Bag a Barra — 14 August 2020

It's time to head to the Top End and Baga Barra with Glenn Watty Watts. Thanks to Shimano. Remember to buy local and fish local. visit shimanofish.com.au. Well, Wadi, I'm leaving the tour of Northern Territory at the end of this week.

Yeah, mate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, enough. Yeah, at the end of the week, yeah. Our last show in the territory.

It'll still take me a couple of weeks. Few things to do on the way home and I'm going to spend a few days at the Walkabout Creek pub. But anyway, it's been a good time. I got to thank you for your hospitality while I've been up here, mate.

I hardly seen that, mate. Yeah, it was good. Good time. We did have a good time actually.

It was good. Mate, look, we always talk about where to catch them and how to catch them and what you can catch. But what do you do once you catch them? The ones you don't throw back, mate.

What are you doing? You're telling me you've caught some today and what are you doing with them? Yeah, we're just sitting out here actually, right now. I'm just dodging a few flies, a couple of wild operators on the boat today, but we've quite a few Barra and some other bits and pizzas.

What do I do straight away if we gonna keep fish is um always eat a brain spike them. They call it an icky jimmy spike or cut their throat and break their neck straight away. Um, just for a bit of a swift, honourable death, and then blew them out properly. into a little kill tank for a little while till they get a bit sort of rigour mortis and they'll set a bit and then it makes them easier to fill it.

Fill it them all up and then straight onto the ice, mate, in the, in the um ziploc bags, all vacuum pack. And I'm into the ice so, so they're ready for either eating later on today or, or into the fresh. Now, I noticed the other week when we did mine, we filleted that barramani bit left the skin on. Why would we do that?

Yeah, so that's part of our fisheries regulations up here to lead the skin on for identification purposes for our bag limits. Just so that it's mainly for the bar of money, because we've got the minimum size of 55 centimetres. So the fillets are required to be 27 centimetres long. So, so if I fill it at a smaller gold snapper with the skin off, um, it could be confused, I suppose, for barra, you could get yourself in a bit of strife, uh, potentially having undersized fish.

So, yeah, that's just to protect the, I guess, the fishery and and the angler, keep everyone above board, and also, um, no, it's actually a habit that we get into up here, and then it's really easy to ID your fish fillets, um, when they're in the freezer as well, you know, so you can, you can fill out through your bag and pull them out whenever you want. yeah Yeah, and I noticed that. Yeah, as being the guy that is your job, if your hands fall there. Well, mate, I thought we quickly catch up with you today. One to say thanks for your hospitality, and I've had a great time in the Northern Territory, and thanks for all that, and then to find out just what we do do, once we do catch fish, what we do with them.

And obviously you got all these different ways of cooking, which is good, but mate, we are going to run out of time, but Watty, thanks again. But mate, you'll be no stranger to the program because we'll be talking to you every week as we keep on going. Yeah mate, no worries. Safe travels down there and yeah, we'll do it again sometime.

Oh, we'll definitely do it again. No worry about that, and I'll be actually coming to you from the Walkabout Creek pub next week. I can only wish you'd be there with me mate. Yeah, that'd be right.

It will be. All right, mate. I talk to you soon. Thanks again, mate.

Good on you, mate. See you later. There he is, Glenn. What do you want?

Barefoot Fishing Safaris. Make sure you're checking me out. He's one of the many guides you can go fishing with in the northern territory.