Guys in the Gulf — Ep 046

Northern territory fishing. royalty. And me. Glenn Watty, what the Barefoot fisherman, Barefoot Fishing Safaris. You know, Leo, to call me the Barefoot fisherman, because I had to have a fight with Dave Hodge, the original Barefoot fisherman.

Do you remember Hodgy? Yeah. Was getting your talk a bit closer to that one, eh? Thanks, mate.

Yeah, he confronted me one time on another podcast. Yeah, he's bigger than me, like you fellas. No, no, it's okay. Hodgy's good. Still scared of him, though.

I'm going to swing this microphone over to you. I'm just going to hold that one. I'm more of a lena. You are.

Don't mind me. There we go. Yeah, we're already on the other side of the cheerleag, mate. I can't get much further away. I want you closer.

I need to. I can see. I can see. I don't think I'm going to enjoy it. Glad wrapping, man.

Should I bring that out? Hopefully the cleaners don't walk in. Those people at the reception did give me a little weird look when I was walking up the stairs between you guys. And all the camera gear. man

to worry. Ashley, where do we begin? Oh, no, what he, maybe tell us, tell us a bit of your story, mate. your background like where you're from.

You're not originally from the territory, but you've been up here for a long time now. So how do you get here? Well, I came up the Stuart Highway. and stopped here because that's about as far as you can go north without being somewhere else, even though I do like spending a lot of time in New Guinea these days as well, but we might touch on that later on.

No, um, yeah, I mean, I've been guiding in the territory now for this will be my 16th year, about to start in 2 days time, actually. So that's nice. And I guess the reason I'm here is goes sort of back to old family stuff. You know, our family traditionally goes to the same boarding school in Western Victoria, good old Monterey College, and a lot of those guys, like my uncles and 2nd uncles, you know, like my old man's cousins and stuff.

Got to remember my grandad was the youngest of 16 kids, right? So, and then if you all of them had 4 kids, so there's a lot of us. And back in the 70s, they'd finished school, jump on the train, just like the same as that Ted Egan story, you know, jump on the train with a knapsack and a 22 and come up and work on the missions back then sort of thing. And so we've got, uh, we've got sort of some family history around here since those times and when we were growing up in the 80s in Wes and Vic, these guys would come and, you know, Easter camping and stuff and they'd tell us crocodile stories and barrow fishing stories and stuff. And that was the same time when Malcolm Douglas was on the telly, Alby Mangles, Bush Tuckerman, and Rex and Starlow and Bushy, and anything to do with Barra in the Northern territory, just for whatever reason, really grabbed me.

And I came and went a lot over sort of 10 or 15 years after I left school and and then I just sort of didn't went. I stopped I stopped leaving. With no real intention of doing anything else than sort of what I was doing next week and yeah, and next week, 16 years ago, here we are. bloody hell.

So you didn't come to the territory then just to start guiding. How did you get into actually guiding? Yeah, no, I've never really had a plan for anything, mate. It frustrates a lot of people in my life to this day.

Sounds like someone I know. Well, I mean, Mikey's plans are good. This is a nice little only fan set up here, so. Later on when he gets, you got that room, special room with the dimmer switch and stuff, don't you?

Yeah, no, look, I was doing station work directly before I came into Darwin. So 2010, 11. I was at, like, Tipperary Station. Um, and Daly Rivers got a big connection from our family from that sort of yarn that I was just saying about.

So that really felt like sort of like I really had a connection with the Daly and I still do and I love fishing there. And so I really enjoyed that. But yeah, you know, relationships and stuff at the time. Okay, moving to town, I was actually working for Simon Moyle, who's a really well-known Darwin Fisher, and a bit of a legend around town, for Moyley installing skylights and roofing.

And I got on to Moyley because I'd made friends with Starlow and Starlow was going out with Moyley's sister, who is Joe, and, you know, I was moving into town. So, yeah, get us a job, no worries. So, um, but then, yeah, another one of those, 4th or 5th removes, connections. We're at the ski club one day having a beer and Starlow reckons, oh, that's me, mate, Crocker over there.

Let's go have a yarn with him and yeah, he was the skipper of Canon Charters at the time. So, yeah, one thing led to another and yeah, off we went, myself and me brother, the next week. Guiding barrow in the mini, mini, and I don't reckon I'd ever caught a barra in salt water before that day. So, I mean, luckily, we're back then, and it's come back to being pretty similar now, I think, you know, you know, if you'd read the books and you'd watched all of Rex's shows and stuff and you went to a spot that looked like it should have a barrow in it, and it did.

So it was a really quick way to learn. Plus, there was 4 guides on that boat and, you know, is just fishing 247, 7 day trips, we did 28 weeks at sea that year. So it was like in the deep end. That was our life.

And yeah, it was a really quick way to sort of sink or swim, I suppose. I just took notes. Which way is the mini, mini? mini minis up towards that's West Arnhamland. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

So we just go and say, Darwin, we go on Adelaide River, Mary River, south, west, or west, south, East Alligator, and then mini, mini. It's just a big estry system, but it's a real land of the Giants, you know, there's, you can catch me to Barras just flicking in drains there. They've got a metre 17 just flicking a snaggy point like you would in Down Harbour. They disappear in drains there and massive dewies and huge snapper and stuff.

And yeah, it's really special country through there. What do they have the big tides like here or the smaller tides like the golf? No, it's a it's a confusing sort of a place. And even within a kilometre or 2 in that system, it changes a lot.

So Endelgad Island, which is where DNA Barrett Dwayne's got his camp there now and Dwayne one's in an unreal operation out of there. So anyone should check that out too. Um, that is, uh, That part of the system is, is sort of, well, it's all shallow, but it gets a lot more tidal movement than 2 kilometres up the, um, up the arm, or up there, I suppose, the peninsula, to the, what we call the top system, and there's 5 creeks there. So we would always fish the napes on the 1st few days of the tide down in mini, mini, and then ones that sprung up and that would sort of get perhaps too dirty for site casting on the flats and stuff.

You go out there and you can fish the dirtiest tides, the biggest tides in, you know, 2 days after the moon in November and the top 5 creeks and it's crystal clear, you know. So, yeah, tides are weird things, man. And you know, I spent a lot of time staring at that tide chart and trying to figure it all out as well as, you know, however many 1000 days on the water and you only have to go around the corner and it all behaves differently, which is, yeah, that's one thing that people really struggle with when they come to the territory. I mean, you would notice.

I remember watching some of your earlier videos where you, you know, coming from the Gulf and then into Darwin Harbour and it's just like totally different. If you watch my video, I haven't made a video in Darwin for years. and I've lived in Darwin for years. I don't, yeah, I just didn't connect with it, didn't gel. obviously didn't put a lot of time into it, but I literally would leave my boat in the gulf, leave Flanders down there and do all of my fishing down the gulf.

Like, spend all my time down there whenever I want to make a video, whatever, just go down to King Ash Bay, and it's just so easy there. Like, just small tides and you can go, you don't even, don't even need to look at the tie chart. Don't worry, folks, he's not dying. He's actually, he's actually heaps better than he was.

He's better. I'm just going to mute you the whole time, eh? It's this bloody air con, mate. I want him to turn it off, but you're winding about being too hot. He's too cold.

He's got, yeah. like a walrus, though. get a bit sweaty in here later on, but you need to get the bricks cool. Jesus.

Yeah, but you know, if you say that, it's how it's easier because the tide's smaller, but I reckon if I went down there, because I'm like, I connect really well to the spring tides, I would struggle down there. I'd be like, why aren't these fish turning on? I need the water to do something so that they activate or whatever. And I really think it's, obviously it's, it differs for each location.

and yeah, everyone gets used to their own little patch, but... And I suppose that's my patch is King Ash Bay or the MacArthur River down there. Yeah, yeah. And you haven't been forced to have to learn it either as well, right? You're trying to make a living, doing half day, crabbing and fishing tours in the harbour.

You got to figure it out eventually. Or it sort of just happens. you know, like it's forced to put it. So as a result, you're probably, I'm going to call you an expert in lots of rivers in the NT.

