It looks like there were barra being caught all over the place over the past week or so.
Not wanting to miss out on the action, last week I managed to slip out for a fish down the Daly River with mates Geoff Bird and Dave Russell.
I had one favourite creek in mind a fair way down the river, but I can tell you it was difficult not to pull up and try some nice feeder creek colour changes along the way.
This was more so given the number of bent rods and high-flying barra we witnessed on the way down.
According to the Bureau of Metreology website, the river height was steady at about 1.6m above the old crossing.
This helped explain all the nice colour changes as the river had dropped several metres in the past fortnight, thus sucking out tannin-coloured swamp water and all the tasty barra tucker that flows with it.
We arrived at the creek to find another boat already in position.
It was old mate Trevor Robb who is back running his Darwin Sportfishing Safaris guiding business, and he greeted us warmly.
There was none of this “we were here first” attitude which some anglers think gives them the right and justification to claim sole fishing privileges over a creek during the Runoff.
As long as you ask nicely if you can also fish a given spot, and not impede the other boat by intruding upon where the anglers aboard are casting, there should be no issue.
When there is an issue, it can lead to what I call “River Rage”, and I remember hearing of a couple of incidents over the years which culminated with fisticuffs back at the boat ramp.
With Trev were two clients and one them hooked up as I positioned my own boat, spot-locking with the electric outboard.
Nowadays, I’m set up with Lowrance Active Target 2 units and HDS16 Pro sounders.
As I lowered the Active Target pole, Trev called out: “You won’t see the bottom Al – there are too many fish!”
Wasn’t that music to our ears?
This top Darwin professional fishing guide was right of course: the sonar fired up and straight away depicted at least 50 – maybe 100 – barra swimming around in the colour change flowing out of the creek mouth.
Dave was the first to hook up, mainly because he was the first to get a cast away.
It was a legal barra, well into the 60cm range.
It was silver too and not a swamp dog, and Dave claimed it for the ice box as both he and Geoff were keen on taking some tasty barra home.
One of the things we’ve all learnt with forward-facing sonar is that, just because you can clearly see fish milling about, it doesn’t mean they will necessarily bite.
There are all sorts of factors that come into play: they are focused on a particular food source such as tiny baitfish, your lure presentations don’t “match-the-hatch”, your lures are not swimming at the depth the fish are, the action of your lure is not enticing them, the colour is wrong, or they just might not be hungry.
However, if you are seeing fish with your forward-facing sonar, at least you know they are there, you know where to cast to and, if you keep trying different lures and different approaches, eventually they might come on the bite.
Dave’s barra must have been a willing one, because it was several minutes before the action for us really started to happen.
Trevor’s boat was in the prime position – which was fair enough – and he’d fished the creek with huge success the day before, so he had the pattern wired.
His clients hooked a lot of fish around 60-65cm on soft plastics about 10cm long.
We were out wider but were catching our fair share – mainly on hard bodies like Classic 120s.
Especially after the tide started to move in, we began seeing bigger fish with the Active Target and, soon enough, our lures were connecting.
We landed at least half a dozen barra in the 80s and 90s, the biggest a splendid 97cm fish for Geoff.
They fought damn hard too, catapulting out of the water all over the place.
Geoff hooked but lost an even bigger fish: a metery for sure.
Trevor’s boat landed the fish of the day: a beautifully-condition 104cm barra for John O’Hagan.
We were so engrossed with our own catches that we didn’t even realise Trev’s boat had landed the metery until Trev called out asking if he could borrow my brag mat as he’d left his at home.
At that stage, they were tied to a tree right at the creek mouth, so I motored over on electric to hand him the brag mat, and of course take a few pics too.
Trevor was down for a few days, but ours was a day trip so I left the brag mat with him when we packed up to leave mid-afternoon.
I had no doubt he would put it to good use.
A perfect colour change flows past the boat as Geoff Bird nets a Daly River keeper for Dave Russell.
Big fish moved up with the tide and Geoff Bird nailed a sweet 97cm barra on a Classic 120 in the gold bleeding mullet colour.
