The WIN TV Family Fishing Classic is a massive family event held at Monduran Dam every year. It’s a competition you should not miss if you’re into taking the family along on a great weekend away.

Located in the vast grounds of the Monduran Recreational Area, the event has to be experienced to be believed. Annually almost 800 competitors arrive at the campground, set up a tent, get their fishing boats and tackle ready and head out into this massive waterway to chase bass, barra and catfish on lures and baits.

Over the weekend 52 barra were weighed in and Mike Connolly from Redland Bay managed to bag the biggest on Sunday morning - an impressive 12.245kg fish. Mike fished near marker B in one of the back bays and landed two fish on Sunday morning in quick succession.

There were also plenty of bass weighed in with 79 making it to the weigh master stations. Kevin McHugh’s 1.925kg fish was the biggest bass caught over the weekend. Plenty of catfish were also caught and some impressive 30kg bags were the highlight.

But this family competition is about much more than just the fishing. It’s about the great event that brings families together and also gets the kids well involved.

While we were unable to make the Friday night festivities, we soaked up Saturday night’s with wide eyes. It was like walking into a carnival with BBQs sizzling, everyone laughing and having a good time. The boys from Bundaberg Tackle World hosted a kids fishing show that saw just about every kid in the place take home a prize or two.

Every hour or so the MASA worker held a raffle for fishing gear, bottles of rum and other goodies with limited numbers of tickets. When the raffle was announced it was great to see half the crowd get up and get in line for a shot at the raffle prize. It’s a hard to way to make a buck running raffles, but the MASA group pulled it off as well as I have ever seen and the competitors and visitors knew they were donating some hard earned to the right people.

Every so often the MASA boys would also do a lucky entry card draw, where a computer randomly picked an entry card and that person won a great prize from the event sponsors. Prizes like books, outboard oils, lures, subscriptions to magazines, tie down straps, boat and car cleaning kits and more were all given out to competitors who were present. If the winner wasn’t present the crowd would enthusiastically count down the clock and call out ‘Redraw’, in the hope they would be next picked by the computer.

WIN TV was filmed the whole event and after a cool beer and a great feed we retired to bed, well before many of the competitors.

The next morning we woke to the sounds of a couple of hundred boats taking off from the boat ramps to their hot spots. We leisurely made our way down to the café and grabbed a great $5 breakfast from the MASA crew before piling in to the boat and going for a look around. I’d be telling lies if I said we were catching fish every cast as we didn’t even turn a handle in anger, but we did get to see and meet some of the lucky competitors who had it worked out a lot better than we did.

By 10am the fishing was finished and we headed back to pack up our gear and get into the final presentation. The crowd was even bigger at the final presentation as all the prizes and draws would go off today. Everyone entered had as much chance as the next person to win a great BMT package from Adrian Marine and all were hoping to be in the final 10 competitors in with a chance.

I honestly don’t know how high the value in prizes given out for the weekend was, but it was pretty impressive. There were kayaks, electric motors, boats, charter days on the lake, rods, reels, pressure cleaners and batteries – the prizes were far too numerous to mention them all. It’s a credit to the organisers and the sponsors for putting on such a fantastic show.

In the wash up Greg Hawkins was the lucky draw major prize winner and he was absolutely stoked to take home the BMT, but I have a sneaking suspicion that almost everyone who entered the event went home happy.

And as for MASA, they made enough money to add to the money they receive from their SIP allocation and put in losts more barra and bass fingerlings in the coming months. So from that point of view alone, the event was a great success.

Next year the WIN TV Family Fishing Classic should not be missed. My only tip is to go there to have some fun. If you’re dead serious about fishing you may find it a tough comp as there are boats everywhere, but the activities organised by the MASA crew make the event one never to be missed.