It was certainly familiar with know what to do there. I know you've spent a lot of time at the Daly, like you mentioned, you've gone all the way over to the east with the mini minis, the alligators, the Mary, that do you find that every spot has its little secret sort of thing? Like, is there a way to crack eat a code at each river? Yeah, I think there is.

And it's the tide. Yeah, exactly. And also, fish in different places do behave differently. You know, everyone knows if you've been fishing in the Adelaide River 10 times, you've probably caught nothing 8 times because those fish are just assholes in there.

No matter what the conditions, like there's like 2 days a fortnight when you can reliably go and get a bite there. So that's why you never see any guide boats in there, you know, like it's just, it can be hard fishing. And the Barrett, the south alligator, behave really differently to the Barrett at Shady Camp as well. And they look different. And Dundee Bar are different again.

So, um, but the, you know, I guess that, um, that base knowledge, it transfers all around the world, not, not only to different systems, but just a, just a basic sort of fish behaviour or animal behaviour stuff as well as understand, once you've got the idea of what the water's doing. If you've got that base knowledge, you can sort of transfer it all around the world, I reckon. Yeah, that's a fair call. I just had a recollection of a video.

I watched a few years back when you say the fish literally act different in different systems. You might be familiar with this. I remember seeing a video of one where the barrow don't jump. Do you know that one?

Have you heard that one? No. Where is that? It was definitely NT.

It was an actual, it was a it wasn't a YouTube video. It was a TV one. So it might have been like a ET's fishing adventures or something like that. And there was one particular system that the barrow just typically do not jump.

Yeah, which is unusual. yeah You know, you go up to Ben's Back River and out of, um, you know, 9 groups for 9 weeks, um, all year, averaging 15 to 20 metres a week, they're 90% of a court on surface lure is this big. Oh, wow. Stuff that you would never, you know, you pull it out of the box, even at Shady Camp, and you're like, nah, they're not going to eat that thing.

But that's what you you got 4 rods in the boat. all got them tied on. Yeah, it's really, I mean, like people in different cities, they all behave differently. So, yeah, it's, I guess it's the same for animals.

And mate, bullfroggy, he caught a big barrow once on a big surface popper. And ever since then, he's got go, there, popper. He's always, always get the big pops out. There's no better way to catch them, that's for sure. I don't think I've caught a surface barrel before.

Like I've, yeah, no, I don't think so. Even on the even on the barge. At nighttime even, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, which you think that'll work really good, but we've tried it and that, yeah, and going back to what you were just saying, like they, they behave differently in different places. Like, down there, off the barge at nighttime, like you can catch a barrel of cast all night, some nights. But yeah, you put a surface lure on and you won't get a touch. But you put bloody a broken plastic that's, you know, got nothing left on it and literally a bit of plastic on a hook and they'll lead it.

So it is funny like that, I suppose, yeah. go cranky trying to figure it out. You just got to accept it a little bit and, you know, that's the way it is. So, yeah, and yeah, I mean, to get back to your original point.

Uh, you know, spending as much time on the water as I have in the last 15 years, uh, it's a, he's sort of forced to do it from your clientele a little bit, but also my restless brain just makes me do it as well, you know, like I could never just be the Darwin Harbour Barrow guy because it sort of, it becomes a bit predictable. Um, that's a really arrogant thing to say, but you can sort of, you, you don't get surprised very often in the harbour. I mean, you're never surprised if you catch nothing, but you never catch, like, it's rare to, apart from that day and top embarrass series last year when they absolutely smoked them for whatever reason. Um, yeah, like you get, if you spend a day in Darwin Harbour, just anyone and you're doing it right, um, you're going to interact with half a dozen to 10, Barra, you're probably going to hook 5 of them and land three, you know?

And you can have, you can go either side of that. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, so I, you know, I would you, I love just exploring. So I would do...

I really love Dundee for my 1st fair few years of guiding when I started Barefoot, but you can't really fish Dundee in March. It's really hard. like it's windy and stuff. So I would be in Shady Camp until 1st of April usually, and then I'll go to Dundee.

But then you're moving around a lot and sort of getting the feel for a system is a bit harder. So, okay, now we're just going to, like, we're just going to fish shady for 3 years in in runoff. 1st of March through to the, you know, middle of the middle of June or whatever. And then I did the same thing at, at, um, the Daly. And, and now, now I'm really settled and really happy with what Kakadoo's, um, got to offer as far as fishing because you, you're fishing, um, South Alligator, right through until middle of April. And then next thing, Majula Creek.

opened up and you've got the East Alligator as well. So you're never getting bored with 11 spot. And there's not many gods in Kakadu, is that right? No, there's only a few of this.

Yeah, you got to do, you got to jump through a fair few hoops to get the permit, which is, you know, it's, I sort of wish it wasn't like that because then the old Aurora Lodge might still be open, and Jabru as a town, you know, as it sort of phases out of mining, might be a bit more vibrant. But yeah, there's there's a lot of levels of management in Kakadu. So you've got to respect that. And I guess, from a business and marketing point of view, it's good to be able to say, oh, I'm one of only 3 guides that's allowed to fish in this area and it's a world heritage listed national park and that sort of thing, but, um, it would spread the load um, and the, you know, economic benefit.

if it was a bit more sort of relaxed in that way. So for people that don't know Kakadu, even myself included, like I've never fished there. And I've never really, I've been a Jabberoo, but I've never actually been out outside of Jabber rather than the main road and in and out of there. So explain what that entails in terms of area where you can fish as an accredited guide as opposed to if you didn't have the accreditation, like...

So, um, I guess the, the big picture is Kakadu National Park is, is off limits unless you've got um, this, the sort of full accreditation that I've got. And even if you wanted to come and work for me as a subby or be employed by me, you've got to go and do a certificate 3 in at Charles Darwin Uni now, which is that stops a lot of guides. A lot of fishing guides because then generally not academic or don't have a lot of time or whatever to do it. What's the cert 3 in?

It's Kakadu knowledge for tour guides. Oh, right. Yeah, specifically. Yeah, on. So three, just, just, like, just for that specifically. And the thing that frustrates fishing guides and I know a lot of guys that have got, you know, gone halfway through it and then stopped is that Obviously, the vast majority of tourism in Kakadu is built around waterfalls and culture and wildlife and that sort of thing and there's a lot of stuff in the course and and therefore the assessments that is less relevant to guide to like fishing guiding.

Um, you know, it's about interactions with, uh, English as a 2nd language, people from Europe, who are at Newland, You Rock, and how are you going to explain the 6 seasons of, of, um, of whether that happened in Kagadu. And most fishing guides get to that question. They go, nah, I'm not doing that. It's got nothing to do with me, which is really disappointing.

So, you know, some tweaks in that could be good and I might get my license cancelled after criticising. Delete this file. But, um, No, we got what you're saying though, yeah. Yeah, it'd be nice if it was a bit more tailored, and then they would perhaps, because there's no limit of the amount of licenses that can be granted for guiding fishing guiding in Kakadu.

And it is, I mean, it's massive. You've got the South Alligator River, let's say, from the bridge downstream, say, 80 or 90 odd kilometres to the mouth, and you can go upstream 40. uh and then when the east becomes passable, about the same, really. And then you go an hour down the road and you've got 30 guides crammed into Shady Camp, which is 30 kilometres long, right?

Yeah. And I know a lot of those guys perhaps would like to do it. But the hurdle of the Kakadu permits is a real big one. Yeah. I suppose Shady is a bit like a bit closer to town as well.

So it's an easy day trip as well for some of them. Well, I mean, we'll keep it between me and you, Mikey, but it's actually like 5 kilometres difference in distance. Does he got to go a fair way off the road? Yeah, you've got it already, eh?

And you don't have to go on the dirt when you go to the south. Yeah, okay. You can always tell a Shady Camp guide's car because it's filthy, all run off and mine's just nice and clean because we just idle in and out on the bitchy, but don't tell anyone about that. Okay. So I just mentioned day trips, but that's not the sort of thing you're into these days. You tend to do these longer trips, more experiences, safaris.

