Alex's Column 8 January 2026
- NAFA
- Jan 22
- 3 min read
With all the rain over the past week, it’s no surprise that at least a few of the Top End’s big tidal rivers are rising and the floodplains are holding good water.
Take the Adelaide River, for example. Upstream from Goat Island last weekend, some feeder creeks were running inland and not into the river.
Surprisingly, that hasn’t stopped the barra from biting at the creek mouths.
Against all popular theory, some terrific barra were caught at these creeks when normally they don’t fish well until the river starts falling and the creeks run a colour change into the main stream.
Downriver on the Adelaide, inside the Wiltshire creeks, some nice barra were caught at the end of the neap tide phase.
That’s where I was with friends early last week – we caught barra to 86cm.
Another spot that has been fishing okay is the barrage at Shady camp.
Anglers casting straight off the barrage were catching fish, but I’m not sure of the current status as plenty of water has been flowing down the Mary River and the barrage could well be submerged.
I’m told that, from the air, you can see a bunch of different tannin-coloured run-offs along Chambers Bay that look like stained pockets along the foreshore.
It’s no secret to anglers who regularly fish the Mary River system that the most number of really big barra caught in the NT each year come from the mouths of Sampan Creek and Tommycut Creek – which together form the Mary River delta mouth – the coastal creeks in Chambers Bay either side of the Mary mouth, and the mouth of the Wildman River.
The best times to fish these locations are during breaks in the wet season and during the Runoff, so the timing is perfect or at the very least looming.
Surprisingly, the South Alligator River hasn’t flooded to the extent you might expect, and more rain is needed there to get things happening.
Once that happens, most likely you’ll need to monitor the position of the big mud bar which usually props in front of the South Alligator boat ramp early in the season.
Plenty of anglers have been caught high and dry on this mud bar over the years.
It’s a different story down the Daly River which earlier this week was 7m over the crossing.
However, with most creeks flowing in rather than out, the fishing has been mediocre, although that could change very soon.
If you’d like to keep an eye on the rainfall and river heights on a daily basis, then you’ll find the Bureau of Metreology’s website (www.bom.gov.au) useful.
Like so many keen anglers up here, over the years I’ve developed an intense interest in the weather, particularly around this time of year when we all have our fingers crossed for a big wet season and the great barra fishing that follows during the Runoff.
Its comprehensive new website is an amazing storage of information and explanation – that is, once you learn how to navigate it – so you can keep yourself right up to date with highs, lows, rainfall intensity, river heights…you name it.
For Darwin anglers, a particularly useful page is the Darwin Radar map which tells you where it is raining, the different intensities of the rainfall and the direction and speed that it is moving, and the images are updated every few minutes.
Just download the BOM App.
From a strictly safety perspective, how good is that you can check for adverse weather before heading offshore for a day’s fishing.
It’s one thing to head inland aware that you’re going to get belted by rain – no danger there – but offshore is a different proposition. You’d be mad to go to sea in a trailer boat knowing there were widespread rainstorms hovering.
