Bag a Barra — 14 February 2020

OK, let's head to the Top End to Bag a Barra. With Glenn, Watty Watts, thanks to Barefoot Fishing Safaris. Well, our man, Wadi, he's up there. He's been battling the wet season, doing his best, and getting himself ready for a massive season of fishing.

Now, one place, every time I seem to get onto Watty, is in Darley's, in the Darling Harbour, in Darwin Harbour. So I thought, why don't we have a chat about Darwin Harbour to find out what you'd actually do catch in there. What do you g'day? G'day, Doc.

How you going? Mate, I'm going all right, son. I'm flying. about you?

Yeah, I'm going well. Yeah, I'm actually just about to drive past Darwin Harbour on my way back out of the city this morning, so yeah, it's looking good at the moment. Yeah, absolutely. So you do a lot of fishing in Darwin now.

I guess for a lot of people that have never been to Darwin. I mean, and that'd be a majority. be a lot of Australians. I haven't been to Darwin.

In fact, we're going to plan on getting up there later this year. Darwin Harbour. You do? I mean, the 1st thing that people think about is when Darwin was bombed back in, you know, World War 2 and things like that.

Darwin Harbour, it's just describe Darwin Harbour. What's it like? It's a working harbour, obviously, and but a lot of fishing. Yeah, that's right.

It's a massive area, Darwin Harbour. Everyone always compares everything to Sydney Harvard side. Yeah, but sorry to cut you there. That's what I was going to say to you because whenever anyone ever talks about a harbour, they always talk about Sydney Harbour, but Darwin Harbour, it's huge, isn't it?

Yeah, that's right. I actually um jumped on Google Earth here a while back and sort of mapped it out a little bit against Sydney Harbour and it's it's half a dozen size, half a dozen times the size of Sydney Harbour. Um, so yeah, like, it's a huge area, and, you know, from, from where I pick up my half day clients across to where with fish is about 18 nautical miles across the harbour, you know, so it's actually, it's a huge area, and it is a, it's a commercial port as well as, obviously, a great area for recreational fishing and boating, and just nature and um, bird watching as well. So, yeah, it's a, it's actually a bit of a hidden or not so much hidden, but unknown, Jim.

A lot of the locals, you know, really um fish Darwin Harbour really heavily and they get to know it really well and and the fishing can be just as good right here. You know, we can see Qantas jets flying straight over the top of us at the same time as catching Barrow right in Darwin Harbour. It can be as good a fishing there as anywhere else in the Top End. That's amazing, really.

When you say 6 times the size of Sydney Harbour. I mean, that's that's a... I mean, a lot of people would never know that. Made a lot of crocs in the harbour.

Yeah, there there is, and uh, well, there should be, but um, the parks and wildlife guys up here um, have traps uh, set throughout the harbour um, consistently throughout the year. Last year, I think they remove something like 270 crocodiles out of Darwin Harbour. You're joking. Yeah, you can imagine if they didn't do it for a few years that it had become fairly inundated with them and it just puts everyone at risk.

So they just remove them and they send them to the farms or relocate them. And it makes it a bit easier for everyone to do their fishing and crabbing and, and you know, like a lot of people don't know this, but you can, you can actually swim between the flags at, at beaches in Darwin throughout the dry season. You don't tend to do it this time of year because we've got our jellyfish, box jellyfish and era candies sort of come in close, but you can swim between the flags in Darwin Harbour with lifeguards, the surf life saving club and all sorts of stuff. So, yeah, it's actually, it's a bit unknown to a lot of people.

Well, even, well, when you say even in the winter months, I mean, it's still what, 30 degrees in Darwin. Yeah, that's right. We'll have water temperatures. Even in middle of May, you know, when down home on the farm, Victoria, it's frost every morning, we're going to have water temperatures up here of around sort of 24, 26 degrees, something like that, probably at the coldest.

Uh, there's a really famous uh, sandbar party that always happens right in the middle of the winter just to rub the noses of every, everyone down. They have it on a big, low tide, on a big sandbar right in the middle of Darwin Harbour that exposes on low tide, and everyone goes out there and plays cricket and has a barbeque. Oh, mate, every different kettle of fish up here. Yeah.

Oh, mate, I know. And mate, the whole place is a different kettle of fish, I reckon. I mean, so it must be such a laid-back place. the territory any particular Darwin, because it's like, it's just like you just shrug your shoulders at the rest of us.

It's just unbelievable. Yeah, it's a good analogy. We do tend to shrug our shoulders at the rest of you and wonder what the hell you're doing down there, you know, like life, life is good here and um, you know, that sort of encompasses everything from, from work life right through to home life and of course, your recreational stuff on the weekends is um, is world class, so, yeah, we um, we shrug our shoulders a bit at you guys down there, but at the same time, we don't want too many of you to move up here and start pinching all our good fishing and crabbing spots either. Yeah exactly.

I mean, just on that, mate. So there are plenty of good spots in the actual harbour to grab your barrels and your crabs. Yeah, absolutely. Mud crabbing is huge in Darwin Harbour hasn't been commercially crabbed for over 20 years, so the stocks are well and truly up there and the, um, it's, it's really easy throughout um, dry season in particular to go, go out for half a day and come back with, with half a dozen or 10 mug crabs and a few fish.

So we get every species of fish that you'll find in a tropical fish guide. It can be caught in Darwin Harbour. It's quite common for us to catch a dozen species in a day. Up here, right now, even actually, it's a bit out of character for the fishing up here, we're actually still catching long tail tuna, right in Darwin Harbour at the moment, where you can, you can see the boat ramp and the restaurants, you know, where you're catching these fish from. So, um, yeah, it's, it's really quite pristine and um, and there's a lot of work and effort goes into actually keeping it that way too.

So... How good is it? Mate, unbelievable. It just sounds fantastic.

All right. Well, we'll let you go to get back out there and get amongst those muddies and those big barrers and just living the dream. You're a good man. Talk to you next week, eh?

Good on you, duck. Thank you. Good on you. And that's our man.

What are you, Glenn, what are you, what's? Make sure you check out his Facebook page, Barefoot Fishing Safaris. And if you want to go on a bit of a fishing expedition up in the Northern Territory. You need to get onto our man, Wadi.

He can certainly look after you there, and he knows where the spots are, knows how to catch them, and he'll show you how to do all of that. How good would it be to get up? There's only one thing better than going up there to go fishing with what? You know, to be moving up there with him because I'm tipping.

It would certainly be different, such a laid back attitude up there and that certainly has got it made. But if you want to go fishing with Watty, and you want to plan, you know, it might be just a part of one of those big mid-year trips, a lot of people head up there during the winter months, you check him out, Barefoot Fishing Safaris of a website as well, Barefoot Fishing Safaris.