Yeah, that's right, I suppose. It's a bit of a natural evolution. Uh, just with the style and how I like to do things. I mean, I really enjoyed doing half day and one day stuff with mum, dad and the kids in Darwin Harbour.

I was one of those families when I was a kid, you know, and you remember those guys who give you that experience and catch a 1st mug crab or a 1st barrel, a gold snapper, queenfish, whatever. I really enjoyed that, but it's a bit of a grind. If you're going hard through the dry season, especially when those southeasterlys are blowing and it's spring tides and you're over in woods inlet and you've got to come back 20 k's across the harbour. Um, you know, you do that 100 times a season and by the end of it, you're looking for a spell type thing.

so Yeah, that feels more like a job. So you've got to be mindful of that, right? It's like anything.

It's only a dream job until it's not sort of thing. So I've always been really mindful to have a hard stop to the end of the season as well. So like 1st of December through to used to be 1st of March, but now I tend to do the last set of tides in February as well. because we've got active target and we can find Barrow much easier.

Um, and just have that, that's maintenance time and me time, family time and just having a break. And then you go hard for your 9 months, right? But at the same time, if you, there's a pattern that I noticed when I was sort of coming through that guys would get to about 8 or 9 years and start getting cranky at their clients and they're whingeing about being a fishing guide at the pub to blokes who are concreters and block layers and shearers and all the other like actual hard work jobs. Yeah, yeah. And all the bartender, you know, who's like, he wishes he was a fishing guide. So, and I used to do, I mean, I'm for, you know, stations, earth moving, truck driver.

I used to drive road trains for ostidic, all wet season. And every time you saw a boat, you wish that you weren't in that truck, you were in that car going to wherever, no matter what the tides were. It doesn't matter. you know, you're right.

So you got to not take sort of take that for granted. And to be able to keep going through, like break through that 8 or 9 year mark into, you know, this is my 16th year now. You've got to cut back on some stuff and you've got to learn to say no and and for, well, you don't got to, but my personality had to. So yeah, my trips these days start at 3 days and we'll go out to,

I had some guys last year for 13 days, a couple of days off in between. And yeah, we did, you know, half a dozen days out in freshwater billabongs with fly fishing guys, a few days off and then a week on the tide in Bynoe on the flats. So, yeah. I remember when I 1st met you, speaking of the fly fishing.

I remember when we 1st met, you were telling me how much, how great it is for the fly fishermen. The way you explain it to me was you can take them out fishing for 3 days. They catch nothing and they're so happy. Well, fly fishermen are a bit, they've sort of reached that next level of Zen with their fish and then the rest of us, right?

Because most of them are, you need a bare bit of money to be a like a travelling fly angler, for sure. So they're generally a bit older, which normally means they've caught plenty of fish, so the pressure's off as far as, you know, catching fish all the time and stuff. And the thing with fly, yeah. is that it's so bound to the ability of the guy who's got or the girl who's got the rod, different to trolling a green bomber at the mouth, a sampan or even, you know, throwing a rubber to a fish on the screen.

Uh, casting a fly at a, at a cruising barrow on a flat is pretty hard. So it's more about the opportunities, right? And Graham Williams from Inside Fly Fishing, who's the original guru around here for fly fishing, he used to say, you're a provider of opportunities. And if you keep measuring how many fish you caught, you know, as your measure of success, you're going to have like no success. But if you can put people in front of 20 or 30 bar a day and give them a shot.

That's a successful day, right? And the rest is up to them. What a way to put fishing guiding, though. Like, you're a provider of opportunity.

Yeah, that's that's a really, really good way to play. the ultimate handball. Not my fault guys. Yeah, yeah. No, there he is.

Yeah, he just swung away. I think everyone that's driven to bonus probably said the same thing. I'll put you on the spot. I skipping money.

Not much I can do. Hard to saw like an eagle when you flap around with Turkey sometimes, isn't it? But there's a really good way to put it, though, as provider of opportunities. So do you do what's the sort of breakup in your business?

Obviously, you do fly a lot of fly fishing, but what's the sort of breakup? Do you do that just specifically for guys that want to do fly fishing? Yeah, they, um, those guys are great because fly guys who travel all around the world, and when I say guys, it's half of them are ladies as well. There's a lot of amazing female fly fishes particularly come from the states and there's one in particular that lives here in Darwin's probably the best fly angler, certainly lady fly angler in Australia, Kathy Bassett, and we're great fishing buddies and those guys, they book 2 years in advance.

So they, and they love the, you know, a bit calm awarders, you got to have clean water. So we're working the tides. And so it doesn't really suit runoff style fishing. Probably get one or 2 groups each year that want to have a crack at those big runoff barrels on fly and we've got a few of them over the years, which is awesome, but most fly fishes are really keen on seeing the fish before they cast at it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a different world and when you're actually looking, like looking to target the fish using your eyes rather than the sounder or live scope or something like that. It becomes a bit more like bill fishing where, you know, they talk about, you know, fish raised, fish hooked, fish landed type thing or fish tagged, and, and, you know, psych arson on flies is a little bit the same, you know, like how many did we see as far as an opportunity? And one that's sitting 10 metres into the mangroves doesn't count as an opportunity has got to be accessible.

And and then, you know, they fly fishing guys, we always talk about the eat. Oh, yeah, he ate it. He ate it. So, but, you know, like a barr eating something this big.

and it's generally a pretty gentle take. It often doesn't hook up. just the nature of how they feed and threadies are even worse. So yeah, so it's, you know, how many opportunities, how many takes, how many eats did you get and then how many did you put in the net, I guess?

Yeah. Well, the fly fishing is something that I think Ash and I, one time we even planned on doing. I spent a few $100 on some line and some flies and stuff. at Craig's at, um, in Darwin there.

was only, you had, you had a couple of rods in your, um, what's it called? in your container in town. And, um, Yeah, so we were, we were going to try it one time. Remember that?

We're talking a few years back. Yeah, that's when... Oh, yeah, that 2 nighter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that one. I mean, you guys are in the absolute prime spot to go site cast and barrel.

Small tides, shallow systems, you know, clean water, you got all that amazing blue water, heaps of currents and pressure points and stuff down there. I think I might try and come down there in November, actually, boys trip and will suss it out. But yeah, that's got to be prime. It's surely easy.

you know, I mean, how'd you go? Well, we had, well, we didn't, that's what I was going to say. We didn't even try it. I was sort of, I don't know if it was too much effort or we just wanted to drink beer.

I don't know. We just never did it. Well, it does interrupt me, Beardre. Yeah, so it's something I love the idea of, but we remember, oh, who was it?

What's his name? Him and the couple that were with the little tiny Tinny. that were fishing. A-ron. A-ron.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, him and his missus. Yeah, they came through working the bar at King Ash Bay for a season. Oh, yeah. And he was a real keen fly fisherman.

He wanted to get, what do you call it, a blue bastard, which was the just the mother-in-law fish. That was one of his bucket list fish, and you got a real good one on fly, and there was another couple of fish he wanted to get on fly, and he did. And he was real keen and he, they would go from like sunrise. They had one night off a week or whatever, sunrise after sunset in this tiny little crock biscuit, man.

It was the small little tinny. Might have even been a little... plastic. composite. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it was tiring. Yeah, like cross concert. And yeah, he was a mad keen. So he did he put in the hours, but he did really good down there.

Yeah, and that's another thing that's common to fly castes is that they tend to be sort of species collectors as well. Yeah. Because a blue bastard. I mean, we don't get them this side of about Norm boy. Oh, no, it's a bit further east.

Perhaps Coburg Peninsula. You know, we get the, it's the brown bastards from there. And then it goes back to blue bastards once you get perhaps around Broom somewhere. But, I mean, it's not really an eating fish, but it is a fish that you see on the flats a lot.

We see a lot of brown bastards on the flats, particularly on the neat tides in Bynoe, and they're challenging to catch, mate. Like they're spooky and, you know, they're fussy and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, um, it's a really different philosophy than a lot of other fishing where a lot of the time you, you know, you're going fishing because you like it, but also you're keen for a feed as well, but a lot of fish we catch on fly. I mean, barracuda is a huge one in the states. And, I mean, yeah.

