Bag a Barra — 17 May 2024

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 shamanofish.com.au.

And of course, what is the man up there in the Top End, Barefoot Fishing Safaris or angling adventures? He is the number one fishing guide as far as we are concerned here. If you're heading to the Top End and you want to go barramundi fishing, in fact, a good mate of mine, and one of the boys involved with Ozoff Road is heading up there, and I had to introduce them on email, Watty and my mate, James. And this is what we've written.

I'm going to just, this is a bit of an email. He's part of the email that I've written. Now, James, meet Watty, Watty's a good mate, and appears on my radio show each week, has done for over 5 years now. He's probably one of Darwin's leading fishing guys.

He only drinks mid-strength beer before lunch or while he's working, so you should be fine, although his car does pull to the left when approaching Bottolo's. His phone number is blah, blah, blah. Just a tip. No matter what you do, don't be late in the morning that you go fishing.

Not even 5 minutes. You'll never hear the end of it. What do you g'day? G'day, duck.

Yeah, well, it's sounds like probably a fair introduction, I suppose. I didn't read your number out. Well, it seems like everyone's got me bloody number. It's been on the internet for the last 15 years, mate.

So I do get phone calls from everyone. Oh, well, fair enough. I thought it was a private number. That's okay.

Anyway. No, thanks for looking after my mate. And I've got to say, he'll be up there in corrobery, Billabong, eh? Take him out there. Yeah, we might do that.

We'll see if we can, you guys can have a bit of a little mini fishing comp. See how he goes. Yeah, yeah. Well he's going to have his lovely wife, Helen with him, so hopefully she'll go as lucky as Mrs. Duck was when she pulled that Saratoga in on the 1st car.

Remember that? There you go. Yeah, yeah. Actually, he's pretty lucky.

He said, you got any videos of that? and I said, mate, have a look at this one. Remember that? All the squealing and cheering and me going, Yes, yes.

Get it out. Don't lose it. Ah, no, no, no, no, that was obviously then, sir, by the my response when I got that Barramundi anyway. What's happening up there, mate?

It's dry season, all happening in the Top End right now. I tipping. What's happening? Ah, yeah, it's all going off now.

Our biggest problem this time of year is deciding which sort of big event to go to every weekend, you know, we've got, um, oh, what have we got? Iran, the next couple of weeks, um, there's a couple of AFL games, uh, is, um, basing the grass, big uh, music festival. We've had to DJ on a bike. I don't know whether you'd probably sort that online. The DJ ride down the middle of the road and everyone just follows on their bike.

That was pretty big one. And yeah, just right into, right into this true tourist season, you know, the, the joint's just packed. Like overnight, it just got, um, just went busy. incredible, isn't it? incredible.

It's the number one. I think it's got to be almost the number one destination this time of year. the Top End. I mean, how good is he probably?

Now, 50 for people for sure. Oh yeah, definitely. It is easy. People think it's so far away, but it's an easy drive.

Take your time. Yeah, that, and once you hear, you've got everything that you're, 100%. being a capital city, so you've got all the support that you need to have an extended caravaning holiday, especially, and, and there's so much space that, you know, there can be, you know, the 20,000 caravans here and, uh, and you wouldn't even know, once you're out in the parks and stuff, you know, like you're always on the spot. Exactly, mate. Now, what's happening in regards to fishing?

The bar is biting. Yeah, they are. We're sort of into this transition period almost now where we're going from, well, you know, our true runoff through into the dry season period, uh, the boat ramps in the Big Rivers will become ti- or have become tidal again as the flightboarders sort of run out a bit. And um, and that means that, that you don't have to travel anywhere near as far as, as we were a few weeks ago to, to get access to big numbers of fish.

So, I think last, last trip we, you know, we're fishing in the top 5 kilometres of the river. for a whole 5 days is that all the big fish will push up to um to get access to all that bait and and those baby barrers and everything else that's coming off the floodplains sort of at the last minute. And um, yeah, I've got one more, what I would call a runoff trip to do next week, and uh, that's a group of 16, mate, out at um, at Shady Camp, so there'll be 4 boats of 4 and 4 days fishing. So yeah, big group up from Melbourne, come up every year, looking forward to that one.

Yeah, mate, you're a huge fan of the, um, a huge fan of that Shady Camp, aren't you? Well, yeah, I mean, it's it's probably the place in the territory and perhaps in Australia where the most big barrow get caught every year. It's a simple... hang on, hang on a minute.

Why did you take me there? Oh, well, I think we've covered this before is the wrong season. Oh, right, true. The water had gone, remember? Well, probably. But corroborate Billabong is a part of that same river system.

So it's only a couple of bits. From, from the boat rear, but Shady Camp that we launch into the tidal section. Corrobery is only 10 K's as the crow flies. Yeah, right, okay. And that's why it's loaded with fish too, right? So it's a great great environment.

But it's also, you know, it's um, they remove commercial netting from there as well. I think there's probably the same amount of big fish right across towards through Kakadu and Arnumland. But it is just a bit extra further distance to travel. So not as many people go there, I suppose.

I'm a fan of corroboration. I wanted to go there anyway because I remember you spoke about corrobory here and I said, yeah, I want to go there and you took me there. and I love it. It's one of my favourite places.

Watty? one of my favourite places in Australia. Well, it's going really well too right now, mate. They had the freshwater fly, fishing comp in there a couple of weeks ago and, you know, they're always a pretty good litmus test for how that billabong's going to fish for the year and it went quite well.

I haven't been there yet myself, but I'm looking forward to my 1st trip there. Yeah, absolutely. All right, mate. Well, I've got to run, but well done.

You get yourself to some of those events and get the wheel alignment done on the car, so I was not pulling to the left as you drive past those bottle shops, okay? Well, I did get it a line, so it did that, mate. That's fair. That's the standard up here.

Oh, I understand the standard up here. I do love the Northern territory. All right. Good on you.

See you, mate. There he is. That's Watty, Glenn, what do you want? You can catch him.

Barefoot Fishing Safaris or angling adventures. Check to the website, check the social media pages as well. The best in the business and not just fishing in the Top End. He will take you overseas as well.

You need to check it out. And he's a good man, and he has been coming on the show for over 5 years now. Unbelievable. But anyway, obviously the talent is a bit scarce.

No, he's pretty good. He does very, very well. And a great bloke as well. And Corrobory Billabong. He took me out there and I just thought, mate, how good is this? It was the real deal.

And if you ever go up there, make sure you go fishing with what are you, you know, you're almost guaranteed to get amongst the big fish, that is for sure.