Bag a Barra — 2 October 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.

And it's great to catch up with the one day future Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Glenn Watty Watts. He's on the line. What do you g'day? How you going?

Don't be a worry, wouldn't it? You'd imagine that? Ah, wow. I'm bringing in happy hour every day.

Of every hour. We're going to change happy hour to happy day. Happy week. Yeah, that's right.

Well, they'd want me. Oh, I reckon they would want you, you know. You know what? Have you thought about it?

I mean you've got a bit of a following up there. I mean, you could come. You could become, you know, get into politics, start off, you know, at the lower base, like, you know, just become a mayor or something like that. Right, or a councilman.

I'm not degrading mayor or councilman, but council people. But start in there, local get in there. Or just go straight to the top. Get on the gunners up there and say, listen, mate, you've done well.

See you later. I'm taking over. Yeah, take a break for the wet season, mate. I'll sort her out. and maybe that's it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see, he's been getting around a bit, and he's trying to push a little bit, too, to try and get people up there for the wet season and for the summer, try and get people a holiday in the northern territory. Mate, how's it going? But it's warming up.

I've seen some great footage and some great vision of some of the storms. It's, mate, some of the lightning storms you're getting there at the moment, rival the fireworks in Sydney on New Year's Eve. Oh, yeah, that's right, yeah. I mean, we, um, we're very lucky here in our place sort of, where we sit down on the veranda and the evening faces west too, so we tend to get, get, um, the sunset and the storm, which is pretty nice.

Yeah, we actually had some more rain last night. So you wake up and it's all beautiful and cool in the mornings, which is just lovely, you know? So, yeah, it's um, it's greening up nicely. Yeah, that place of yours would look amazing, I reckon, in a few weeks.

It would probably be running up now, with the water around. I did read too through the week that they're expecting some a little bit more cyclone activity this season. Yeah, that's right. Higher than average cyclone prediction for this season.

Um, which is good, um, I think we averaged sort of 3 or 4, so if we can, we can be higher than the average, it's not so much the cyclones that we're after, of course, but the rain that's associated with them. Um, you know, if we had 10 cyclones that didn't touch land but gave us a metre of rain every time they turned up, once a month, it'd be nice. It's amazing you're talking those figures, eh? A 1000000

What is a metre of rain? Yeah, well, that's right. I think last year was the 2nd lowest rainfall on record or something, we still had one. 3 metres for about 3 months.

Unbelievable, really. How's the fishing been, mate? You've been out? Yeah, fishing's been good.

We're still busy doing the tourism voucher stuff and um sort of every weekend, so we're back on the necktides last weekend, so we were back chasing those Trevelli and Queenfish and um big mackerel around out in the harbour, as well as a little bit of necktide barrow fishing, trying to hunt these bigger barrow um up in the bays as they sort of think about spawning and that sort of stuff. They had really good luck on the pelagics, but the Barra, uh, we couldn't get any to bite and then there was a little issue, actually, so, yeah. Yeah, do you want to elaborate here or not? That was a tricky one too.

What happens if the big, the bigger barras, they, as they school up and aggregate, start thinking about spawning, they do get a bit spooky and we, we were chasing the school around or following a school around that um, that I work quite regularly. Um, and it's only a couple metres deep there, but the Barra, there'd be 20 of them in the school and they're all over 85 centimetres so up to a metre 10 or so. And you've got to be really quiet, so we're, we're just get, getting into a fishing forum and going through the techniques and then uh, one of the clients dropped one of the hatches on the boat and made a hell of a great big clunk and um, I was like, oh, no, so we, we drove back over the spot where the school was and yeah, lo and behold, they'd shot through. It doesn't take much to spook them when they're sitting there like that.

So that was the end of our chance for the whole day. Oh, fairly. How popular was he? Uh, well, this is actually getting the bucket out so she could go for a week. And, um, yeah, I mean, I don't make a big deal of it.

no one's fault, but um, yeah, I find that. No, no, no, no. I find that hard to believe you don't make a big deal of it I mean, I remember the time someone was, what was it? 5 minutes late.

Good afternoon. And I copped them for an hour and a half. Yeah, well, you know, we got to, when the, when you got paying clients on, it's a bit different, isn't it? No, fair enough.

All right, mate. Well, it's good to see things going well up there and you're enjoying you are enjoying that the start of the wet season. It sounds like it's going to be a cracker, really. And uh, but I've got to say for anyone that's, um, jump one of some of those northern territory pages and have a look on Facebook and you'll see some of the images from the storms at nighttime and uh, you'll know what we're talking about.

looks fantastic. And in the meantime, jump on the bodies, Barefoot Fishing Safaris page as well. He's got some, how I saw that footage yet up the other day where it was pouring rain, and it's hard to fathom because I was there for a fair while, and every day it was just, you know, the same. It's just 34 degrees, day, day out, not a drop of rain, not a cloud in the sky, and it's just for me back here now.

I'm picturing those places where I visited and I went just about everywhere. With it raining then. It's just hard to, you know, get that into your head, but I like to get back up there and have a look. Yeah, mate, yeah, that's right. A massive transformation and something we look forward to every year, of course.

So, yeah, everyone, everyone should come up and have a look at it. Well, everyone who can. Come up and have a look at the rain at some stage. It's, um, yeah, it really is something that you've never, never seen before. I mean, it's impossible to describe.

As we say, there is a bit of a push on at the territory at the moment to get people to have their summer holiday up there. So if you can do that, I'll get up there and look after some of those businesses as well that struggled throughout the quiet time, like everywhere else. I mean, we can't be everywhere, but we can do our best, that's for sure. All right, Watty, we'll talk to you next week, eh?

Good on you, mate. Thanks for the call. There he is the honourable. Glenn Watty Watts.

See, it's got a bit of a ring to it, doesn't it? I reckon he could go all right. We just get him here. He could start off as the fisheries minister or something and then just take over.

I'm sure he'll be able to, you know, knife a few people in the back. You know, bag a few people and just take the top job. I'm not sure whether what he's got that in him, to be honest. He's too good a bloke.

He's too laid back. But don't forget, you can check him out. Check out the website, barefootfishingsafaris.com.au, or just jump on Facebook and you can find him there as well, Barefoot Fishing Safaris, puts up some pretty good videos, has little giveaways.