Fishing on Arvos — 4 February 2026

It is time for some midweek fishing on a Wednesday, afternoon, Rocky Edwards, shopgirl these days at fishing and outdoor world. Here in the studio. Hello, Rock. Hello. And we've got Captain Watty, I think from the waiting room at the doctors on the phone.

Hello, Watty. Yeah, hi, girls. No, I've just got out and old fishing injury, I think. Got to go in and get the knee fixed up in a couple of weeks, so that'll be good to get done before runoff starts. Is it really a fishing injury?

Are you just staying around the message? been around for 25 years, so I'm not too sure. Probably footy or something. Yeah, who knows?

Okay, because I do have quite a significant fishing injury to talk about with both of you in a moment. Talk to local mum, Kylie on the Brekie show on Monday after her young fellow was kind of speared with a shark hook down at rapid creek. I think you've heard that, Watty. But there's some other pressing stuff to get to first, which is all this water that is just pumping through the Daly River at the moment and more on its way.

Rocky, this can only mean good things for the runoff. This is exactly what we want and what we need. And I don't know that we've had this good a wet season for January in coming into February in decades. So with all this water, that means that our runoff is going to be pretty exciting, because there'll be a lot more water to run off, so to speak.

Explain for those who don't know what the runoff is. So what happens at this time of year with all this rain, the whole floodplain will fill up. It'll be like an inland sea, you'll see it'll go from the rivers right through to the coast. And all that water's going to have to come off.

So as it starts to drop, that creates these little waterfalls and in gutters and stuff like that. And of course, everything comes off the floodplains, all the nutrients, all the little bait fish and that is what entices our barriers to come up the river. rivers and it's just, is it, it's just a barra that we're talking about with runoff excitement, is it? Well, there's other fish you can catch.

Like we often get a lot of threadies and sometimes even in the Daly, we've caught the odd small dewey and snapper and mangrove jack, all that sort of stuff, but really it's all about the barrow. Are you rubbing your little fishing hands together, ingly, Watty, with all this water? Yeah, absolutely. I am.

Yeah. And there's actually been a direct correlation found by one of our PhD students up at Charles Darwin Uni that the Maoraine, the more fish sort of thing. So, yeah, like it's really good and especially at a time when we're looking at getting rid of some gill nets out the front of these rivers as well. It's going to be a really great start to that process, but yeah, barra Threadfinn is the main go.

But at the same time, everything benefits from it. We'll do a little river check down the Daly ahead in the next half hour. I have just seen that. The chief minister will be on drive this afternoon here in Darwin on the flooding and those evacuations.

Last week we started talking about team names, because this is like part of the reason I want to get into fishing, because I love a wordplay. What do you came up with? Can you say them on the radio? Yeah, yeah, of course.

They're all, they're all so, maybe not socially acceptable, but they're all okay to put on a sticker on a boat. Um, and I didn't... Do you have to get that, don't you? You have to get your stickers approved by someone? It's not like a number plate on a car.

No. Yeah, no, you don't get, they're not government issued, luckily. Otherwise, um, wasted semen probably wouldn't have got over the line about the MVR. No.

Why is that? Explain that one to me. No. Well, I'm thinking in boats, see?

That's the wasted part. What was the other funny one that you had? Are these teams that you've been on or are they just... Oh, I can't remember.

It's in our chat. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I mean, there's some really cool ones travelling all around the world. The US has got a really good funny boat name culture as well.

Do they really? There you go. Hey, well, Rocky's come prepared. She did her homework, Watty.

pull up the group chat and find the other one that you mentioned. What are the few that you've scribbled down, Rocky? One of my favourites last year was in the Barra Nationals, was a team called Bin Chicken Battleship. Yeah.

And they didn't do well. They didn't catch much, but they were certainly having a good time. Some of them are very hard to say because they, yeah, they probably should have been censored. But there's things like, well, let me have a look.

Lunatic charters. Yeah, righto. On the chew. Staunch crab, tight hookers.

Yeah, unsinkable too. That was your other one. Oh, that's my other one. Yeah, that's right.

Unsinkable too. What's that in? What's that a word play on? Well, what happened to Unsinkable One? That's what were the question is?

Did it sink? I thought it was a movie title. I get it now. I was like, ah, tickle one.

It's sunk, got it. All right. These are good. I've got it, before I become a proper fisherwoman.

I'll come up with my team names. There haven't been a lot of reports because of all the water. It's just too wet to get out there, except for the Colverts, and I did have a report from Talia from St. John's ambulance on Brekie earlier this week. Oh, over the weekend.

I'd probably say, hey, fishing with my daughter. She really enjoys because she's 5 and she really enjoys getting out, flicking my chalverts and trying to catch a barrot. So I believe a few people, of course, I'm over the weekend and yeah, for quite a lot of joy to us, watching they learn how to flick a rod and not throw all over the garden. Very nice.

Did she catch anything? Unfortunately, not aside from a couple of treats. Yeah, did she lose any lures? Thankfully not this time.

Oh, great work. Archie and I lost 7 in about 2 days. So you're winning. No $10000 fish, but it sounds like you've had some good reports.

