Alex's Column 12 February 2026
- 52 minutes ago
- 3 min read
The iconic Daly River reached major flood levels this week, an event that seems to happen at least once every 10 years.
Of even more significance to the vast fraternity of Top End barra anglers will be the aftermath of the wet season as it begins to wind down and the rivers start to fall.
It’s interesting to reflect on past wet seasons that brought the Daly up to similar flood levels, and the fishing that resulted afterwards.
Showing my age, as I’m prone to do, in the early ‘80s, two mates and I launched from the Daly River Road just below the Police Station.
Of course, just getting there back then was a right-old mission: rugged dirt road all the way from the then Stuart Highway, endless challenging washouts and several deep-water creek crossings were all par for the course back then.
The river was a raging torrent and we parked the old Tojo ute and trailer on high ground outside the old Daly River Pub just in case it came up more.
My boat then was a 4.3m Stessl centre-console powered by a 60hp outboard, a rig I had towed all the way around Australia before settling in Darwin in 1978.
Our trip plan was to head right down to the river mouth and swag out for a few days on a commercial barra boat operated by Grant Jessup, a friend of mine.
My two mates were John Haenke and Wayne Eccles, both of whom had flown in from interstate.
Mind you, John had lived in Darwin a few years before and knew his way around barra water.
Finding Grant’s boat was also a mission as it was one of 22 commercial barra boats anchored inside and outside the Daly River mouth.
The river sure got a gill-net hammering back then.
In fact, the creek known nowadays as “Anson One” was poached relentlessly by all the pros who took turns setting their nets illegally right across the mouth.
One day during the trip, Grant said to us: “You blokes can go and fish in the creek tomorrow as it’s my turn to net it so I’ll stay away.”
It was an offer we couldn’t refuse, although we only caught a few small barra – which is a different story to the great fishing on offer in recent years at Anson One.
Mind you, as budding fly fishermen, both John and I caught our first barramundi on fly in the creek.
However, we mainly headed upriver each day, fishing feeder creek colour changes in the lower reaches.
One memorable session was in a bay about the size of a suburban house block.
The entrance was quite narrow where flood waters had broken through into the river, basically forming a new creek.
We tied up inside the mouth and spread out inside the bay casting lures.
It was quite an experience actually as there were half a dozen or more waterfalls cascading into the bay from all sides.
It was an extraordinary sight, and the cacophony of water coming off the floodplain and tumbling into the bay, and the billowing blanket of white froth that swirled around inside the bay before flowing out the mouth is a memory still deeply etched in my mind, even after more than four decades.
As for the fishing, well it was just simply mind-blowing.
There were endless barra stacked at the bottom of each waterfall.
The term “boofing” was unknown back then, but the sound of surface-feeding barra devouring whatever was flowing off the floodplain was deafening.
We were mainly using 4-inch Nilsmasters and, as you can imagine, it really was a fish a cast.
Around that time, I dabbled in making my own lures.
I remember standing on the bank next to my boat and testing the action of a home-made lure by swimming it back and forth at my feet.
Kapow! A chunky 80cm barra crashed it, dousing me from head to toe with frothy water in the process.
We fished until mid-afternoon, laughing and totally immersed in the incredible action of high-flying barra and the mind-boggling vista of a new creek coming to life.
It was time to head back down the river to our mother boat while there was still plenty of daylight.
But before we left, we named the spot “Waterfall Creek”, which is what it goes by to this day.
