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Lake Maroon is one of South East Queensland's best freshwater fly and surface fishing destinations It lays close to the base of the Great Dividing Range on Burnett Creek, a tributary of the Logan River.

It is a relatively small impoundment with a surface area of 350 ha and an average depth of 9.6 meters.

Maroon Dam is shared dam and popular with a wide range of usage including fishing and water water skiing. There is no access to the area around the dam wall but the rest of the lake is open to all marine activities allowed under Queensland maritime and Queensland fishing laws.

Maroon Dam comes under the Stocked Impoundment Permit Scheme. You can purchase your permit online at www.smartservice.qld.gov.au and the cost is $7.45 per week. You should also check out licensing requirements and bag limits.

Water flows into Lake Maroon from:

• Burnett creek.
• General catchment inflows.

Water leaves Lake Maroon via:

• Burnett creek at the south west end of the lake.

To many Lake Maroon is the most prolific of bass fisheries in Queensland.

Boat launching bay

Lake Maroon Holiday Park provides an exclusive launching area onto the dam for all guests and as well as that there is a public single lane concrete ramp. The public ramp is usable from around 15% capacity and higher. As well as the two ramps shore launching is allowed but as the shore can be soft particularly at time of falling water low range 4 wheel drive with law range is a good idea.

How to get there

Lake Maroon is situated about 25km south of Boonah and just over an hour’s drive from Brisbane or the Gold Coast. The "Sat Nav" destination that I use is"Burnett Creek Rd Maroon Qld".

View Larger Map

Open season

Maroon dam is a put and take stocked fishery and consequently is open all year round.

Food supply

Most of the food (and consequently the fish) is located around shore structure such as the prolific weed beds along the shallower shoreline, rocky headlands and associated rock bars protruding into the lake from those headlands and drowned timber mainly at the top end of the lake. Stocked species feed mainly on terrestrial insects, nymphs, shrimp and and red claw which are prolific.

Services & facilities available

There is accommodation ranging from camping to cottages at 3 location all located on the Burnett creek road. You can check out exactly whats available by contacting Camp Lake Maroon Holiday Park on 07 5463 6256, and Pointro Camp Site on 07 5463 6209.

When visiting Lake Maroon I stay at Lake Fire, You can contact them on 07 5463 6121. If you want information about the lake generally or activities that are available, click on the logo above to access their website or, call Steve Wilkes - Sports Tuition Director on 0403154510 ... you'll find him very helpfull.

Target species

The dominant target species by far is bass in the 30 to 40cm size range. Other stocked species include Golden Perch (Yellowbelly), Silver Perch, Mary River Cod and Spangled Perch.

Techniques

The best fishing can be had an hour or so either side of dawn and dusk. At those times you can expect the bass to be actively feeding close or at the surface and are quite receptive to dry flies. Best options are to fish weed beds generally or to target the edge of weed beds, open pockets and channels in weed beds and near structure such as the drowned timber and rocky points. The best of the surface fishing generally occurs when the lake is still and glassy.

Depending on cloud cover surface and sub surface fishing will generally taper off the closer you get to the middle of the day. The fish will still be there but generally you will need to swap over to progressively deeper techniques to get results. Type 3 or intermediate lines are popular options but my preference is a type 5 uniform sink line. Occasionally when the sun is high or the sky is clear you will find that faster sink or even a very fast sink shooting head presentation of a weighted fly will make all the difference. Target drop offs, the deep cut offs and channels in and close to weed beds and of course deeper water around rock and timber structure. Bass typically hold at around 6 meters in Maroon dam so try to get your fly or flies close enough to that depth for bass to get interested.

Approach target areas with stealth and where possible present your fly or flies with longer accurate casts into or toward selected structure and then retrieve with short jerky retrieves with plenty of pauses. Strip strikes are best as often if a hit is missed the fish or close by fish will come back for a second go. It's very easy to get "weeded" in Lake Maroon so even though you wont find many bass over 40cm I recommend using 6 to 8 weight fly rods with plenty of butt strength and tippet above 10lb so that you can keep the fish from returning to weed cover.

Leader set up

You can use #6 weight rods upwards but I recommend using #8 weight fly rods with plenty of butt strength and tippet of as low as 9.5lb fluorocarbon if you fishing open waters but moving up to as high as 18lb fluorocarbon if you will need to to keep the fish from returning to weed cover.

This is the set up I have settled on when fishing mainly from boats in coastal waters, lakes or rivers for other than trout. The main difference to my trout leaders is the fact that I only have one heavier section in the butt section of the leader and then of course the overall length of leader is less than I typically use for trout.

