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Gladstone is a major Queensland city located approximately 550 kilometres by road north of Brisbane and 100 kilometres south-east of Rockhampton. Situated between the Calliope and Boyne Rivers and covering an area of some 128 square kilometres Gladstone is home to Queensland's largest multi-commodity port and is serviced by an extensive rail service and has its own airport servicing flights to and from Brisbane and a number of smaller Queensland destinations.

The city's population was around 28,000 in 2006. By the end of 2010 something like 8,000 temporary jobs were created as a result of the the mining boom and as major gas and resource projects commenced.

Unfortunately service infrastructure did not kept up with the population growth and whist some of the larger retailers including, Coles, Woolworths and Bunnings, established in and around Gladstone there was still a lot of catching up needed.

In response to the rapidly growing temporary population, there was a temporary property boom and a lot of new land was opened up mainly south of the city of Gladstone and places like Calliope, Boyne Island (The largest one of 14 local islands and the only one connected by road bridges) and Tannum Sands. Each of those have developed into major population hubs.

When those boom projects came on line in around 2015 a large part of that temporary workforce moved back to its home regions and also to new development projects in other parts of Australia leaving the resident population at around 34,000.

The resident population of Gladstone is expected to grow by up to a further 8,000 in the period up to 2025.

When the boom projects came on line there was an outflow of a large proportion of the temporary work force and that led to a drop in both commercial and residential property values. Whilst the surplus of rental properties is now back at pre boom levels and the value of properties owned prior to the boom have had good growth values based on the pre boom values, for commercial support industry properties and rental and residential properties purchased or built at boom prices there is a deficit against those boom prices which will hopefully be absorbed in the next year or so.

On the plus side industry has but significant funds into Gladstone and it is blessed with fantastic facilities in the harbour and East Shores precincts and work is currently in progress to upgrade facilities to facilitate an ever increasing fleet of tourist ships that are now calling on Gladstone.

Moving onto the important matters of fishing.

Fishing Open season

Most of the rivers and lakes are open all year except for the Barramundi closed season. The Barramundi closed season does not however apply to Lake Awoonga.
 

Services & facilities available

Tackleworld, Compleat Angler and BCF have fishing shops in Gladstone and the guys at Tackleworld and Compleat Angler are particularly helpful and know their stuff. There is also a good fishing shop just outside Miriam Vale on the road to Agnes Waters and several fishing shops up at Rockhampton and an independent tackle shop on Boyne Island. All the shops are bait and lure oriented so if you want any fly fishing gear take it with you or buy on-line.

Target species include

 
The main fresh water fly fishing target species targeted locally at Awoonga Dam is barramundi and an occasional by catch of saratoga and sooty grunter but within 'day trip' distances you can also target bass, silver perch and sooty grunter.

Saltwater species you can target on fly around Gladstone include salt water barramundi, mangrove jack, barred & silver grunter, tarpon, fingermark, flathead, bream and whiting and several species of each of trevally and mackerel.

Along the beaches, headlands and coves a wide range of reef and estuary species can be targeted including coral trout, fingermark, flathead, bream and whiting. A little wider as well as being some fantastic reef fishing and a wide range of pelagics including, trevally, tuna, spaniards, cobia, queenfish are popular targets on fly.

 
Barramundi
Follow this link for more information including suggested flies for lake Awoonga and freshwater barramundi. Much of this information is also relevant to targeting salt-water barramundi on fly.

Bream
This post will help you target both yellowfin and pikey bream on fly and the information provided includes techniques and suggested flies.

 
Barred and silver grunter are often by-catches when fly, bait, lure and soft plastic fishers, are targeting barramundi and mangrove jack in Central Queensland waters. They are apparently a great eating fish but my preference remains to treat them as a sport fish and catch them and release them to fight another day.
Grunter

Fingermark

Flathead
Flathead are definitely one of the easier species of estuary fish to catch on fly. They will respond to a wide range of traditional and specialist flies and you will catch them as a by catch when your fishing small flies (from a flathead’s perspective) to species such as bream and whiting and relatively big flies (from a flathead’s perspective) even when fishing for barra.

Stocking

The Gladstone Area Water Board has a fish breeding program in place and breeds Barramundi and Mangrove Jack for stocking into Lake Awonga as well as some of the surrounding waterways.

Approximately 200,000 fish are released into Lake Awoonga each year (200,000 Barramundi and small numbers of Mangrove Jack). Since 1996, over 2.5 million barramundi fingerlings and 470,000 mullet fingerlings have been released into Lake Awoonga and many of those finish up in the Borne River. There is also intermittent stocking of other local fisheries.

Until 2019 were are bred at a purpose-built fish hatchery in Gladstone, operated jointly by the Gladstone Area Water Board and the Gladstone Ports Corporation. That hatchery is currently being moved to Lake Awoonga and will reopen in 2020.

The Board has a continuing fishery monitoring program in place using net surveys, to evaluate the success of the restocking effort.
 

Food chain

In the fresh small fish of various species are obvious element of the food chain from a fishing point of view but that chain is of course well supported by a well balanced phytoplankton and populations of nymphs, shrimp and red claw crayfish. Drowned terrestrials including, beetles, hoppers and cicada are significant to the fresh water and estuary food chain.

In the salt there is also a diverse food chain with shrimp, prawns, crabs, squid and small fish of so many types being the most important from a fly fishing perspective.

Hot spots

Have a look at Queensland posts on the location page for more information.

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