The five fish with a bounty on their capture remained at large for the entire event, with not one of them being seen - until now!

Local fisherman Steve Hounsell has long been harvesting pest European Carp from the waters of the local dam in his role as a professional fisherman, and called the Inland Waterways OzFish Committee to let them know the tag number and location of where he managed to catch and release one of the prize fish from years gone by.

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"We always try and avoid the natives when harvesting European Carp, but we safely catch and release the odd one from time to time," Mr Hounsell said.

"The tag had Matt's phone number on it, so I took a few snaps of the fish and tag before releasing it back into the dam, a few kilometers above Mookerawa."

Steve has netted many tonnes of invasive Carp from Burrendong over the years and said that some of the pest species appeared to have spawned when the water rose in lake Burrendong back in April, earlier this year.

"The biggest one we have so far this year was 9.1 kilograms, and some are now starting to drop eggs when we handle them now," Mr Hounsell said.

Several tonnes of invasive carp were caught and culled from Burrendong and the surrounding waterways in the past few years, with a great number of fish rescued from waterways where they'd become stuck following 2016 flood levels.

The 2018 Easter Burrendong Classic, from which the five highly prized catches originated, was a huge success for the region's fishing community, with a massive 15% rise in participation and attendance over the previous year.

The five yellowbelly were sought after by a crowd of 1561 fishermen during the event, with thousands more attendees arriving over the course of the event.

While many tried their luck, almost all left empty handed, with none of the five fish with bounties on their heads caught during the event, and few catches otherwise in what was a gruelling challenge for the fishermen.

The event was the ninth in a row to be held at Burrendong and saw the OzFish River Repair bus put to good use for one of it's first, large-scale jobs, cleaning up huge stretches of water in the lead-up and planting several hundred trees.

It is still unclear if COVID-19 will prevent the Easter Burrendong Classic from again being run in 2021, after drought and COVID saw it cancelled two years prior.