I like, But when we catch about it. In fact, I'm editing a video right now from a trip that a little snippet that we did you me and Ant went around West Island. I got really seasick, so we went up Mule Creek and we caught a cold and cooked it up, so I'm going to make a little episode out of that because I've got the footage.

But yeah, they just remind me, yeah, we got a, um, you got a barracuda and I'm like, oh, I had to stop recording or I didn't even show it. There was no holdup. There was no whatever. It's a fish that it's a, we don't want to catch.

But then in another place. all around the world, man. Well, it's the same with like the tarpan. like it's half in here, like, so, yeah.

But those big meat along tarf and overseas, which we'll get to overseas, I suppose, as well. You were touching on your went and bought some fly gear and fly fishing is notorious for like becoming an addiction and then you have to spend way too much money to service it, and especially fly tying. My old man said to me, do not get into fly fishing. And I like I went to the to Northwest Sports and Marine in Horsham in, you know, 1989 or something and I bought the $100 combo and a book of how to cars to fly rod and I did it on the lawn at the farm. Just because, I mean, one of my uncles, Jerry Watt, he was big time involved in the Ballarat Fly Riders Club and he really inspired me to get into that sort of stuff. But he's also cost me a lot of money because today I was mucking around.

This is why I got my phone. I was mucking around with all my rods and stuff getting ready for fishing. And I realised that I've got 4 bundles of 4 rods that I'm taking to go barrow fishing, you know, this weekend. So that's 16 rods. And I was sorting everything out.

I got one of those cube shelves and they all stack in there, especially now I've got a lot of those jabbers rods and travel rods for overseas stuff and fly stuff's all 4 piece too. So I actually counted them all. Not for any other reason, then I thought it'd be good flex somewhere and just see if anyone else had wasted anymore, like more money than me on rods. So I've got 34 baked caster rods, 25 spin rods and 12 fly rods at the moment.

34 is a lot, actually, isn't it? I reckon. You can see on the photo. Ash has a container. I counted and then I would find some more, like it, and I had to cross out the number.

There's another three. The more you look, you're more you'll find, yeah. Yeah, it's an asset. We building an asset.

That's right. Yeah, yeah. Oh wow. Hey, I need to take a leak.

We can, you guys can either keep chatting or we can pause. I really need to humble it out too, mate. All right, cool. All right.

We'll be back in a moment. You want me to just tell a few jokes? Yeah, go on. Keep it going.

We go together so we can hold. Yeah, yeah, we crosswords, yeah. Fuck it, hell, I'm dying. Because we're still on water restrictions.

just fucking breathe. It's already warmed up. I can feel a bit clammy. Oh, fuck off.

Oh, yeah, the beers too, eh? Oh, no, there's more in the... Am I under those northern cans now, am I? Oh, yeah, there's Norman cans in there too, yeah. Yeah, the only fullies left, I think.

They've been drinking all me stubbies. You gave me a fully bit. Got a beer? Oh, yeah.

Have you still got a? No, I'm going to have one of those white Marlon cans that's in that issue. They're heavies. as well.

Oh, there you go. They're the ones out that were rolling around the back of your Ute. A couple weeks ago. You sure you know one of these on, mate?

I forgot about that. Fuck hell. Well, that's how I've been able to cut back on the grog. I don't, like, I've got a rule for myself.

I don't. Oh, we should have had that one. it is recording. I don't buy takeaway beers anymore.

So, you know, the only beers we've got at home are leftover shit from fishing trips or like when someone brings a box. And it takes me a while to get through. I'm trying to cut back, mate. You could have said my little drop you a couple of cards.

No, other ways, I haven't bought a box for a month. Why is there 6 in the shed? As is intense. Ash, come back.

Oh, shit. Where do I even want to go from here? there's a lot of things you've got going on. Keep me on track, mate.

Yeah, no, no, you do this is unreal. I'll go in a 1000 different directions. Everything you say is interesting. One thing before we forget, it was we need to get the, like, your details.

So where do people find you if they want to come fishing with you? And we'll do it again at the end and we'll, Mikey can put some links and stuff on. don't make me do more work. Well, you see how long it takes him to get this show set up, make sure.

for 3 days. Yeah, yeah. I'll just do that bit. No, yeah, I mean, my main jam, I suppose, still is his Barefoot Fishing Safaris has been for a while now, but more and more is, you know, as I sort of fade away from guiding and stopped getting half a dozen skin cancers cut out of me every year and my kids demanding a bit more of my time and I want to be there.

and grow a vegetable garden and stuff like that. Angling Adventures is taken over my world pretty fast. We've had that business now for a few years and yeah, from 2027 on its sort of full steam ahead with angling adventures. So, um, yeah, just a brief rundown on that, it's a, it's a business been around for over 35 years, perhaps close to 40 years.

Started by an old fella, Gary Bambi, down in Geelong, and he really pioneered sort of adventure, angling travel for Australians, to, you know, Hell West and Crooked all over the bloody world, and particularly New Guinea. So, yeah, I've been lucky enough to spend a fair bit of time travelling in the last couple of years. So just before we go too fast. So this is a separate business from your, you've got your guiding business here. Yeah, which is bare from fishing safaris.

This is another business, angling adventures, which now you're an owner in or you're a part of it. Yeah, so myself and my 2 brothers and our mum just to keep an eye on us. She's good at doing I mean, she ran our family farm on the smell of an oily rag for 40 years, so she's keeping an eye on the money for us.

But yeah, so we're all partners in angling adventures and it's a business that if you want to go catch a tiger fish, you give us a ring, we can we can set you up to do that in a really good destination. Nice and safe and efficient. You just don't have to worry about anything. So any of that sort of stuff all around the world.

I was looking through the old files the other day, and this is a tricky thing about Gary Bambi was a really well-respected man in the fishing community right through the world and he left an amazing legacy. But he was part of that generation that still did everything with pencil and paper. So, um, Gary died, Gary had a heart attack during COVID, not from COVID, he was on the way to go fishing actually in South Australia. So he was probably happy enough.

He was mid 70s. He had a good run and he left us with a, with a, you know, like a firebox and some manila folders with gray lead pencil written on it. So I was actually going. So you bought the business and hands over a box of papers.

Yeah, and a website that was, it was built on Adobe and 6 months after, or as we took over the business, Adobe was not hosting websites anymore. So we rebuilt the website before we even owned the business. Um, and yeah, so um, Gary's, Gary's uh, built up this uh, dossier of, you know, it's close to 50 different lodges they worked with all around the world. And these are places like Mongolia, Alaska, um, Costa Rica, um, Argentina, all these are really, um, and and even these a bit more like scary, intimidating stuff, Uruguay, Tanzania. Um, and even perish the thought that Australians are scared of going to New Guinea who are our absolute blood brothers, but um, you know, that's the way the Australian media portrays it as a bit of a scary place.

Really pioneered some fishing tourism and pescatourism, which also involves a lot of bird watching and stuff all around the world. And yeah, and now that's us. So it's a great opportunity for me to sort of fade away from guiding and drop back to maybe 10 trips a year with all of my favourite clients and spend a lot more time at home, but also any other time that I'm going to be away or be in some of these really inspiring places just to keep me going. Yeah, so the, so for example, like what, what the big uh, Costa Rica, I think it is, the fish, the, with the big uh, fins on top?

Yeah, the rooster fish? Rooster fish. So if someone wanted to, they say, oh, geez, I've seen those on YouTube, they look amazing, I want to catch one, they get in contact with you. And then you do like a full service from accommodation, fishing, everything, go with expert guides in that region. You've got all the connections in all the places.

Go get you onto some rooster fish. Yeah, and that's the really important thing is that Angling Adventures was really built, and that's the whole success of the business is that it was, the whole ethos is that you would never send anyone somewhere you hadn't been before, or at least, you know, one of your clients or your good mates had been before, if you hadn't had a chance to get there. So, and that's why we're sort of, we're like just baby steps at the moment with, with us because we're all still working full time and time and money, right? So we're getting a few more destinations up and going each year.

