (4000-5000 size) as well as Okuma Helios and Komodo 200’s models.

• Heavy leaders of 60-100lb are required to handle the abrasive jaws, sharp gill rakers and abrasion on submerged structure.

Dylan’s Best Tinaroo Dam Barra Lures

• Rapala XR12 shallow diving hard body lures are very shallow diving and are effective both slow rolled and fished with twitch and pause techniques. This lure is particularly affective in the periods just before dawn and just after dusk, when the barra often feed on bony bream near the surface. Cast them long and make them land almost on the bank, the strike usually comes within the first 4-5m of the retrieve.

• The Jackall Squirrel 79DD is a great option for deeper water (6-7ft on the cast, 9-10ft on the troll). Dylan likes this lure around 4 in the afternoons when the fish are often in 8ft or so of water. This lure is a great option on those days when the fish are not super interested and are best worked by casting long, cranking down to depth and then pausing the retrieve for 6-10 seconds. The lure is them fished slowly in short bursts with long pauses between. Dylan usually likes the silent version of this lure, but he finds the rattling lure can occasionally work better, particularly when trolling.

• The Zman 7” DieZel MinnowZ has an incredible swimming action fished dead slow. It’s a great option as a search lure during the low light periods in 6-8 feet of water. Rig them on a ¼ oz TT Lures jig head, cast long and slowly roll them back to the boat. Be prepared to hit the fish pretty hard when they take this lure.