I get away with just one section of butt material because I am using much heavier leader than in my trout leaders and in the heavier material that I use one section is sufficient to comfortably turn my heavier fly or flies over. The overall leader length is much shorter than my trout leaders because generally I find that my target species with this set up are less sensitive than trout, are in less than crystal clear water and of course I am casting bigger flies which are a pain on long leaders particularly when casting at short ranges into structure ... any way this works for me when targeting fresh water and salt water species such as, Bass, Sarratoga, Yellowbelly, Silver Perch and Redfin.

I start by attaching a 20 mm long Maxima Ultragreen monofilament nail loop knot to the end of each of my fly lines. I like that loop connected to the fly line to be about 2/3 the thickness of the tip of an intermediate fly line which works out at about 30kg for 8 weight lines and 40kg for 10 weight lines. I use these monofiliment loops on all but my dedicated dry fly lines as they are stronger than the manufactured loops that come on fly lines are less visible than braided loops, allow neat leader to line connections without introducing any hinging effect and and of course allow for easy line or leader changes.

I tie 20 mm mono loops to the end of all my #8 weight fly lines.

Connection to the leader is an open loop locked with a blood knot.

For thicker line to line connections I use back to back uni knots but for thin lines such as for my dropper I use the surgeons knot.

The butt section of my leader is made up of one meter of Maxima Ultragreen monofilament line. I use 25lb for my #8 weight outfit and 35lb for my #10 weight outfits. In either case the butt section is connected the loop on the end of the fly line with an open loop closed with a blood knot. I use this butt section set up for two reasons. First because the heavier butt section in the leader makes a better connection to the small loop at the end of my fly line than relatively thin tippet material and secondly because the slightly heavier butt section definitely helps turn my team of flies.

To that butt section I add 1.8 meters of my selected tippet material. My advice is, within reason, to stick with tippet that is as thin as you can get away with on the day. The thinner the tippet the better the action of your fly. Having said that Bass and all of the Perch family all seem to have the same penchant of retreating to cover once hooked and you can need every ounce of stopping power you can muster. I generally start with 12lb Sun FC Rock fluorocarbon that has a 0.285 diameter and go up or down from there depending on outcomes.

The butt section and the tippet are joined together using two back to back uni knots. Tie the uni knots carefully and even if they are between two tippet materials of different thickness or between mono and fluorocarbon they wont fail. That's the leader complete if your fishing one fly either on the surface or deeper.

Some of the time and particularly for Bass or Redfin I fish two wets on this leader but it is equally at home with two dries or a wet under a dry. For the dropper for that second fly I use the same tippet material tied in with a surgeons knot, with the bottom 20cm tag end as the dropper tied in 1.2 meters from the point fly. When extended this leaves me initially with 1.0 meter between my two flies which I reckon is just about ideal. As you fish and change flies you will gradually close the gap between your two flies, so I keep and eye on that, and generally tie a new tippet section onto the butt section as my confidence in the gap or length of leader overall wain. Too much closer than one meter I believe that the flies spook fish but too much further than 1 meter apart then the team of flies become harder to cast and when you do go to land a fish the bob fly is precariously close, or hooks up to, the top runner.

I suggest you experiment and come up with a compromise that suites your casting ability and style and of course the weather conditions. With this type of leader set up you can pull your point fly up close to the rod tip and swap lines via the loop to "locked loop" connection which at that stage will be half way down the rod. I am a strong advocate of using a lefty's loop knot I connect dry flies to my tippet because that knot allows the fly to swing or swim freely and because it's dam strong when tied carefully.

Flies

Dry flies

If there is a secret to bass fly fishing, and a useful dry fly technique for other native fish species, its got to be putting your fly in the zone and keeping it there for as long as you can. With dry flies that’s fairly easy. Cast it right into the snags or above the margins of the weed beds and hold it there without drag for as long as you can. If nothing happens then just give the fly a little wiggle so that it creates rings on the surface of the water and wait again. Repeat this process a few times until your satisfied that the structure you are covering doesn’t hold an interested fish or until the fly is out of the zone. If fishing static doesn’t work than a great alternative is to position yourself so that you can fish along the structure and then strip the dry flies in using a variety of speeds twitches and pauses. I like to fish single flies mainly on size 1 hooks when targeting surface feeders and can recommend:

Wet point flies

For wet flies its best to either find the fish on a sounder or have an educated guess where the fish are and then to dredge the fly through that zone at various speeds – locking into the speed and depth that works. In my experience if your not hooking up to structure occasionally your not in the hunt. I like to fish a team of two flies for bass and can recommend the following flies as good point fly options

Wet dropper flies

When I am fishing a team of two flies these flies or a black booby, as shown above, are the flies I generally select from for my dropper which is generally around 25cm long and 1.2 meters above the point fly.

For more options have a look at:

My bass EP & perch fly box
My woolly bugger fly box
Streamers & pulling flies
My lake fly box
My boobies fly box
My Dry fly box - hoppers particularly

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