I think we might be up to about 14 or 15 or something there now on the website, but, you know, we're heading back to Christmas Island this year in July, there's a couple of really great lodges we work with there. Is Christmas on the one that has the crabs that walk across the road? other side of the country. So that one is that one's Christmas Island on West Coast, Western Australia, you go, you go there via via there to get to Cokus Keeling Island, which is also an amazing destination.

YBS, he goes there a bit. Yeah, to those ones. yeah. Spectacular?

Yeah, yeah. But this Christmas island is curebas, actually. So you would fly East Coast to Nardi and Fiji. And then down to, yeah, Christmas Island, and it was, it was named that because, oh, Jimmy Cook rocked up there on Christmas Day. a fair while ago.

Yeah, so any of those sort of places. And you mentioned Costa Rica and I can tell them now because we've done the trip some time ago. But this is sort of part of the bluff of being a fishing guide and stuff anyway. is that, um, you know, someone rings you up and goes, oh, I want to go catch a rooster fish and a giant tarpon in Costa Rica.

This is walkie and he's Mrs. Ness from Broome. Absolute Legends. And can you help me out there? And I'm like, yeah, no worries.

Of course I can. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Hang up the phone. Okay.

Fucking hell. Here we go. Do you get through old mate's old pencil carvings and go through their documents? exactly right.

old connections. Yeah, so Silver King lodge. They were absolutely stoked to have us back. We did 4 days fishing for those massive tarpon there. The river is named Barra del Colorado.

It's um, and it's just this amazing big floodplain system loaded with um, these massive tarpon, like right up to £200. So 4 days there and then, yeah, back to San Jose and then another half hour flight out to the Ossa Peninsula, which is on the west coast. For anyone who doesn't know, Costa Rica's that tiny little skinny bit in between North and South America. It's a really small country.

They don't have military and 30% of the country is still native virgin jungle, right? Like it is, their whole country's philosophy is pure Vita, the pure life and it, the people are so happy and friendly and the wildlife and everything there is just spectacular. In fact, here I go off on another tangent. You remember that documentary, Blue Zones, where it was a Netflix thing where there's these half a dozen areas around the world where an inordinate amount of people live to over a 100 years of age, Costa Rica is one of those.

Yeah, wow. Yeah. And it's just, you know, happiness, less stress, good tucker. Well, the food, they'd have no preservatives. They would have no, no, yeah.

And a lot of they're still living off the land, but they've got health, they've got good healthcare and stuff. So, you know, they've got the good combos. And yeah, so over we go to the Osa Peninsula crocodile Bay, we're about to send another few people there later on this year, actually. And it's really well known for its Bluewater Marlins, sailfish, Yellowfin tuna, that sort of thing. But yeah, we were there for the roosters and they are spectacular.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sort of like a giant travail, or maybe like a bludger travelly with a massivest mohawk, and they jump when you hook them and heaps of fun. Yeah, right, yeah. Yeah, some of the my list of bucket list fish just keeps growing and growing.

Like, yeah, the, I was on, on, on your Angling Interventions website today and yeah, it just, uh, some of the, but between PNG, Costa Rica. Tell us about a few weeks back we caught up for a beer and you told us about the Mongolia trip and the thing that got me was when... Bought up for a beer. Hang on. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Why do I get the blame for everything? No, we come up, we set up the podcast perfect. Dodgy Power and Beast Creek apparently. Well, the desk wouldn't work.

And then Ash brought it back to his hotel, bugged in it to work. So we're like, nah, we got dodgy power. Maybe that, look, is there an OnlyFans buffer zone around? Oh, how am I the buddy brunt of everything today?

Anyway, it's all good. seems to always work when we're in the hotel room behind a locked door. With the air con crank. Oh man.

But yeah, no, when we caught up and you were telling us about Mongolia. The thing that struck me was when you can tell us the details of the trip or how you go down the river, but the staff per people, like customer ratio. Like, so these trips, you're not booking trips for 20 people to go along. These are like small trips.

Yeah. Like very... Yeah, this is high-end stuff we're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Barefoot is listed on the website just because, like, I'm an owner, but Barefoot probably doesn't really have a place there. It's, it's that real, it's the high end stuff.

And with that comes, you know, great relationships with traditional owners of the land wherever they go and, you know, you're really embracing culture and stuff wherever you travel. So, yeah, the Mongolia thing. I did a, um, fair bit of ringing around past clients who'd been there when this 1st trip, when our 1st trip since we've owned the business got initiated by Alex Keiko, who's also an amazing client of angling adventures and Barefoot. said, oh, yeah, I want to go back to Mongolia for a couple of weeks.

So, sort it out for me, Wadi, sort of thing. And um, so I rang everyone and and they, I guess it, it's a bit like the fly guys, you know, once you get to that sort of level of, it's almost like a Buddhist thing, you, where you sort of, you've reached this level of zen where it's not all about the fish anymore. Um, everyone talks about Mongolia being the greatest travel experience of their life. When they go there for a week to fish for tame and and the other Lennock and trout species that are in the rivers there. The trout that's one of the biggest in the world or something.

Yeah, it's the biggest salmon in the world. Yeah, and a quick Google or a quick YouTube search will show you, you know, people catching 40 pounders and they're long and they're, you know, they're, they're not like massive, like sort of barrow, but yeah, they're sort, you know, they're just huge, big sort of brown trout and they call them the wolf of the river and they, there's a great video that yellow dog fly fishing did where they, they're sort of scouting some areas and they went out with the local blokes and, oh, how do you catch these fish? So they shot a couple of prairie dogs and threw them on a treble hook on a handline and just dragged them along the surface and bush, you know, and they're like, oh, okay. So they'll let surface then.

Wow. Yeah, so but, you know, Mongolia is... of flies do you use then? It's a prairie dogs. Yeah.

Well, it turns out that a lot of our, the flies, especially a couple, um, that I really love for our Saratoga work really well, perhaps just a hook size or 2 up. Um, like a mouse fly, um, that they use on rainbows and browns in New Zealand as well. So, you know, you can catch an elephant on a peanut sort of thing and you don't want to be, you can throw a huge fly around all day. Same with a barrow and all it does is where you out and weed out the smaller fish, but, you know, a big a big fisher leader fly.

I mean, I got a £170 tarp on a flight that big. You don't have to have a foot-long fly sort of thing. It perhaps a bit different in that way than the blue water fishing, but yeah, I mean, Mongolia just sounds spectacular. We're off there in September for a couple of weeks.

There's only a group of four, and we start up at the top of the river and we float down on rafts and they move the camp every day and and yeah, like it's 2 or 3 or 4 staff members per guest. Yeah, so they're setting up camp every night. So if you went to Costa Rica, for example, you might be staying in a 5 star hotel, but then if you go to Mongolia, you might be literally camping with 3 or 4 staff per person. In their traditional gurs with the, you know, the big rugs and all that sort of stuff and Mongolia is really...

This is an amazing part of being able to travel to all these spots is you see how other people live their lives. And, you know, we get so used to Australia and sort of the way we are going to work every bloody day and just so that we can have a few hours on the weekend to have a beer and a fish under a tree with our mates. But in Mongolia, there's, um, there's like no private landownership. So they're all still nomadic farmers, these guys.

So there's there's people herding reindeers out there. That's their living. They live off reindeer milk and reindeer meat and a few fish out of the river and, you know, grow a few vegetables and forage and stuff. And we see that in various places where we travel around the world, just this really pure life that people are still living and they've never heard of Married at 1st sight. Or they've never seen...

can you move there? is it? I've never seen you guys only fan page. And they and they're not like sort of bittered by social media and knowing what Uncle Donald's up to and who's blowing up who and all this sort of stuff like it's and it's been studied all around the world.

A lot of people who have lot less stuff are generally happier, right? Yeah, oh, definitely can be. You know, there's a there's a there's a there's a line there. You need a certain amount of stuff, but, you know, I always come back to New Guinea and I keep saying that I'm going to move to Lake Murray as soon as the kids finish school.

