Fishing points has to be the most consistent way of finding barra anywhere around Darwin and Bynoe Harbour. Virtually any point with a bit of dirty water on it at low tide is worth a cast, and that goes double if the point sits at the down-current end of a long shallow mud flat.
The thing most people get wrong is looking for something impressive. Some of the most productive points in Darwin Harbour are dead boring to look at. No dramatic rock bar, no big timber, nothing that photographs well. What they have is bait, sitting there on the low tide, hiding from everything that wants to eat it. The barra work that out long before we do.
Why the ordinary ones work
Bait needs cover. When the tide drops off a flat, a point is often the only cover left within reach, so that is where the bait ends up. Add one stick, one bit of gravel, one isolated rock, and it concentrates further — fish will hold beside a single upright object for no reason you can see, and bait does the same.
That is really all a point is doing: giving bait somewhere to be, in a spot where barra can pin it against the shallows.
The bottom of the tide
Right at the bottom of a spring low, you are far more likely to catch a barra on a muddy or rocky point than in the mouth of a drain or a bigger creek. That is worth knowing, because the drain mouth is where most people are looking.
This is skinny fishing. The boat will sit in about a foot of water, and you are casting up into a hundred or two hundred millimetres and dragging back out. It looks wrong and it is not. Barra will swim on their side across a mud flat if there is a feed in it — first one in, last one out.
Slow is the theme. A three or four inch paddle tail or a wedge tail, rolled straight and slow so the tail keeps working, does most of it. In dirty shallow water a jig head with a small blade underneath — not on top — adds a bit of vibration and throws some light about, which helps them find it. That set-up with a soft plastic on it has been dynamite in exactly those conditions.
The other end of the tide
Rocky points are also one of the few places worth fishing when the water is too high for flats and drains — say above about 4.3 metres, once it starts pushing up into the tree line.
Rocky points often run right up to the high-tide mark, the back of the beach or the mangrove line. So the tiniest bit of falling tide starts loosening bait out of its hiding spots, and that switches the barra on earlier there than anywhere else.
Years ago, guiding out of a mothership, we used to see barra sitting in among the big sprawling mangrove roots doing absolutely nothing. You could not buy a bite. Then the tide would turn — you could not even tell it had — and they were suddenly up and about and you would start catching them straight away. They know. They are just waiting.
As the tide keeps falling and the current builds, a rocky point starts developing saddles and pinch points of its own, so you end up with two or three separate bits of hunting ground in the one spot.
Pressure points
This is the one worth learning properly.
On the incoming, some points split the current so cleanly that a colour change forms and holds on both sides of them. Not the brief smear you get at a creek mouth that washes away as the tide builds — these hold, because of the angle the point faces into the current.
That matters for a simple reason. Once the tide is up and everyone else has decided it is too high and headed for the ramp, these points are still fishing. The barra sitting on them are not following bait up the creeks like the fish at the drain mouths do. They are parked, waiting to ambush the bigger schools of mullet flooding back in as the tide builds speed.
Find a pressure point with an overhanging tree, a snag, or a bit of rock or gravel on it and you are well and truly onto something. A collapsed bank with a point on it facing into fast incoming current does the same job.
They are easy to pick once you know the shape: a point at a creek mouth that faces down-current on the run-out, so that the incoming tide hits it square and splits either side. Some systems are covered in them. Others — Darwin and Bynoe included — barely have one, because the land just does not lie that way. It is worth an hour on the charts finding out which you have.
The best fish we have seen off one came on a half tide incoming, well after everyone would have called it a day: a hundred and seventeen centimetres, in about a metre of water, on a hard-twitched shallow hard body. Short sharp rips and then a decent pause.
What to throw at them
Not much thought required, honestly. Fish sitting on a pressure point are there to feed, and they have never struck me as fussy about lures or presentation.
Quieter and subtler beats loud. Bombers rather than rattling classics. Weedless plastics earn their keep because you will be throwing up under overhanging branches and want to get in there without hanging up.
What does matter is not spooking them. Though even that has its limits — we once had a barra sitting so hard against a tree that it very nearly got its eyebrows clipped by the electric motor, and it ate a gold bomber that dropped on its head while we were retrieving snagged lures. They are properly switched on when they are in there.
Finding them from the couch
Almost all of this work happens before you leave. Google Earth and your charts will show you muddy points, rocky points and the down-current shapes that make a pressure point, and the aerials tell you what the chart will not: where the beach runs straight down to rock instead of into mangrove and mud.
One extra thing to plan around is wind. A point that is unfishable in a stiff northerly might be perfect in a westerly, and vice versa. Pick out a couple that face different ways and you will nearly always have one that is clean enough to fish.
Then it is just time on the water. The specific spots are yours to find — but the shape repeats everywhere, and once you can see it on a screen you can walk into a system you have never fished and know roughly where to start.
Common questions
Why do barra hold on points?
When the tide drops off a flat, a point is often the only cover left within reach, so that is where the bait ends up. Barra use it to pin that bait against the shallows. The point does not need to look impressive — some of the most productive ones in Darwin Harbour are visually dull.
What tide is best for fishing points for barramundi?
Two windows. Right at the bottom of a spring low, a muddy or rocky point will out-fish a drain mouth. And rocky points are one of the few spots worth fishing when the water is too high for flats and drains, above about 4.3 metres.
What is a pressure point?
A point that splits the incoming current so cleanly that a colour change forms and holds on both sides of it, rather than washing away like the smear at a creek mouth. They keep fishing after the tide is too high for everything else, because the barra there sit and ambush bait flooding back in rather than following it up the creeks.
What lure should you use on a shallow muddy point?
Slow-rolled three or four inch paddle tails or wedge tails, so the tail keeps working at low speed. In dirty shallow water a jig head with a small blade underneath adds vibration and throws a bit of light, which helps them find it.
Rather learn it on the water?
This is what the safaris are for.
Three to eight days, one guide, and the same water you have been reading about. Everyone fishes with Watty.