Bag a Barra — 25 September 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. I saw you yahooing on a video the other day, in the rain, Watty.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Bit of a moment of celebration for everyone up here. Last weekend. It was a beautiful welcome of early rain.

Yeah, incredible. really. I mean, I guess that must be the feeling right at the very, you know, when the 1st downpour, after it's been dry for so long, and then all of a sudden, you know, you feel the change in the air and then down it comes, it must be, it must be, you know, like, thank God. Oh, yes, absolutely.

And it's particularly after, we've just had 2 fairly poor wet seasons and we didn't even get our 1st rain last year until uh, like into, into November sometime, you know, so, um, over 50 mils at Darwin Airport, last Saturday night, I think it was, and, and I was driving down, um, sort of through Darwin Harbour that following morning as the storms are just clearing and sort of going off into the distance, and the smell of the city was just smelled clean and tropical and just moist and just every, you know, the dust washes off the leaves and the trees and uh, the whole place really just becomes more vibrant again and it's just that everyone's excited and that's what everyone talked about for the next week. you know, it's unreal. Yeah, I reckon so.

And I mean, down here, I mean, in the southern states, where it rains, you know, on and off all the time, really, apart from our drought affected areas, obviously, but I'm talking more coastal, where, you know, people, you know, when it rains and, you know, it'll spoil someone's barbeque or or a party or a wedding or something like that. We're up there where it doesn't rain for so long. And I guess people who live in the western part. Like I know, you know, out in Western New South Wales now, they've got a lot of rain where for years and years and Queensland, just no rain and it was a joyous occasion, but up there.

It's a big thing, isn't it? There's the dry season and the wet season. Yeah, absolutely. And it, it really, it, the rain is what drives the whole economy, one way or another, through tourism or, you know, even the earth, moving and roadworks and stuff, they rely on big wet seasons to actually damage the race and, and keep going again and, um, yeah, like the, the, the rain is something, because we haven't had rain here since, uh, let's say, um, late March, I suppose.

Probably even earlier than that. So, yeah, I mean, it's really welcome and, and um, we're actually, you know, if we continue on now, um, on the same sort of strain. We're heading along. We're looking like having a really good wet season, they're forced, uh, forecasting La Nina, um, conditions for October, um, and higher than average numbers of cyclones.

Um, we're already September's had 6 uh, 6 times its average rainfall, so um, you know, if we can get, keep ticking along in that sort of, same, same frame, we'll be very happy come sort of mid February, you know? Yeah, well, I saw some video through the week of some storm activity. And it must have been spectacular that, and obviously, I mean, it wasn't surprising that somebody had filmed it, but I remember speaking to locals up there and they said, there's nothing like watching the storms come in. It's just a light show every night.

Um, you into that? You like that? Oh, absolutely. Yep.

Once, particularly once the monsoon sort of comes down from Indonesia, we'll have those storms every night and it'll generally, you know, as you go into bed, it starts to happen and then all through the night, it'll start to rain at, say, 3 o'clock in the morning and then rain all the way through until sunrise. Then it'll clear again, and then you get, you might get an afternoon shower, say 2 or 3 o'clock, or it clears again, and then builds up again into that evening time. So, yeah, it's um, uh, you know, rain up here, is a really good thing and the more of it we have the better. And what will that do to the fishing now?

That'll change things a little once we start raining? and this little period now? Yeah, definitely. So the next set of spring tides, we're going on to neap tides this weekend where we've got not much movement at all, but um next set of spring ties, by then, I say it's a fortnight after the rain, the jelly prawns should have hatched in Darwin Harbour, which um, brings a sort of a, a burst of, of Tucker for the Barra and other critters that are hunting around in the shallows up in the harbours and stuff.

They will start targeting those areas and and change our tactics a little bit according to um the fish if they start playing around on the jelly prawns, which is generally what starts to happen once we get some rain. Yeah, it's an exciting time for everything. Oh, good stuff and it's pretty steamy now. tipping it the humidity to be up a little.

Oh, absolutely. I think the ratio this morning, line in bed. listen to the weather. It was 100% humidity.

It's about 24 or 5 degrees overnight and 100% humidity, so there's no point hanging the clothes out at night. You just put them on wet in the morning and saves your, saves your sweating up and losing all your moisture out of your body. So, yeah, she's um, she's hot and sweaty in the shed building his boat, mate. I can tell you now, but you know, it's not going to be too much further down the track and and it'll turn from steam into rain and that's when everyone really starts to party on.

Oh mate, it sounds fantastic. I'd love to get up there for that and just to see the difference in the landscapes, you know, and the colours and even that place where you live at your place there. I'm tipping once you start copping a fair bit of rain there, that's just going to be a tropical oasis. property there.

You could just see it. You could just, I mean, I was there when it was preferly dry, but you look at and think, geez, with a bit of water in here. This is going to be magnificent. All those little drinking holes, those little watering holes literally you have there where you can sit around in the pool and have a few quiet ones at the end of a day.

Yeah, mate, that's going to be pretty good and it won't take a hell of a lot of rain to get that system flowing either. So, as soon as it does, I'll let everyone know and you can all come up and jump in for a swim. Yeah, send me some videos mate. Well, the borders.

Good news there. The borders now are fairly relaxed and people from down south, excluding Victoria at the moment, unfortunately, but everybody else, I think from the ninth of October, New South Wales is back, or Sydney, rather. And so, mate, should be all back to normal and hopefully people will get up there and try and experience a bit of a holiday in the in the Top End during the wet season because I think it'd be fairly worthwhile doing it. Yeah, look, it is a good time to, to come up if you, like, it's hard to convince southerners to come up um through that time of year because the weather's just getting good down down and, and it does get a bit oppressive here at times, but, you know, just to see the, the light shows and the, the amount of rain and then what it does to the, to, you know, the whole landscape is, is extraordinary.

The territory government have actually put together some um fairly good incentives to holiday in the territory through what they're calling the summer season or the green season. This year um where you can, I think for every 1000 bucks you spend, you might get 200 back or something like that. So there's some pretty good incentives to actually come up if you're keen to get away from, from home, has he been locked down for a while? Yeah, exactly right, mate. All right.

They reckon there's a lot of people moving up there from the south too permanently. So there you go. I read somewhere the other day, there gives me a 30,000 new people movie. All right, we'll let you go, what do you get back into that?

Yeah, good stuff. Will you get back into that boat and we'll talk to you next week? Good day, mate. Good on you.

Enjoy it. Good on you, mate. There he is. Watty, I mean,

Glenn, what do you watch? Just scatter his Facebook page there. Barefoot Fishing Safaris and check out the website as well, Barefoot Fishing Safaris.com.au. And if you want to get up there, then experience a summer holiday in the Top End. And or even get up there before summer, get up there now, it'd still be pretty good. And um, get up there, make sure you get, you want to go fishing and, and be guaranteed to catch something, go with our man, Glenn Watty Watts. He is our Top End correspondent, and a part has been a part of the show now for quite some time, and I was lucky enough, as we all know, to spend some quality time with him there.

And I wouldn't mind getting up there and back up there soon and just checking out that wet season. Not sure if it's going to happen. But certainly, uh, it'd be something different. But if you want to get up there yourself and you want to go fishing, get onto him.

playing what he wants from Barefoot Fishing Safaris.