These guys there, there's no electricity, there's no roads, they're 95, 97% living off the landstill. Every bit of tucker they eat is grown in a garden that they've made or hunted or fished out of the lake. They, you know, they have a toothbrush if they can afford it. bit of spices and stuff to season up their tucker and a big cigarette lighter so they can light their fire, maybe and a bush knife and that's it.

You know, one cup per person, if you're lucky sort of thing, and living in a house that's made out of all the materials from the forest. And they are some of the happiest and most content people that I've ever met. So there's this balance there. We really struggle with in Australia, I reckon, right now in any of these sort of like um, uh, sort of highly westernised cultures.

And every time I come home after spending, I spent 5 weeks in New Guinea year before last and I came home and I was like ashamed of how much stuff I've got. You know? So yeah, that's a really interesting thing. So when people book these trips and go on one of these trips with the business, either you or one of your brothers, one of the other owners goes on the trips.

As often as we can, yeah. particularly for the ones that aren't that are sort of one or 2 trips a year. So, um, you know, uh, Tanzania, Uruguay, Brazil for the Golden Dorado, um, yeah, Mongolia. I mean, the trips to Lake Murray and Ben's back, which is the other destination in New Guinea where the Big Barra.

They've been running for a long time. They're professionally run and I've got all the all the staff and stuff. They love a bit of Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp and stuff. So whenever they've got, they go to the lodge and they plug their phone in, get a bit of phone service and some credit, always in contact with them.

So having those really good relationships means that I don't have to go on every trip. I would love to. We're not sort of at that point yet, but um, yeah, we're only a text message away if there's any, you know, oh, there's a hole in my fly screen. No worries.

I'll get Mayor, the guide to go down with a Band-Aid and put a Band-Aid over it. Yeah, right, yeah. Yeah, something, yeah, which sort of struck me on your website today. We just mentioned then was the Big Barrow in PNG.

Like, in my head, they're an Australian fish, you know what I mean? But then I thought, oh, of course, like you got all the way up Torres Strait Islands and that, of course, they're going to swim over there, like, and for there to be a big barra fishery over there. I'm like, 0 wow. Like, um, we earlier on we spoke about how fish are different in different rivers just in the Top End of the Northern territory.

You go over there. How do the Barra differ over there? Yeah, it is a different thing again. And, um, you know, one thing that I've always been frustrated with New Guinea for not sharing with us is black bass because they stop at the coastline there, even though from the nearest Australian island to the shore of New Guinea is like 6 kilometres, right?

But they, but black bass aren't in Queensland, which is really frustrating. because if they were, it'd be pretty amazing. That's an incredible geological feat for them to just... Yep, it just hasn't happened. And there's a hell, there's really, there's a huge knowledge gap in with Black Bass, Papa and Black Bass.

There's really been no scientific research done on them. I'm actually working on a couple of guys from the world wreck fishing conference, some of these scientific or scientific anglers. I suppose, um, uh, research scientists who love fishing. I was like, oh, do you want to come to New Guinea with me and do some research on Black Bass so we can sort of understand the population and what they do because it, Lake Murray is a 70,000 acre lake in the middle of, is a 7000 acre lake, right in the middle of New Guinea.

It's 250 K's from the coast, right? So they're a little janet species and there's barrow in there as well. Like mangrove jack. Mangrove jack, golden snapper, stripes. So we assume that they need brackish water at least to spawn?

When I look at them, they look like a mangrove jack, like Arnold Schwarzenegger version of a mango jack. That's what the black bass are, yeah. that's right. The same as a cubera snapper and a few of those other ones that you find in the Americas as well.

But we just don't know if do they travel that far or have they just adapted to breeding in the fresh. And the same with the barrow there. We never catch small barrel there. The smallest barrel.

I think is on our promo videos like a 55 or something, but you never get rat barrers there and the barra, Lake Murray, fight twice as hard as a barrow of... So Topsy connects to the ocean, there's a river that comes out. Yeah, the fly river goes into the Gulf of Papua. Yeah.

And it's a huge system, but no one knows anything about it. Where does the river come out on the north side of the south side? So it comes out of the south side as well. But yeah, that's interesting as well.

And that's the closest point. You know, you've got you've actually got Horn Island in Australia, which is where we fuel up and we check our passports out of it. Australia when we fly to Ben's back. It's it's really close.

Like you could drive your punt there. Yeah. It's so close. But when you fly there, what do you do you fly like Qantas or? Yeah, so they're both different.

Lake Murray, we fly Cairns, Moresby, Mount Hagen, which is right in the middle of New Guinea, and it is an amazing place as well. You go up to a hotel called Rondon Lodge, which is 7000 feet above sea level. It's cold there. There's roses growing in the garden, which is really weird.

You don't think about that for New Guinea. Uh, and and then the next day we'll fly down to Lake Mary hour and a half flight um, down through the mountains and over the floodplain. And that's, that's how we get there. But for Ben's back. And this is why I think it's so popular.

It's been sort of on the down low until we got hold of it and now we're telling everyone about it, which some of the old guys have been going there for 30 years that they love having their same week. There's only 9 weeks a year of fishing there. And they love having their same week. But, you know, we get all these new young punks that want to get over there and try it now. So there's a bit of competition happening there.

So, but yeah, you haven't breakfast in Cairns. If there's fuel at Daru, which is Papua New Guinea, you can do everything at Daru. But otherwise we fly to Horn Island, check out of Australia there. Flight of Daru, which is PNG, check into PNG there.

Flight of the lodge are about 40 minute hops each, and you're fishing by lunchtime. That's only like obviously small plane. Yeah, it's a king air. So, um, 9 people with about 15 kilos each.

Yeah, and you got to fuel up everywhere you can because a bit of range and stuff like that, there's a lot of logistics involved. And yeah, and you're fishing in New Guinea, by lunchtime, which is pretty spectacular, right? All these other destinations, it's at least an overnight or two, you know, especially to get to, you know, Jurassic Lake in Argentina, I was going to go there for a week in January and it would have been 17 days away to do a week's fishing just because of overnights and flies. So, yeah, really lucky to have that so close. And, um, yeah, and the fish is spectacular. The Ben's Back River is pretty similar to May River, Shady Camp, it's only 250 K's long.

It has a later wet season, so the runoff is June, July, August there. We put 9 groups a year into there and they average at least 15 metres a week each and there's no sounders on the boats. So imagine if you did have a sound at it. I actually took my active target there and turned it off after the 1st sort of day because I was like, holy shit.

Imagine if you could target like the big ones. if they're all big. Imagine if you could target a big one out of the big ones. How big could they get?

There's decent numbers of metre 30s that get caught there every year. Yeah. It is, it's just mental. And the record with these guys got uh, what was it? It was like 46 metres for the week.

It was over a full moon a couple of years ago. 36 of them were on surface. So that's metres, and then, and they're not like 101s, 103. They're 115's plus most of them.

And then you got to think, okay, well, if that's the amount of metres, they're probably catching twice that many or at least one. 5 times that many in 90s. And it's, and it's mostly off the bank. Oh, really?

Not even fishing in boats. Yeah, yeah, because it's just floodplain drains. It's like the top of the moil in May, right? So you can, like, you drive down to these massive creek junctions, hop out.

It's all beautiful grassy banks is amazing for fly casting. There is not many trees or floodplain. Um, and just, yeah, they throw this lure that um, you can't buy it anymore. I know this bloke who bought the last 100 of them off eBay.

But they call it the donga. There's a blue Waterloo. There's a river to see rover and it's 230 mil long about that round. And he's monster Barrett just smoke it.

And that's because the main bait source for them is Snakehead that got introduced from West Papua. Yeah, and they all swim along the top. It's meant, yeah. We'll get you there one day, mate.

I was going to say, yeah, look, it's the middle of the dry season, and that's perfect timing for me. Yeah. Yeah. You starts the day, sporty?

Yes, there's the dates. You snuck in earlier. You mentioned the fishing recreational fishing conference, whatever it is. So in the last couple of weeks, you've just got back from South Africa.

