Bag a Barra — 10 April 2020

It's time to head to the Top End, and Baga Barra, with Glenn Watty Watts. Thanks to Shimato. Remember to buy local and fish local. visit shimanofish.com.au. And our man, Wadi, who's not doing a lot of fishing at the moment, is on the line in the Top End.

How are you, mate? G'day, duck. Yeah, I'm going, well, I am actually getting a little bit prepped up to go for a fish on the weekend. We're still allowed to up here and because there's not many of us, we can abide by all our social distancing laws.

So um, yeah, we can sneak out as long as we do the right thing. Yeah, well mate. Look, at the end of the day, I think you're allowed to go fishing in New South Wales as well, but I guess up there, um, you have minimal cases of this virus and, and, uh, and you, and I'm unusually responsible enough up there to get out there. The thing with you is you've got a lot of space.

And it's not hard to get away from anybody up there. Social distancing in the Top End would be pretty easy, wouldn't it? Yeah, that's right. We do it every day, but I mean, particularly myself.

I like to be fishing away from the crowds. So, um, that's, that tends to be not something I have to worry about too much as far as changing my habits, but my little daughter, Arabella, she's been um, humbugging me all week to go out and see some big crocodiles, so we might go out and have a look at one of the billabongs as long as the uh, the roads are open. We just had a bit more rain in the day. I'd like to check the road before.

I mean, well, that's that's the joy of living where you live. You just want to go out and look at crocodiles. You just go jump in the car, go for a drive. Unbelievable.

It's what we're looking at going to over the weekend is one of the main areas we head to for our fishing charters as well. and there's also um uh like wildlife um sunrise and sunset tours out there. It's called corroborory Billabong. You can hire boats and party barges and everything. a great place for visitors when they do get back up to come for a look. And it's only, it's, it's sort of less than an hour and a half from towns, Bitcherman Road all the way until about the last 500 metres, and the bird lives.

the crocodiles, the fishing and scenery out there is just spectacular. It's part of the Mary River system. So, it's really famous um area of corrobery billabong. It's got to be a fair sized billabong.

I mean, you get your boats and everything on it. How big is it? Yeah, actually, it's a bit of a, It's a funny sort of terminology thing that we have up here.

The billabong when I say to people, oh, we might go fishing out the billabong tomorrow and they sort of think, oh, well, that can't be too good. It won't be very big, but it's actually, it's a section of the Mary River, and there's about 60 kilometres of, of water that you can fish in, you know? So it's um, it actually is a, it's a very big place. They have fishing comps on it where you, you might have 40 or 50 boats and um, and you know, you can all have your own patch, so.

Yeah, and so in this Billabong, 60 K's of Billabong? How many Barramundi, do you reckon your bag on the weekend? Well, I haven't been out there for a long time. We had a couple of tough years out, out there where the rains didn't fall when it needed to and sort of replenished the fish, but I think we had that big burst there earlier in the year, and there should be some good numbers, normally the fish out in the Billabong areas, um, they're around that sort of 50 to 65 centimetre mark, and there's generally plenty of them. On a, on a good year, you can go out there and catch a sort of 10 bar a day as well as 10 Saratoga and a couple of sundries.

So before we go out and grab a couple, that'll be good. Yeah, good, is it? I mean I can't wait to get up there. Really?

I mean, it's just, you know, like, I just can't wait to get back to get up there. I mean, there are so many options in the Top End, isn't there? I mean, for fishing and, you know, you talk about these big billabongs and you've spoken about, you know, Darwin Harbour and the Mary River and the Daly River. It's just an absolute abundance of places to go and we're the line. And, of course, you can just get in the car and go for a casual drive to spot a crock or two.

You're in a good spot, mate. Yeah, that's right. The Mary River is actually one of the, um, I suppose there's half a dozen bill of bongs in the whole system, um, that we can fish through the dry season as it recedes. I guess the only reason they become billabongs is because you can't sort of navigate to the, to the next one and they do, there's some sort of floodplain areas in between them.

So, yeah, there's um, there's Mary River Lagoon right on the, on the Arnham Highway, which is Bitumen Road all the way. Hardy's Lagoon, um, has got a really good ramp and a bit of rough dirt road to get to, and then corroborate Billabong, and then there's Shady Camp freshwater. So that, that's 4 on the one system, um, and then you've got, you go further into Kakadu and you've got all the alligator billabongs as well. Um, yeah, there's sort of endless opportunities and, and we are very lucky to not have to share it with too many people, especially at the moment.

You could do a billabong crawl. Really? It's like a few weeks. That'll be me.

When I come up there, why don't we do that? We'll do a billabong crawl. Yeah, yeah. We can do that.

And one of the best things that everyone loves about fishing out that way is that to get, so if we go to fish corroborate Billabong, we've usually fish pretty high. We leave Darwin at 5 in the morning and we're there by, so on the water by 7 after some breakfast along the way, fish through until 130 and then we're generally off the water and back home to get back home. We've got to go past the Corroborate Park Tavern, and then 20 minutes down the road, the Humpty-Doo pub, and then another 10 minutes up the road, there is the Coolinga Tavern, then 5 more minutes is the Virginia Tavern, then another 5 minutes to Winelli Hotel. And by time you get the boys home, ready for a sleep?

With a designated driver, of course. Mate, you're a good man. You live the life up there, mate. And hopefully we can get these restrictions eased off a little bit where you can get back out there with a few people and take them fishing, mate.

You certainly, uh, you certainly got it all all there for you. It's all there at your front door, mate, really. I love that. So you do the billabong pub crawl.

I tell you now, when I get up there and I'm big, well, mate, as you know, I was heading there, I would have been on my way after tomorrow, after this or Easter weekend. I would have been on my way towards you. You were preparing yourself, as you know, and warning the pubs that you've just mentioned that I was on the way up. But mate, it looks like it'll probably happen next year now. So, mate, we might have to do that Willabong slash pub crawl, eh?

I reckon that'll be a bloody good thing. We'll do a lot of broadcast from the water. Yeah, of course. That was the plan.

We were going to do a stack of shows up there, and as you know, we're huge fans of the northern territory down this end. Mate, I envy you, mate. You've got the lifestyle up there and it's a great part of Australia and I've said it before. As soon as you hit the northern territory and you hit some of these places that you're talking about, you feel more Australian.

I just, there's just something about it, something about the northern territory outback as well. It's just a great part of the world, and you really do feel like you're more, you're more Australian when you get out to the rule. Australia because that's what that is out there. Um, you know, all the, what goes on up there, don't even worry about half the stuff that goes on in the big smoke in the southern states, that is the real Australia right there, I reckon.

You're a good man. What he will talk a bit more fishing and whatever you're up to and pump crawling next week, eh? Good on you, Duck. No worries at all.

All right, you go and get yourself another cold one. I'm sure you've already had a couple. I'm only joking there, but no, he's a good man. That was, I mean, what, you don't forget, you can check him out on Facebook, Barefoot, fishing safaris, and check out the website, Barefoot, fishing safaris as well.

And he's grounded at the moment, but he's got a nice new boat on the way, and as soon as these restrictions are lifted, he'll be out there, and he's got that northern hospitality, as they call that, Top End hospitality. Great bloke, his customers love him, and that's why he's successful and does what he does, and I'm really disappointed that, you know, that whole trip that we had planned, and we hadn't said a lot about it here. Thank God we didn't because it didn't end up happening because of this virus. But one of the big things I will miss is the fact that we were going to spend some quality time with our me and what he up in the Top End would have been great. And uh, but we'll get there. And I certainly do look forward to doing that. Billabong slash pump crawl with him.