NT Fishing Report
with Alex Julius 16 December
Last month I published some letters and photos of metre-plus barra – aka metreys – including one from Justin Jones of Obsession Barra Fishing Safaris.
In brief, Justin posed the question: what is the biggest wild barra caught in the salt and the fresh this year?
He also entered two, a 17kg (107cm) fish from Corroboree and a 27kg-plus barra from Chambers Bay. It’s taken three weeks to get a couple of yarns and pics in, but two have arrived this last week.
The first from Fred Munro is a great story which I’m compelled to run in full:
“Hi Alex, after reading your article in the NT News on metre-plus barras a while back, I thought I would send this in.
A couple of weekends ago my next door neighbour Tim Pel and I went on a spur of the moment fishing trip down to the mouth of the South Alligator.
Tim is one-third of the current Kakadu Klash Champion Team so I figured I was in good company. We hit the boat ramp at about one in the morning and motored our way down to the mouth where we camped on his boat for the night. The next day’s fishing was pretty good as we worked the creek mouths and rock-bars picking up several legal-size barras and dropping just as many. Towards evening, we started getting amongst them again and, while Tim was picking up barra, I was pulling in rock cod. One was caught on a Reidys B52 which it just about managed to swallow whole.
I spent more time retrieving the lure from its gullet than I did landing it.
After the sun went down, we switched to poppers and that’s when the fun began.
With a three metre croc as a witness, Tim hooked on to a beauty, and with him reeling it in and issuing numerous orders on how to handle a net, he landed a silver barra measuring in at 105cm. We duly photographed it and then released it.
Twenty minutes later, as Tim had just untangled a bird’s nest in his baitcaster, he was onto another big one. He landed this one as well with a little help from yours truly who by now had been told everything there was to be told about handling a net.
This one measured in at 100.5cm and once again was a beautiful chrome saltwater barra weighing in at close to the 20 kg mark.
We released this one as well and kept fishing. I managed to hook up a horse and, after fighting it for 20 minutes, it found the only submerged mangrove in the river for miles and dropped the lure by swimming through it. That’s in my one that got away category.
We celebrated a good day’s fishing later that night by polishing off a bottle of Makers Mark Bourbon and the best part of a bottle of Port as we anchored in a sheltered part of the river and camped for the night.
The next morning, feeling a little worse for wear, we made our way to another creek mouth and started flicking lures again.
After half an hour of nothing, I had smoke break and then decided to give it another try.
I stood up and said to Tim: ‘There’ll be one under that overhanging mangrove there.’ As soon as my lure hit the water, it was on.
I managed to land a 78cm silver and pink barra which made up for the disappointment of losing a big one the night before.All in all, a good fishing trip and one that went a long way as to re-enforcing why we live here.”
The next email from Brev Lawless of RAAF Darwin Fishing Club was short but the barra certainly wasn’t:
“Alex, here ya go. How does this measure up for the NT News comp?
This 132cm big girl was caught and successfully released by Mr Jamie Ware on Wednesday 27 October 2010. Jamie's fish was caught on an 8kg Wilson barra stick at Port Roper, during an annual seven-day pilgrimage.”
If you have a big barra yarn, either freshwater or salt water, email
NT Fisheries Minister, Kon Vatskalis, has announced new regulations for the Daly and Mary Rivers.
A reduced bag limit for the Daly River is no surprise – it’s now three barra in possession instead of five. Also, the bag limit on the Mary River has been increased from two to three.
“The reduction in the barramundi limit on the Daly from five to three will help maintain the Daly River as a premier fishing destination, while the complementary change from two to three on the Mary River will align controls between these two iconic areas,” the Minister said in his media release.
Remember also that the general barra bag limit for the rest of the Territory is five in possession.
There’s been a lot of discussion around the traps on bait fishing with cherabin on the Daly.
Well, that’s been addressed too: there are now possession limits of 10 cherabin per person and a boat limit of 30 cherabin.
There are also new pot regulations for cherabin fishing – only pots designs that do not keep on fishing or entangle wildlife if lost or forgotten, such as Opera House-style pots, will be permitted.
Go to www.nt.gov.au/d/Fisheries for full details.
Brev Lawless with a worthy entry to the biggest salt water barra of 2010 – 132cm Roper River fish.
Tim Pel with one of two metreys he caught down the mouth of the South Alligator recently.