Yeah, yeah, that was a weird one, wasn't it? I sort of, I've been infiltrating some of these, like, organisations with smart people in them over the last few years. And the Amateur Fisherman's Association of the Northern Territory is one. I was pretty naturally drawn to it.

Warren DeWitt, an amazing fella has been has been our sort of boss representative of that organisation for a long time. They've fought the good... 20 something years maybe? Yeah, 23 years.

I think this year, yeah, it'd be maybe 24 in 2026. You only have to look at his sons to know he's a bloody good bloke. Yeah, Trent TV, right? This week in Canada with the floods.

Trent has been, yeah, like. We've got to save a lot of it for tomorrow, because Ash and I in the morning, as long as we don't end up at the big house till 4 a.m. We're going to record a potty right here tomorrow, just the 2 of us. Oh, no, I want to talk at length about, obviously, the flooding, Catherine, and Trent.

Yeah, he's a fuck, we've had him on the party. It was a two-part series. Let's never play. Yeah, bronze statue of Trenton.

Yeah, that's what I was going to do. And then like another one I saw was like AI photo of big signers, you enter Catherine, birthplace of Trent Dewitt. Maybe on the railway bridge, Trent loves nacho. I didn't know. Cross out the Jesus.

That's unreal. Yeah. Because that was, like, heritage listens to where, but the Jesus... Yeah, graffiti that's been heritage listed in a town that's only been there for 100 years or whatever. That's how we do it in the...

Warren, obviously, which is Trent's old man. president of that president of that and has been for over 2 decades. Yeah, and, um, you know, like for me, I want to be part of this world for the rest of my life, you know, and Angley Adventure is going to provide that. But also, you work pretty hard to get the knowledge and understanding of systems and people and how it all interacts over the last 15 years and to just give that up and go truck driving, again, when I get sick of it, it sort of seems silly to me.

So to be able to give back a bit and have sort of the bogan or the uneducated view in a boardroom full of lawyers and really smart people. For whatever reason, Dave Shiravolo and the rest of the crew at AFANT allowed me in and I haven't let them kick me out yet. So, uh, that was sort of... Oh, yeah, I mean, an amazing bloke.

He'd probably do a better job of running the country than the current fellow, I reckon, but I also think he probably just rather go fishing and enjoys life. But yeah, so we ended up there. There was there was a dozen or so Aussies there on the official Australian delegation, but there was at least 15 altogether. No, I'm having a real beer, mate.

You guys have those. He's on the heavies, Ryan. I'm busy yapping. So this is the it's the Wreckfish conference.

This is the World Recreational Fishing Conference. happens about every 3 years and it's, and it's a scientific conference at its, at its heart, and it's where all these nerds share all this amazing work that they've been doing for the last few years. And then drink a few beers afterwards. So, yeah, there's some extraordinary stuff happening.

But the problem that you see all around the world is that, number one, there's not enough data. And number two, there's a big disconnect from the nerds, and I say that in a loving way because, you know, some of these guys and girls, I'm now like close with and and will probably be friends with forever. There's a big disconnect from them to what happens with me and you on the ground and it's the people in between that, well, largely aren't there. You know, our government representatives and stuff have been nice to see some fisheries guys to turn up to that sort of stuff rather than just representatives from peak bodies and fishing guides, although out of 180 people in 27 different countries.

I was the only fishing guide apart from one other dude in from America. Bryant Dunn, who's an absolute legend as well, part of Christmas Island Lodge. He's started up a fly fishing operation in Bhutan. Do you know where Bhutan is?

Uh, I'm going to have a stab and say over like in the Persian Gulf sort of area. It's it's right at the bottom of China, in between a few other stands. Okay, yeah, yeah, rodeo. Tiny little country, but it's all hills.

And they have this fish over there. It's tricky to like get Australians fired up about it because they look a little bit like a carp. You know, anything that sort of looks like carpet strains are like, no way. But they have golden and chocolate and masir there and as well as trout.

With them bloody carp. If you blindfolded someone, like, they are a sport fish. I shit, you know. Absolutely. freaking catfish, tarpon, by all these arsehole fish.

If you blindfolded, they are, like, a tarpon would pull a barrel of the same size backwards. course. Yeah, yeah. And and same with caddies. yeah

But that's a whole nother thing. Anyway, yeah, there's only there's only like sort of 2 true end users there, and lots of really interesting science people, and we had an amazing time and learned a lot of stuff, some really great networking. We've got some great ideas that we're working on at, from that conference, as well as, you know, trying to get some of these really interesting scientists to come over to PNG to like understand some unknown fish as well. So, really inspirational and afterwards, I just, I was like, sign me out for every single one of these ever.

Like, it was a whole different conversation than what I'm used to having. So, yeah, pretty intimidating though. I can only imagine, mate. You, um, in a previous topic there, you mentioned the, the idea of like all the knowledge you've gained and the idea of going back to truck driving or whatever, but using that knowledge, you have actually put that into something which you can share with others.

So on your website there. I say you've got, what's it called? Barra... Come on, mate, you you're actually, you've got a login.

I do, I do. I just think I'm going to confuse it with Ryan Moody's one. It's not Barabasics. That his one.

Brian Moody's the king of this sort of stuff in Australia. Yeah, mine's Top End barr secrets. Barr secret seat. Yeah, I knew, yeah.

Look, I've. Thanks, buddy. Top embarrass secrets, Spike. It's got to be hot in here, isn't it? Wow, he turned it down.

Have you noticed? clamming. I clammy. No, mate, and look, I was forced into doing online courses through COVID, of course.

You know, we went through... why he did, yeah. We went we went from having a full diary in 2020 to nothing overnight. You know, we were we were at the Moyles doing a mothership trip and started getting these weird text messages when we start heading back to Anson Bay.

Guys are from Victoria and they're like, you guys better pull off the water. They're closing the borders tonight. Like, what the hell? I mean, if you look back on that time, it was really weird, wasn't it? You couldn't imagine, you couldn't ride it.

I don't think it'd ever happen. Not now in our lifetimes again, I don't think. I don't think people would be compliant like they would. absolutely. Yeah, unbelievable. The vaccination thing.

Like, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, it makes me, it makes me angry. But I was the same was, say, what, you, like, you were absolutely fucked over. Like your business, everything. Oh, yeah, you're just based on, oh, look, I've just spent 2 days doing risk training and nobody did risk creating this fucking COVID.

I can tell you. No, but it's very frustrating from a business owner's point of view, it's fine when you work for the government when you're getting paid. Yeah, like when you own your own business and you have to look at where, how, where, where you're willing to put your risk and like for me, I was the same because like, you know, I had a guiding business as well. You still doing it then, weren't you?

And a fishing lodge, and that's what stopped me. That's why I'm out of it now, is because I went from having 2 businesses, like a guiding business and an accommodation business that we sort of work together. you know, obviously sort of, you know, overlapped heavily. And in the end, like we had no trade for, you know, 12 months and we were...

radically for 18 months of 2 years, really. It was sort of on and off. Well, for sure. And where we were, we were a by security area.

So you couldn't even come from Darwin. So, you know, Darwin's got a population of what, 120, 150,000 people. If you include Palmerston. Um, We couldn't even get people from here down to home.

So we had the people that live there full time. So we're down to about 30 people. And bullfrog's not paying you to go on. No, no, no, no.

Namalet's got his own boat. Yeah, it was weird. I spoke to him the other day. I don't think it's going to, which, I mean, perish the thought if ever happened again, but I just sort of roll with the punches a bit. I don't have any strong feelings about that.

I mean, people were, I assume, doing the making the best decisions they could at the time and stuff. In hindsight, we probably all would have made different decisions. Definitely. The thing that sort of, I just, the one thing that frustrates me about it.

And again, we're not political at all, but one thing that really frustrates me about it is that not that people made poor decisions. poor decisions or mistakes is completely acceptable for a period at least, but it's the misinformation and the lies that came out of it. that really, really annoys me, especially today when you have some people, especially in the media that are absolutely rubbishing some people because they're coming out and saying, oh, you know, I've done this and I'm good and they're saying, oh, that person's batshit crazy. Don't follow what he's saying, you know?

