Hotting up in the Top End

The occasional shower around town is creating comments of an early wet season, but I reckon I've seen this all before. No sooner does it look like a wet and it dries up again. For us, the longer the build-up grows the better it gets as the water temps ignite the barramundi in the inland billabongs and shallow coastal saltwater across the Top End.

This has certainly started to happen as reports of half a dozen barra a session keep coming from West Arm in Darwin Harbour, Talc Head rocks, Shoal Bay and the mouth of the Adelaide River, better known as Saltwater Arm. Frenchy from Civic Video cracked onto a good barra session at The Narrows this week, the fish were big and chrome.

Pioneer Creek is holding a nice mixed bag of species on its many rockbars with live bait braining a variety of snapper, blue salmon, school jew and the odd 60cm barra on the outgoing tide.
Finding some slack water on the protected side of the rockbars is the key to finding the fish holding up in numbers. The boys in the know around Bynoe are having fantastic sight casting sessions up amongst the mangrove snags and flats. Shallow 14A Bombers, X-Raps and Spearheads have done the job as have accurate fly casts.

The bigger inland barra are on the bite too, with several 80cm reports from Hardys and Corroborree backed up by impressive photographs. Anthony "Simo" Simpson caught an 82cm and 87cm barra at Hardys trolling the Got One Green Bling +10 Classic during an early morning session this week.
Get ready to hear the word "barra" coming thick and fast now, I remember in previous years, even close to town, some stonkers to 112cm were caught at this time of year.

Some might think I'm talking about Shoal Bay rock...wrong...try East Arm!

Frenchy of Civic Video with a nice "Narrows" saltwater barra.

Now here's one for the books. It would seem that the "soaking a bait" days are almost over in favour of soft plastic jigging techniques. The Berkley Gulp/Squidgy/Slam phase is on bigger than I've ever seen before. It's a mission just to keep them on the store shelf, especially Nuclear Chicken, Satay Chicken and Sardine colours in 5 and 7 inch Jerkshad varieties. The big 7 inch versions are hot to trot on jew and big snapper and best loaded with a 7/0 3/4 or 1oz Nitro jighead. The smaller 5 inch models sit well on a 3/0 head and don't the fish love them. There's really not a bluewater reef species that won't touch them and they often outperform dead baits hands down.
Throw in the new Octa and Lucanis Jigs and you can almost use your dead baits as minced berley!

With the local mackerel season trickling to an end, now would be a good time to target a session before they head for the horizon. Having said that, I personally believe the macks are quite happy in our waters all year round, although their numbers thin out during the wet season.

Around town the landbased action has been quite good. East Arm boat ramp provided some serious fly fishing action with two tourists casting clousers at trevally and small queenies to their hearts' content. These fishos have been peppering our boat ramps and returning with smiles on their dials as 8-weight fly rods get stretched to the limit.

Fancy some crabs? Best you hurry up as the warmer weather sees catches dissipate a little - so it's the sooner the better.

John Main caught this 82cm barra at Corroboree on the X-Rap lure pictured behind.

Regards

Craig Grosvenor
Got One Darwin
Ph (08) 89472224
Fx (08) 89472239
Email- darwin@gotone.com.au

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