BLOG: DIY barra

IT’s good to be back on the blog trail again for 2011. I hope you have been slaying the fish over the summer months. Some of the reports coming out of Sydney have been nothing short of sensational. It seems there are pelagic fish everywhere at present.

Just to give you a recap, I wrote a blog some time ago expounding the virtues of DIY adventure trips to far-flung destinations and I have recently returned from one myself. While the Top End is far from an exotic destination these days, the fact that two southerners ventured north to fish NT’s big rivers in the middle of one of Australia’s worst cyclones was an interesting experience to say the least!

The good news is we had a break in the weather for the first half of the mission and our road trip to the South Alligator River, two hours drive east from Darwin, produced quality barra in big numbers. Maybe I listened to too many rumours but I had fairly low expectations about barra fishing during the wet season and was expecting the water to be gushing hard off the plains and basically be unfishable. I wanted to fish offshore during this excursion but prevailing nor-easterly winds put pay to that game plan by providing three metre wind chop. We needed to head upstream to escape the wind but in my mind, we'd be escaping the fish as well.

I was pleasantly surprised then when we found the river to be in great shape. The water had only begun to trickle off the flood plains and for those who have not seen a flood plain in full swing, it’s an awesome sight with a vast array of wildlife – and monster crocs.

While the run offs and snake drains hadn't begun to fire, we found barra holding on isolated snags just off the bank. In three days we caught well over 70 barra, which was a pleasant surprise and welcomed by my mate Christian Orsini who before this trip was a barra virgin. Christian handled a baitcaster with aplomb and really loved the challenge of hooking barra on hard bods. After the first day I packed away the plastics and concentrated on hard bods as well. While I have never admitted it before I had far more fun with a baitcaster in hand than a spin rod chasing barra. Nilsmaster Spearheads and Manns Stretch 10+s were by far the best producing lures for the trip.

After our three day adventure, we headed back to Darwin to fish the Harbour. While the conditions changed for the worse and the fishing slowed accordingly, we did hook a few good jacks and goldies for the table.

It was an interesting trip full of highs and lows. The one thing that did give Christian and myself a high degree of satisfaction was that we did it on our own. Mission complete!