Built across the Boyne River south west of Gladstone, the Awoonga Dam is a rockfill structure with a concrete upstream face slab. The embankment was formed from rock excavated from a quarry on the Eastern side of the dam wall. The embankment is over 650 metres in length and 54.4 metres in height, with a volume of approximately 2 million cubic metres of rock. The spillway’s height is 40 metres AHD. This design of the current dam allows for further raising, if necessary, through the addition of gates to the top of the spillway. The current capacity of the dam is 777,000 megalitres.

The Gladstone Area Water Board with the Gladstone Port Authority has begun a breeding program Mangrove Jack and mullet for stocking in Lake Awoonga. Approximately 300,000 fish are released into Lake Awoonga each year (200,000 barramundi and 100,000 mullet, and small numbers of mangrove jack). The fish are bred at our purpose-built fish hatchery, operated jointly by the Gladstone Area Water Board and the Gladstone Port Authority. The hatchery is one of the largest breeders of barramundi fingerlings in Queensland and our mangrove jack breeding program has resulted in Lake Awoonga holding the largest stocks in Australia with over 13,000 released.

Since 1996 over two million barramundi fingerlings and 340,000 mullet fingerlings have been released into Lake Awoonga. Barramundi in the 10-25kg range are regularly caught from the lake. the largest barramundi caught to date was 29.8kg. The fish you may encounter in Lake Awoonga are: Agassiz’s Glass Perch, Banded Grunter, Barramundi, Bony Bream, Eastern Rainbowfish, Eeltail catfish, Fly-specked Hardyhead, Forktail Catfish, Gudgeon, Long-finned Eel, Longtom (Alligator Gar), Mouth Almighty, Sea Mullet, Snub-nose Garfish, Spangled Perch. (Present in low numbers: Hyrtl’s Tandan, Mangrove Jack, Saratoga, Silver Perch, Sleepy Cod, Sooty Grunter & Yellowbelly)

The Board has a continuing fishery monitoring program in place using net surveys, to evaluate the success of the restocking effort. Although not deliberately stocked, redclaw crayfish have become well established at the lake.

The Barramundi closed season does not apply to Lake Awoonga.