Bass on the Rise by Dean Silvester

Rising water levels have turned up the heat for fishers in southern Queensland dams. The increasing water volume has really improved the quality and quantity of recent catches in Somerset and Maroon.

Somerset and Maroon dams are miles apart in more ways than one but at the moment they would seem to be completely in-tune with each other. Both have received a huge influx of freshwater and both dams are on fire - bags of 30 bass in an afternoon not being a hard target to achieve.

Somerset and Maroon, apart from both having bass, have little similarities. In Somerset, the main food source for bass is bony bream that school-up throughout the water column. In Maroon, the bass chow down on anything they can catch from gudgeons to little black beetles on the surface. These are all found around the weed edges compared to the deep schooling bass of Somerset.

Nevertheless, after the recent rise in water levels the two dams are fishing almost identically. By watching the bass' attitude and positioning on the fish finder you wouldn't be able to tell the difference...