Bag a Barra — 3 April 2020

It's time to head to the Top End and Bag a Barra. With Glenn Watty Watts, thanks to Shimano. Remember to buy local and fish local. visit Shimanofish.com.au.

And thanks to our good friends at Shimano. It is time to catch up with our man, Watty, who is up on up there in the Top End. Kicking back. We just had a quick chat to be more fair.

He said he was around a mate's place having a cup of tea. That'll do me, Watty. You kidding, aren't you? That's code, duck.

Let's say that's code. That's code. That's what you told your missus, was it before? I'm just going around to Jacko's for a cuppa.

And a picture. Oh, mate, you would, look, I mean, at the moment, I mean, the fishing's still on around the place in, you know, I know in New South Wales, you can still go for a fish if you want to. I mean, obviously the big push at the moment is for everybody to stay home. But I think what they're trying to do too is some people are actually going out there to catch fish just to give themselves some fresh seafood as well.

And of course, this, you know, how to try and switch off and, you know, if you can get out and do it safely, you know. Good luck to you. I'll be say. I mean, obviously the message is to stay home.

But you, you would have had some pretty adventurous fishing trips in your day. I mean, You had one just recently, didn't you? where it was pretty adventurous.

We just spoke to Vic Whippen about a very big trip he did in The Simpson, but you would have had, you would have had some moments out there, right, trying to rule in that big one. Oh, absolutely, Duck. Like we, um, I just, as most people would know, I just got back from a mothership trip. Well, it was a bit surreal for us.

actually, we left when everything was sort of quite normal, and then a week later when we got back, the world was in chaos. So... Yeah, we should just point out, what, you weren't on a cruise boat, you were actually on a fishing boat. Yeah, that's right, yeah.

Yeah, and we weren't in the state and we weren't in international waters and whatever. So we didn't have to go into quarantine. But yeah, we have, we do have some pretty good adventures up here, of course, just before I get into that, though. I want to touch on that, um, you just mentioned family fishing, something that came into my inbox through the international game fishing association, a couple of days ago was about teaching kids to fish.

Um, the, the international game fishing association is the world's sort of foremost, um, I guess, um, body, um, administrative body for all world records and stuff, and they've actually developed a course online that you can sign up to for free, which is a cool thing for, um, people who might have kids at home at the moment, um, to get them into fishing and and get, keep that conversation going without having to go out and sort of break any rules and stuff. So, you can sign up to it and it starts off really basic, like, what is a fish and and then it go, it right through into, you know, catching fish and things like that. So it's a cool little resource. I've got my kids signed up for a school holiday, so I haven't had a good look at it yet, but it's definitely worth checking out, the International Game Fishing Association website.

Mate, you know a lot about fish. Listen, why did a fish sleep? It's a funny question. I get asked that all the time too.

I don't know. I think they go into just periods of deep rest. A bit like you after you've had your tents on a Friday night, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They were about 10th, mate. Try 20th. But anyway, that's okay. Especially these days on a Friday night, no pub.

But mate, no, I just thought I'd throw that little random one in. Do you do fish sleep anyway? But mate, you just went out on a ship and it was a bit of fun. Tell us a bit about that.

Yeah, so they're probably our favourite trip to do. Of course, we get really remote over to Kimbley at times in the past and up to Arnham Land, and this most recent one was down to the Moyle River system, which is surrounded by Aboriginal Land, and it's quite close to the West Australian border. The only access to it. um is by sea.

And um it's quite a long way. So unless you're taking, you know, big supplies and stuff, which makes it hard in a, in a small boat. really the only practical way to do it is is by a mothership. Um, so it's remote enough that the fishing essentially is, remains untouched down there and, and it, um,

Yeah, it's sort of that, they're the trips that we look forward to the most every year. I had a few of them pencilled in for this year, but may not get another one done. So we, they're 7 day trips and, um, you know, you go out there and it's, uh, it, it is just adventure and with, with all the good and bad things involved, you know, we have breakdowns and we have bad weather and good weather and awesome fishing and tough fishing. The most recent one, we had pretty good fishing.

We got one barrow over a metre to 103 in an ants in Bay Creek, um really amazing refishing for Golden Snapper and others, and um, and of course, we pushed up onto floodplains to see, you know, that, the, the stuff that you can really only see in the territory in um, at this time of year, clients just love it, and I fly the drone all over the place. I'll put some videos up actually about that. But we did have some incidents at sea with rough sea, which is left my boat a bit scarred and battered, actually. Really?

Okay. When you say the mothership, how big is that? So the mother ship, um, it's, I think it's about 18 metres long. It's a great big um aluminium catamaran, comes sleeps 12 of us in air conditioned comfort with a great big galley, um sort of living space, which is the size of most people's living room.

Um, yeah, we book it out for a week at a time, and um, it comes with a skipper and a dedicated chef, and we tow our guide boats behind it, and it, like, it's, it's probably the pinnacle of the guided fishing stuff up here. Um, it's great. It's great to work out of and it's great to be a client out of too because as guides, we don't have to worry about anything other than the fishing, which really helps us sort of provide the best service we can as well. Geez, it's certainly on another level, mate, isn't it?

When you look at, you know, fishing charter businesses and stuff, that is another level altogether. Like you said, your boat got battered around there. What happened there, just from the rough seas? Yeah, so we're still in the wet season here, of course, and it's something that has sort of slipped to the back of our mind with everything that's going on, but um, it was still March then, and that's, that is early in our fishing season, and we do experience sort of rough weather and some storms from time to time.

So we're actually part the way back and fishing in a different system. Um, just following some fish around, some tide, um, parked up for for the night, actually in some phone service, um, so the clients could figure out what was going on with their own businesses and things. Middle of the night comes in and the, so Skipper runs down and he goes, what are your boat's gone? Oh, no. out of me bunk.

Oh, no. This massive storm cell, it blown in. And um, yeah, it was like the perfect storm, you know, I was George Clooney out there trying to save the boat. She drifted off into the dark.

Give yourself a wrap. Hopefully it went. George Clooney. On that, mate, Watty, we'll let you go, but it sounds fantastic.

mate. Just give us your website again if people want to check out what you're up to there. Yeah, so I'll be doing regular updates and stuff and sort of trying to keep the show on the road as much as we can through the quiet time that we're enforced. Now, it's Barefoot Fishing Safaris.com.au.

Absolutely, and check out the Facebook page of the same name, Barefoot Fishing Safaris.