Bag a Barra — 24 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 our man, Glenn Watt, Watty, up there, who is the owner operator of Barefoot Fishing Safaris.

He's not doing a lot of that at the minute, but he's up there, and he's just doing his best in isolation. What? Watty? How are you travelling, son?

G'day, duck, dear. I'm going good. I've dusted off the fly tying kit recently. So, um, that's been keeping me busy as well as, um, actually chatting to a few clients who are keen to get back up when we, um, when we get stuck into it.

They're all chafing at the bit, um, just like myself, I suppose. You haven't had any new... Oh, mate. I mean, tell me about you, mate.

You haven't editing new cases up there, have you, for a while last I saw, have you? Up there, it's quiet enough. No, that's right. We going really well.

We haven't had any, no deaths at all and no community transmission as far as I'm aware and no new cases for, it could be close to 3 weeks now. So, yeah, we're on my way, but up here, maybe. Yeah, absolutely. Now, mate, one thing we want to talk about up there, which is something that a lot of people are really surprised by when they, a lot of people don't know about it, but when they find out about this, they're very surprised at how big they are, and that is the tides up there in the Top End.

Yep, that's right. It's a, it's actually the number one thing that you need to consider um, when you go fishing in the territory, um, and probably anywhere in the north really. But particularly, when we're doing our barrow fishing, say, for example, the guys I spoke to yesterday, they, they, um, fly fishing clients, and they like to be able to the fish before they actually cast at them.

So obviously that um requires certain conditions um with a bit of visibility, as well as a bit of movement to get the bait happening and and um and get the fish on the bike. So, just as an example, like, like you guys down there, you're probably running it, reasonably steady around your 33.5, maybe 4 metres of tide. Um, doesn't vary a hell of a lot, half a metre here and there, but we'll have tied, particularly the beginning in the end of the year. Um, where we're under one metre, so we might have a.7 and the high tide will be 7.8 or we had an 8.one, I think, in February this year.

So we're getting about sort of 8 metres of actual vertical movement in the water in our harbours and um obviously that's the profound and overwhelming factor in in sort of how the whole system works. So, you've got to get your head around it, mate, and it's not an easy thing to do, um, just rocking up, so it takes a bit of research. And it comes in quick, doesn't it up there? Like, I mean, you can see the water, just the visual part of it when you're looking.

It'll go out for miles. I mean, all of a sudden, it's just, it'll be out there. It'll be gone, but then it'll come in very quickly. Yeah, that's right.

Particularly noticeable on those shallow beaches. Say if you're in Broome, cable beaches, a classic example of it. It's pretty shallow, um, and you can be down the beach, say, from the dunes, a kilometre on the low tide, um, surf fishing, and you've got to move your car up every 5 minutes. It seems once that tide gets going.

The tide actually moves as an old sailor's trick about the, they call the rule of 12th, how, how you figure out how much flow there's going to be, but it, essentially, the rule of 12th gets you to the, um, conclusion that half of your tidal movement comes in the middle 2 hours of the tide. So, say you've got a 6 metres of movement. Half of that is 3 so you're going to get 3 hours of vertical rise or fall in your, in your 22 hours of your 6 hour tide cycle. So 3 metres in 2 hours is how far that water can move in and out of those systems.

So you can get caught out, you know, stuck on a mudbank on your boat or get your car bogged at the wrong time and you're in a hell of a lot of trouble. Yeah, absolutely. you've seen footage of things like that. Mate.

Yeah, good on you, Watty. Like you say, it's very, it's very technical. In fact, I didn't realise you were that smart, actually, but mate, you've done very, very well this week. I've had plenty of time to think about that mate.

Yeah, I know, yeah, as we all have. All right, mate. Well, we haven't got a lot of time to talk about, and there's not a lot of fishing to talk about at the moment, but we might do a, try and have a bit of an extended chat next week. That'll be, just quickly before you go.