Bag a Barra — 6 February 2026

It's time now to head to the Top End and Bagabara, with Glenn Watty White, thanks to Barefoot Fishing Safaris and Uniden, for the best in UHF communications, explore the extract series at Uniden.com.au. Well, we always love to find out what's happening in the Top End. And I mentioned earlier that people in America and other parts of the world think that when you come to Australia, there's wild animals running down the streets of Sydney and Brisbane and Melbourne, kangaroos everywhere and snakes and crocodiles. Well, let me say this to you. If they'd have gone to the Humpty Doo pub to grab a carton through the week.

They would have thought, well, this is true. We told you. Because just out from the bottle, there was a crocodile in the table drain out the front. Watty?

You didn't come out of there in the dark with a carton on your shoulder, chip towing back to your car, did you? No, that's right. Lucky no one staggered in, staggered through the drain on the way back to the Ute after a couple of beers at the Humpty. Um, yeah, not too far away from a bit of a floodplain drain just there.

So, I suppose he might have wandered up there, and of course, we've been having so much rain up here that all those drains have all got, you know, maybe knee deep water in them, a lot of the time at the moment. So, while it's probably something that you wouldn't expect it, um, I guess it's not out of the realms of possibility. It was a decent sized crocodile too, outside the thirsty camel at the, uh, at the Humpty Doo bottle shop there. So, yeah, pretty unique circumstance.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Well, I remember, look, I remember a couple of things. One, when you that young girl went and bought the $10 handline at the 7-Eleven and threw the line into a table draining, caught us off a $10,000 barramundi. Yeah, and then there was the one out, I think it was, was it at Dundee, where there was a croc underneath the caravan awning, a couple years ago?

Yeah, that's right. That was a couple of years ago. And that's even weirder because that is a fair way from any creeks at Dundee there. And he must have come off the beach, up over the boat ramp off the beach, a couple of 100 metres and into the carrier and parking us asleep on someone's fake graft underneath there. I saw the photos.

I think someone was taking them from... From inside the vent, the window going, who's going outside? I mean, like, imagine if you were just, you know, getting up in the middle of the night to go off and have a sneaky leak somewhere and there's a crocodile under the awning. That's right. It goes to show.

can't be complacent up there, isn't it? I mean, like, fair, ink. I mean, and I sort of put, you know, no, I'm not that bright, but I did put 2 and 2 together and thought, well, obviously had some big rain up there right now. And that crox obviously found himself in that drain right outside the park.

So what ended up happening? Obviously someone ought to come and get him, wouldn't they? Yeah, well, I haven't seen it, but apparently there's a video of them wrangling him out of the drain there. So yeah, someone's coming.

The ranges of someone's come and got him, and, um, yeah, I mean, we've had, it's just extraordinary the rain. Daly River's evacuated at the moment and that river's probably, I haven't checked it lately, but it would be almost be at record levels right now, I reckon, and they have been saying on the radio that it's the wetest start to the wet season in 29 years. So that's a pretty big deal for us. I mean, I keep mentioning it, but yeah, everything up here revolves around the rain.

So, uh, while it's really soggy at the moment, there's some weird stuff happening with the old crocodile about the front of the pub, it's going to set us up for an amazing year, even just in a few weeks time once we get into March, so that'll be great. Yeah, so for that fishing. It's funny because I know what we filmed at the Humpty Doo pub up there with the TV show and from memory, there was the Brahman, the Brahman bull that could drink a Darwin Stubby. Yeah, yeah. At the Humpty Doo.

Yeah, well, well, maybe the crocodile was bit thirsty himself and thought, well, hang on, I can go in here and get a cold one. Yeah, that's right. Well, it goes to show too, duck, because a lot, I mean, there hasn't been a hell of a lot of fishing going on in the last week or so just because of this weather. But what the where people are getting out and about is around the Culvert fishing.

So anywhere there's a bit of a bridge or some water flowing underneath a road. you can very often at this time of year, catch a few little barrow or some tarpon or something like that. in those culverts, and that's where the kids ride their pushes to and go for a fish after school and stuff, and it just goes to show that even doing that, you've got to be pretty bloody careful, because that crocodile would definitely do plenty of damage to anyone, particularly a school kid who's sort of wandering, you know, going in up to their ankles, perhaps to get a snack lure or something like that. And, um, yeah, you just never know where they're going to pop up.

The only place you swim up here, mate, is in the swimming pool and the rest of it just bloody stay out of it. That's the rule to go by. Although some of those waterholes are pretty safe during the year, aren't they, when they go? That's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Once they've been cleared, but especially this time year, I mean, you can't go, can't go anywhere with any great, even places like Nanton Dam, where we go water skiing and stuff. I'm a bit sketchy this time of year because you just never know where they're going to turn up. Well, mate, one turns up there.

I mean, they are unbelievable, really. I know as I was mentioning, you cannot get complacent, can you? I mean, the things are everywhere up there. And to end up there.

is just amazing. really. They've got one in a cage there, aren't they? in a big pen? Is it?

That's, that's at the humpty-doo, or is that corroborate? Cor robbery was corroborate, yeah. A couple of crops there. a big fella. He, um, yeah, he, he, he's behind bars.

Luckily, otherwise he'd cause plenty of problems for everyone. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, corroborate, I was thinking, I was at the Humpty-doo, corroborate, 2 great pubs. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

And within a 20 minute drive of each other too. So that works out well. absolutely. All right.

Well, the old mate's lucky he didn't end up on the barbeque, to be honest. I mean, they could have been to have some crocodile kebabs or something. Well, he'd be in jail in a crock farm somewhere right now, I'd say, so his number's up pretty soon, either way. Yeah, no fair enough.

All right mate. So the fishing's coming up, and that'll be a big year, but a lot of all this rain, and we look forward to catching up with you next week. Tell us about how that's all aiming up. Plenty of water, plenty of rain, which you love.

I saw some videos. I saw a video of somebody the other day going, how good is it here? We love this, this time of year. It was bucketing, right?

I got to say to you, last weekend here. We had a huge storm come through. It was as humid as all day. And then you knew it was coming, and then it just bucketed down on us here, and I thought, this is a bit of Watty lifestyle here right now.

And how good is this rain? just loved it. and obviously that's what happens up there. You think, geez, how good is this? We love this.

It's been so humid and the rain comes. But it's all setting up for, as you say, it all revolves around the rain, and it'll set up. What's going to be a bumpy year of fishing in the Top End. Good stuff, mate, and hopefully there'll be a few left then we get there later in the year with you.

Can't wait for that. Oh, mate. Yeah, well, there'll be no doubt about that. There's a bloke did a PhD on Barramundi recruitment and mating and stuff and and the bottom line is the morain, the more fish sort of thing, so, but it's not only the fishing and the tourism, you know, the, all the cattle stations and everything up here, all revolves around this rain this couple of months.

So, it's really good for it to be actually pushing down, down further south and into the Berkeley and all that sort of stuff where sometimes I do miss out a bit. So that's going to be good for everyone. Yep, absolutely mate. Water Bridge life as we know.

All right, mate, we'll let you go and don't go walking through any drains, especially at night, OK, going home from the pub. Yeah, no, I get the lioness to come and pick me up, mate, these days. I'll be walking around with the crocodiles in the drains.