Um, and turns out now it's 100% 180 degrees the other way. Yeah People lost their livelihoods over things that are now proven as fact. Yeah, for saying at the time.

And you know, you know how you can stop being so frustrated about that? Is, um, don't look at social media. I mean, it all affects you. I don't have a TV, right?

I've never owned a TV, so I don't, I'm not exposed to all that sort of news and the, and the stuff that gets me worked up and, and even the, the algorithm in social media hasn't even figured out how to get like political stuff in front of me because I just don't engage with it, right? So that, I just sort of accept. Well, I mean, and being enraged plays a role because it saves me having to do it. So I just expect that enough people will be cranky about this that I don't have to worry about it.

I just go along in my own little bubble and sort of try and be happy and less headaches, but you could be my sort of enraged. I'll put it into perspective, which will affect you tomorrow. Look at it. Don't tell me that. I'm having a good time

Look at it like the price of fuel at the moment. So what are we talking about the other day? 20% of fuel oil tankers, fuel tankers, go through the Strait of Mars? Yes, which 80% doesn't go through there.

Yeah, yeah. Our terminal gate price. So the gate price from in Darwin has gone from a dollar 60 or dollar 70 a litre for diesel, only day, literally days ago, not even a week ago. It's over $2.60 today.

By the time I publish this, it'll take me a few days at least. So it could be $3, $4 dollars. We don't know. So in terms of running a business.

And so obviously one of your big costs is going to be fuel in your business. Oh, of course. But imagine if you're a freight company. Yeah. Or a farmer trying to sell a crop so that someone can eat some food.

Exactly. Well, yeah. They're the guys that, you know, and that's my background. So that frustrates me that they can't get fuel and that the, um, you know, these privately owned companies have, they're increasing at ¢10 a litre every night.

But at the same time, I also understand that I could blow my top about it, it's not going to make a difference. So I sort of choose not to. I think my point was more, and I forgot what my point was exactly, but I think it was along the lines of... I think it's been pushed this way.

The fuel companies have put the prices up. It's not like their price has gone up over. They put their price up because the media has made it sound so terrible. Because I don't watch the news, but I thought the oil price actually went down at one point.

Well, it has. Per barrel. So how anyway. But it's a bit like the bank teller and the Telstra, you know, support person like it.

There's no point giving a tune up to the poor bugger who's working the till. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Well, again, like you see people bagging the girl that's working the checkout at the service station going, oh, you're robbing us, you're robbing us. But it's not the service station's fault.

It's the wholesale that are putting their pro, you know, British petroleum are the ones that are controlling it. Anyway, weren't we talking about... But we're getting to a point where I'm going to, this thing will record forever, but I will run out of video card space at some point. And you still need 45 minutes for your show tonight.

Yeah, right. That's where I bought backup hard drives. That's the baby all over there. Jesus.

Oh man. We'll have to obviously do a part 2 with body because we haven't even covered half the stuff I wanted to talk about. Oh, yeah, we'll get him again for sure. Yeah.

But we actually have a bit of competition here because we obviously get to a point in the podcast where we do our song nominations for the Golf Mudcrabbers playlist on Spotify. And what he has actually had Barefoot fishing tunes on Spotify for, I think, a long time before we ever had our playlist. I think, I look today, it's over 3000 songs, I think, is on there. Yeah, right, eh?

Yeah, so a lot bigger playlist. So if you guys want to listen to some good tunes, you can go check out the Barefoot Fishing Tunes playlist and the song I chose for my song nomination today was from that list, which I can't for the life of you remember what it was. Oh, you were talking it up before too. No, it is a good one.

Digging holes. yeah, yeah. I hadn't heard it before, but I was listening to it. had my headphones on at work. And, um, notes. And, yes, scrolling up.

Scrolling down. Scrolling on right now. Good radio. Good radio.

It is so, no, no, it was digging holes by Brent Hobb. Um, yeah, it's it's a bit of a, um, it's like country, but almost like old. At 1st when I was listening to it, it almost sounded a little bit like old school psychedelic rock-ish. Listen, freaky stuff on that playlist.

No, but then when I actually Googled it, I hadn't heard the song. I actually Googled it and it turns out, yeah, it's not old. It's only in the last decade. Um, yeah, it's not it's not an old song.

but it has an old school feel to it, but still country. was really good. And it's a bit of a cheeky song as well with the lyrics. It was really good.

So that's my song nomination. For this uh, podcast for the guy, uh, Golf Microvers playlist. Am I allowed to have one? Yeah.

What do you mean? That's what we do, Bryce. Oh, okay. That's what we do. You can tell me I was.

I have to think. I messaged earlier. I said, I've already got my song. Oh, that's why I said it.

You're just showing off. Yeah, dog, he's got one. He's got one. My phone's in there in charge.

I can't remember what I have. But no, I'll so I'll do one that I do know. In actual fact, is it on there already? You might have checked.

Luke Combs, he's one of his later ones, sleepless in the hotel room. It's not on there. Not on there. There you go.

That's me then. It is it is a good one, though. It is good. This will be me that'll be me later tonight.

Sleepless in the hotel room. Little couch over here. curling up like a kitten over there. That's what I was getting.

I know. No, it's not a bad deal. Righto, okay. Now, I actually didn't, honestly, I didn't think that that message that you sent was, um, made for me to think about one, but I, I mean, I, so this is another thing with me, right?

And I know we're running out of film. We've got at least 40 seconds. It's all right. I listen to music from the day from the minute I wake up to the minute I go to sleep and sometimes while I'm going to sleep.

I'll, you know, at the end of the year, each year, Spotify gives you a year in a, like a wrap up. The wrap-up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So year before last, last year I deliberately backed off on it a little bit.

I was listening to some different stuff, but I was in the top 2% of users in the world for Spotify. I was listening. Holy shit. Our official Spotify correspondent over here.

like fucking Jesus. But and that's just because I go fishing, the music's on. And if I'm in the shed, it's on. If I'm in the office, it's on, right?

So, and and then it sort of breaks it down even more. So, I was in the top 4% of listeners who had listened to George Ezra. Shotgun is the song. Oh, yeah, I'll be riding, sure.

And that's not because it's on my My playlist is because every day when we drive to school, the kids, they DJ and they take it in turns and that song is on every day. Every day, yeah. But that was weird. And yeah, I... Good song.

Um, to be, I thought there would be people listening to music at least as much as me, but 2% in the world. Out of, what, how many 1000000000 people there are? Crazy. So, anyway, um, but, I guess I would like to, um, think about something that is really like close to home, um, and with a bit of meaning, and, you know, I'm from wool growing sheep country, and I was never a very good shearer or a crutch, I would blame my bad knees, which I'm about to get a Rico next week, actually.

So we'll definitely blame that, not my ability and my heart. But I was a wool classer, which is the easiest job in the shed, right? You stand there and, you know, pull the bad bits and you say that one goes in there. So, um, anything to do with shearing's always close to my heart because it's hard work, um, but it's an amazing lifestyle as well.

I sort of travelled on the sheep's back all around the world in my early days, wool classing and working on sheep farms and that sort of stuff. So there's a fellow named Adam McClure. He's not with us anymore. Um, local fellow from Cole Reign in Western Victoria.

Poor bugger succumbed to, we'll call it the black dog, you know, going through a bit of relationship problems and whatever. And the saddest thing is that he left behind a couple of young kids. But he made some amazing, super funny, hilarious music. Um, all about shearing and and farming and that sort of stuff.

So there's a couple there. The 50 stroke is a really good one. He's sure so hard he died, is another great one. Um, But for the playlist.

I'd probably go the 50 stroke, but I'd just really encourage everyone to check it out. Yeah. Roger. Yeah, awesome.

Well, we'll have that and we'll add George Ezra as well, shotgun. Then I'd have to listen to it again. Perfect. I do love the, I do love the playlist and I particular, you know, I'm so glad that um, Billy Joel's... Down Easter, Alexa.

That's a very special song. That's an epic floodplain runoff bar official.