Bag a Barra — 9 May 2025

It's time now to head to the Top End and Bagger Barra with Glenn Watty Watt, thanks to Barefoot Fishing Safaris and uniden. For the best in UHF communications, explore the extract series at uniden.com.au. Well, they tell me that this next bloke that's coming on the show has been sending, he's had publicity photos done. He's been sending them outside. He's actually got someone else just signing his signature because he's that important and too busy because while he's not doing photos, he's doing selfies with people, and he's become a real celebrity, and this is all because of his appearance on Oz off-road TV last week, and of course, he was seen on the 9 network all over Australia.

Glenn, what do you, what? Have you had your hair done, mate? It might take more than one appointment to get me back up to scratch. mate.

My hair is pretty wild today. We've got the dry weather turned up, but, um, yeah, I did get some good feedback from that show. So, um, Big Gav did some, did some great work on the camera and they'd, I mean, those drone shots at Corbery Billabong's hard to mess them up, even I could do that, but geez, it, uh, it did come up pretty good that show, didn't it? Yeah, it did.

It was one of my favourite episodes and obviously because I was in one of my favourite places in the country as well. So, and it was pretty good up there, and thanks for taking us out to the corrobory again. Although the fish weren't really biting, but we were out there amongst nature. It doesn't get more nature than that. and it was a great spot.

And certainly, certainly was worthwhile. And I've had a lot of feedback from that episode. How good was it in the territory and not just with you up there in corroborate, but also the yarn, the yarn there with old mate at the Daly Waters pub, Big Tim. He's a real territory character and and I look at the Daly Waters pub.

And one of the comments that came to me was, the inner city locals usually got, you know, lucky to find somebody in there. Yeah, this bloke in the Daly Waters, in, you know, in the middle of nowhere is doing 500 mils a night during tourist seasons. So there you go. He'd be getting pretty busy right now, mate.

I think the tourists have started heading up the Stewart Highway. We're seeing a few of them rock up here into Darwin and um yeah, the weather's changing. So he'd probably be pretty flat out right now, I reckon. Yeah, yeah, definitely mate.

And we're going to be going past there ourselves very, very soon. We're heading north up back up your way. Although we are darting off to do the Gib River Road. So there you go.

Mate, I was talking to Vic Whitman earlier, who's up in the Kimberley at the moment. each of the dry season was gone. The wet season was gone and the east leaves blowing and it's all dry. What about where you are?

you reckon that it's now dry and the fish are biting. What happening? Yeah, definitely, yeah, the weather's changed, mate. I think we're done with rain now.

Perhaps until middle or end of September. Uh, we're getting some cooler overnight lows already. We've had one under 20 and a couple under sort of 22, which is, yeah, the real start of the change. It would have been beautiful camping, where the last couple of weekends, out here, as well as, you know, you've still got the end of that runoff fishing.

So it's a real sweet spot for weather and and the end of the runoff fishing. So, yeah, I'm actually sitting under a tree here right now enjoying the nice cool weather, really low humidity today, not even a drop of sweat and just waiting for the next plane load of boys to rock up and out we go out to Kakadoo for 5 or 6 days. So, yeah, really expecting it to be a really good trip this one. Unbelievable.

The amount of people that fly in just to go fishing with you. So, um, where are they from? They're from down Southey somewhere. Yeah, that's right.

They're from around Orange and that type of place. We get a Fair few. of those type of guys, farmers and tradies and stuff and and it does fit in pretty well with some of their annual work commitments, you know, farmers either need to get the crops in before or after fishing and and that sort of stuff, so we can usually get them sorted and these guys have been coming up. I reckon this is about their 8th trip over, say 10 years.

So, um, yeah, really look forward to seeing them every year and a great bunch of young blokes that have a good go and they usually catch plenty of fish too. So that's always good. Yeah, you got to be happy with that, mate. And as a whole, the fish are on the bike now.

What's the main? the barrers are back on and everything's just sort of strumming along. Yeah, that's right. So everything is still ticking along pretty nicely for the runoff fishing in the rivers.

In fact, in these next 3 or 4 weeks, we really expect it to intensify as that last bit of wet season monsoon water does come off the floodplains and that brings all the really small barrow, all the bait and everything, and that's when we have some really crazy barrow fishing sessions right up the top of the rivers on the rock bars and stuff, so we don't have to travel as far as we perhaps were in March and April. So, that's really exciting, but it also, sort of, once you're into May, it signifies that time when the blue water fishing starts becoming a good option as well, because the winds do change around to the southeast, so you, you get the offshore breezes, and tuna should be out wide off Dundee, as well as, I definitely know, there's plenty of Deweys and snapper biting everywhere. We'll be doing a bit of that next couple of days ourselves. So, yeah, it's a real sweet spot.

As soon as the billablongs starts opening Kakadu. that when it's, it's all, it's all, you know, it's all happening at once. So it'll be later on this month, I think. But your favourite corrobory opened over the weekend just gone.

um so that'll be really nice to get out there and check that out uh next couple of weeks. Yeah, it's all. There's so many options in May and that's one of the reasons it tends to book out perhaps 1st and any other month every year for fishing charters. Yep, unbelievable, mate.

And it's obviously you're heading into that into that silly season, that tourist season, and you'll be seeing caravans everywhere within another few of weeks, I reckon. Yeah, that's right. Middle markets have started up again and yeah, there's plenty of people starting to get around. It seems to be as soon as Anzac days, done down south, um, a lot of people get on the move and and start heading north.

So, yeah, of course, we welcome them with open arms. They're always good to catch up with our regular clients and visitors, you know, get people like yourself that come up and hang out for a little while and some rallies every year. It's great to see everyone back up here at this time of year. No, good stuff, mate.

All right. Well, it's good to see it's all happening and well done. You're, you're, you're, basically, you're at an advertisement for northern territory tourism. You painted a good picture when we're up there, not just touring up there, but the lifestyle and living up there and raising a family in that part of the world.

It's certainly, for me, it's my favourite. Oh, I love it. It's my favourite part of Australia, to be honest, up there. So certainly you've painted a great picture talking about on the TV show, mate, and you do that every week here, mate.

So well done. And mate, we see if we can't jag you somewhere, maybe on the boat next week. Yeah, that's right. There's a very good chance I will be on the boat, but we'll see if we can, you know, if we are up the top of the river and those fish are biting, like I've got them in the diary scheduled to do.

We should have phone reception up there. As long as they play the game, we'll be right, mate. Yeah, go and control that. So we'll see what happens.

Exactly. All right, mate. Well, you take it easy up there and get ready, get those customers from the airport, and I'm sure they have a big opening night with you for the 1st night, the night one, and then try to recover for the rest of the week. I'll talk to you next week, okay?

Yeah, that's right. We've got to stop off at the corroborate park tavern and pick up about 2 trail loads of grog for us. Yeah, we're going to be a decent one. Only in the territory.

See you. All right. Good on you mate. There he is, Glenwoodie, what?

Barefoot Fishing Safaris. and if you want to get up there and experience the real Top End, well, go and do it with Watty, just like the people from Orange and down country New South Wales are doing this week. So you need to do that. Jump onto Barefoot Fishing Safaris, jump on the website, jump onto the Facebook page, and of course, if you want to go further than that, and go explore and fishing on other, in other exotic parts of the world.

You need to check out angling adventures as well. If you want to know what we're talking about. Go to 9 now, and you'll see corroborate Billabong in all of its glory, and you can see it on YouTube as well, but go to the TV version on 9 now, or on YouTube, and check it out, and you'll see that last episode of Watty and I on the boat, on corroborate Billabong.