Any idea where the Culverts have been popping off, Talia? Well, the one we have just down the road here on Hopewell, so that I believe 2 fish were caught out of there this weekend. But also just a reminder that if it's flooded, forget it. I believe there are about 3 or 4 cars that went into the floodways over the weekend as well.

So please don't cross flooded waterways. So a lot of people have been hitting the culverts, but a lot of bad driving and crossing a flooded waterways as well. Are they the reports you've been getting at the Shop Rock? Yeah, absolutely.

There's everybody's polishing their hooks at the moment because it's also been too windy to get even out on the harbour. I was having a look yesterday afternoon on the high tide and it was whitecapping everywhere. So some reports of people turning up at the boat ramps and going, ooh, that's not going to work and just turn around and go home. Like Cliff Jetty was taking an absolute battering over the weekend.

I don't know if the surfers have been out, but the kite surfers have certainly been enjoying it. What have you? I mean, have you heard of any Colverts? You got a few around your place, haven't you?

Yeah, that's right. We're at rural, and there's always kids riding their pushies around, I guess, after school now, so that's nice. But one sort of group of COVID said goes under the radar, a little bit, I think, most people sort of head out the Arnham Highway, but the out to Dundee, there's, you know, you've got the Charlotte and the only, and a couple of other good sized creeks there, and there's perhaps a bit less traffic there as well. So maybe a bit safer.

And also some little sidetracks you can go up the side of those creeks a little bit if it's not too wet, but I blasted down a Dundee for a kid's birthday party last weekend and every little water crossing on the road on the Dundee road had had water over it within the last 12 hours. So that's something people really need to be really careful of, is that that aquaplaning thing that goes on, if you hit one of those things that's just got 5 or 10 centimetres of water on it, and down a daily is pretty bad for it, and now that Dundee road is a shocker too. I did that on Lee Point Road the other day because the... Yeah, right, yeah. The stormwater drains were just filled up with leaf litter and yeah, nearly lost control.

The bad one that happens around Mount Bundy as well, which you would never expect water to go over the road in this particular spot. But if you're going through there in the dark time, early morning and it's been raining that night. That's very dangerous, that ones. That's a sneaky one.

I know that one. Yeah, I've hit that one sort of sideways and luckily I didn't have the boat on that day, but yeah, it's enough to sort of send a shiver down your spawn. Oh, it's all the stuff you got to think about when you're out and about to go fishing. Captain Watty from Barefoot Fishing Safaris and Rocky Edwards for a bit of midweek fishing.

The other issue that's come up this week. again, it was on Brekie on Monday. I was having a chat with our roaming reporter, Lil Watkins, who's done a bit of fishing. I dont know if you heard Rocker 1st Fishing Adventure.

Her mate landed a metery. So she's doing all right, but she had a story about her going to the loo on the boat, her boat ablutions, boat... ablutions. Yeah, ablutions, going to the toilet. What happened to you?

I went for the scariest we of my life a few weekends ago with this super skipper, Ian, and it was out at Shady Camp. And, you know, usually we just kind of, you know, lean over the side of the boat, but this time, no, no, no, no, no, no. It was all hands on deck. I was I literally had to squat down on the platform. There was, we were like debating, do we do the bucket?

Do we do whatnot? And we had like one spotter. We were like banked up, we were looking for crocs the whole time. And I don't think I've had a stream louder. Because you were going so fast. Yes, yes, I was like pumping it out.

I'm looking at haemorrhoids in your... Oh, little... Rocky is nodding along. Rocky understands. You're probably better placed to give Lil some advice as a fellow female of the species.

Have you got any tips for her? Well, look, I used to do what we called the gun or funnel where you lean over the gunnel. But, you know, as more crocs become more prevalent and you start to get a bit concerned. Um, there was one incident where, um, I won't tell you which one of us did it, but one of us had to gunnel funnel and was getting a bit wary and obviously didn't lean over the gunnel enough that it ended up running down the gunnel, hence the name gunnel funnel.

So we've decided since then. We've had a few snappy incidences that the bucket. That is the safest way to go. Now, lots of people use these things called she wees and whatever.

Look I tried one. Don't try it until you've been in the shower with it a few times and really, but they don't work. You know, if you're busting and you're going, it just goes everywhere. You end up peeing your pants.

Just get on the bucket. Just get on the bucket. Okay, so have a bucket for the fish and a bucket for the toilet. Watty?

Any advice? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've just got a few mental images trying to get out of my head before I can say too much. But no, yeah, bucket is the way to go, ultimately.

The trick is to not have, well, if you have a steel bucket. Make sure you put a bit of water in it 1st otherwise it sounds like a fire hose going into the bottom of the bucket and farts echo in buckets too. Just to maintain a little bit of decorum on the boat, to dampen the sounds, just to add a little nice little muscle. water.

Yeah, okay. That's really nice, etiquette. A lot of old fellas who struggle with their balance and perhaps a bit of bladder control these days too will carry a little bucket and you just stand up leaning in the boat and then tip the tip the bucket out as well. They didn't do their pelvic floor exercises.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, I mean, you've got the other thing that blocks up the blokes we stream as well, a bit the old prostate, but... The buckets helpful.

All right. We have to leave it there. Rocky Edwards and Captain Watty from Barefoot, fishing safaris. I will catch you again next week.