Bag a Barra — 13 September 2019

Okay, let's head to the Top End, to Bag a Barra, with Glenn, what he wants, thanks to Barefoot Fishing Safaris. Uh-huh. You like that, Watty? Hey, that sounds a bit too flash for me, mate.

Oh, yeah, good is it? Let's just play that again, mate. We've got our man here. Let's just listen to this.

How good is it? This is stop. Okay, let's head to the Top End to Bag a Barra with Glenn what he wants, thanks to Barefoot Fishing Safaris. I love it.

That's got to be one of our best intros. We the real deal now, mate. Oh, you are the real deal. Now, listen, you're going to talk about a beach today named after Mick Dundee.

Dundee Beach. How good is it? And look, we actually had Frank from the Walkabout Creek Hotel on the show today. So, mate, it's like the Mick Dundee show today.

Yeah, how's that very coincidence? It's a funny thing we get asked a lot if it was, if it was the chicken or the egg sort of thing, but yeah, a reason it will tell you that it was, it was sort of named after that, after that, that famous character. So, yeah, it's cool. Yeah, that's good.

So, Dundee Beach. So tell us where it is. How you get there, what do you do there? and hopefully you come home with plenty of fish, yeah? Yeah, that's right.

So it's Dundee's probably our premiere, I suppose, Barra, Bluewater auction close to Darwin. It's about an hour and a half drive from the city. Um, down Bitumen Roads all the way these days and um, and you get to a, a west facing beach, which um, which is sort of a gateway to, you know, the best blue water fission and um, and just down the, down the, um, run a bit is um, is a couple of big rivers and coastal creeks where we do a lot of barrow fishing. So, this time of year, as we go, sort of out of our, out of our dry season pattern and and into, into the buildup, where we're expecting our winds to drop right off and the sea to come right down, we can, we're sort of specialising in the, in the big barrister, on the tides as well as our, as well as the blue water and pelagic, because the, the sea goes flat and we can blast straight out there, once we're done with the big barrier, you know?

So it's a, it's a good, it's a good place for having to go at these sort of mixed species fishing. Oh, mate, you got me. I mean, whenever you're talking about this, I'm picturing it in my mind. I'm thinking, how good does it sound there? Look, here's a question for you because I know some fish species depending, you know, you catch some at night, you catch some in winter, you catch different ones in summer.

What's the go with the barramundi? Are they just all year round? What's the go? They are definitely all year round between our tactics and techniques a lot throughout the year just to match up to sort of their behaviours.

So um starting at the start of the year. Obviously, we're in the runoff time. That's probably our peak season for doing it. We're targeting fish at the mouths of creeks.

They're congregated fish and they're really actively heavily feeding, so it becomes a bit easier. The dry season we go through into, they, they sort of, they, they spread out again along the coastlines, and then we go into our sort of shallow water site, casting, hunting along the edges for them, and then, and then the buildup time comes along, and, and they start thinking about reproduction again, so they come into the mouths of the rivers, and they'll start to aggressively feed, and, and the big fish sort of turn up out of the blue, and on the right tides, and the right wind, and with your tongue in the right place, you can, you know, put a hook in one, get that photo of a lifetime. Yeah, mate, absolutely. I've seen you've got a couple of those photos as well.

And mate, I guess it depends on the size of them. I mean, are they great fish to catch? Do you? I mean, a lot of fun?

Can they take a while to reel in some of the biggies? Yeah, definitely. Look, it's a, like any fish, they, they sort of, um, they've got their own personal traits and stuff, and everyone knows that the Barrett jumps and things, and, and to me, like getting a, getting a fish jump, and, and it's an over 80 or 75 centimetres, a big barrier, you know, and, and they jump and carry on. It's probably not so much the strength of their fight, but sort of the voraciousness and the intensiveness of it at the time.

Why don't they take you a couple of minutes to get him in, but it seems like a lifetime. You know, you, you're sort of, um, you're just hoping that everything goes your way. Mate, I know, look, I know you'll probably give me the obvious answer to this, but when you take people out on your safaris, they usually guaranteed to go home with a bit of a feed?

Yeah, yes and no. There are certain times of the year when I do, I'll do a money back guarantee or actually got a better response from a, I'll, I'll buy you a box of beer, guarantee, if you don't catch that. You got me already. That is around this time of year, you know?

So like we, we start, our confidence levels go right back up at this time of year. But look, throughout the year, we're consistently catching the fish. You've just got to do it a little bit differently and sometimes, you know, you've got to work a bit harder for them. But, like, I think I've probably in 9 years of guiding, I've had, you know, 2 days where we've caught absolutely nothing, you know, so, you, you, you're sort of, you're essentially guaranteed to, to catch something, but you're definitely guaranteed to have the best opportunity.

Yeah, well, mate, let me say, that'd be the 2 days I'd turn up. I mean, I mean, but how do you handle the wet season up there, Watty? I mean, obviously the weather becomes a bit more unpredictable or predictable, I guess, depending on which way you look at it.

So does that change at times in fishing, like rather than go at certain times of day? Does the wet season force you to change what time you actually go out and throw a line in up there? Yeah, it does. It does.

So we, we, we sort of start to expect a bit of build up sort of afternoon storms from the end of September onwards. Um, but we don't really get the, the bulk of the rain sort of will happen from mid-December and we expect our 1st monsoon around sort of Christmas New Year's. Um, so with, our, the charter stuff tends to drop off in that 1st week of December, which is, um, you know, it's great for me because I get to go out and have a, have a go for a couple of months, but there, we, we definitely try and plan around the storms and things like this, but, um, it's never really an issue up here. We don't have seed, like we don't have swell, so to speak.

If there's no wind, there's no, there's no, no waves and things like this. So, we tend to do a bit of night fishing around the fall and new moon and things like this, but, um, yeah, it, you just got to watch out for the afternoon storms really, and, and at the end of the day, when you're coming home, you know, you might have been out all day and it's been hot and sticky and you, you get a storm and you drive through it, and it, you know, it washes you off and refreshes you and, and then you, you're ready to go, go home and jump in the pool when you get home. So you know, it's happy days. Well, back to a beer garden.

I did notice last night. I texted you last night and you're sitting back the photo of 2 beers. I mean, mate, it's a laid-back lifestyle up there, mate, isn't it? Good, is it?

I mean, a lot of people down here talk about that newspaper up there, the 18 years. Yeah, they're, it's just, I know it's all part of one country, but that is just a complete different, you know, people up there have a different perspective on what goes on around down the southern end of the place. Yeah, that's right. And, you know, like you say, I've seen it from both ends. And we're really lucky up here because throughout the year, every day of the week there's sort of something happening, every year around Darwin, because it is such a tourist centre and and a transient population, you know, there's always someone who's on a day off and keen to do something. So, you can, we, we ducked out last night. So, you know, it was Tuesday night or so, or whatever and went and saw a show, you know, like it, you can, you can do that sort of stuff and, and the, the sort of arts and cultural

stuff is really well supported by government and and locals up here, so it's not only just the fishing and sort of adventure sizing stuff here, but yeah, yeah, like there is a lot of live music and culture that you can sort of duck into either. So a lot of your fishing trips as well. So yeah, we've got it all. Oh, mate, it sounds like a great, a great place to live and a great place to go fishing, obviously, mate.

You're doing well considering you've gone, you've done the full stretch, you know, from Victoria up there, mate. It's good having you a part of the program, mate, and we like to take our listeners to all corners of the place and we have plenty of people who come from Western Australia, Queensland, and all around, and now we've got the Top End covered with you. So Dundee Beach. That's the go, eh?

Dundee's the go for us for the next couple of months, yeah. So we're going to do some packages where people will get a night accommodation either side of a few days fishing as well. All include. So if they wanted to find out about that, just hit us up on the Facebook page or website, then we can get that organised.

But yeah, there's, there's plenty of good operators out here, if I'm booked up, um, I, I can certainly point them in the direction of someone else who'd work, aren't we? You're a good man, Watty. Barefoot Fishing Safaris. That's what you need to look at if you just jump on Google and type in Barefoot Fishing Safaris, northern territory.

You will find Watty. And if you do drive up there, if you can't find him, just go to the nearest pub and that's where you will find Watty, Watty. What was that one the other say? Do the miles, get the smiles and kick back and have a few frothy ones.

I love it. That's the go. Good on you, mate. and you take care and we'll talk to you next week.

Thanks for being on the program, mate. Thanks, Doc. loving it. With your own intro.

Wait till you post that on. Wait till you post that on your Facebook page next week. Hey, how good. I got much grace from the boys over there, will I?

No, you'll be right, mate. All right, son. Have a good one. We'll talk to you soon, eh?

Cheers man. See, see you, mate. And that is our man, Glenn Watt, Glenn. Watt, a great bloke, and what a lifestyle he has.

He's up there in the northern territory, up the Top End, and if anyone can catch a barrow, He's the man and good luck doing Barefoot Fishing Safaris.