Fish Tales

   Ever since our arrival in the NT, we’ve been hearing about barramundi fishing.  It seems like everyone is an angler, and everyone knows someone who’s caught a ‘metre long barra’.  As amateur anglers ourselves, always willing to cast a line when available despite our less than stellar skills, we decided to pursue this activity once settled at Wongalara.  Even though barra is an excellent eating fish, we’re not supposed to catch and eat on the sanctuary, so we’ll settle for catch and release for now.  This is the tale of our first barra encounter.  Needless to say, there will be more.

Tegan's monster.

  Borrowing a couple of the managers’ old rods and lures, we took Frank out to the Wilton River, one of the major rivers that flow through Wongalara.  It’s actually where we get our drinking water from now that the rain water supply is used up.  Since none of the roads had been graded yet, the ride out towards the river was a bit bumpy, and after about 30 minutes came to a washout that we didn’t feel the need to try and cross.  The track runs parallel with the river not far away, so we parked and got geared up for some fishing.  To be honest, we expected a whole lot of nothing.  Personally, I’m not much of a fisherman, something I’ve proved time and again in the presence of Tegan over the past 4 years.  We have no technique to speak of, and whatever I looked up on the internet about how to fish for these monsters was pretty self explanatory: cast and reel slowly, with the occasional twitch of the line.  We threw our lines in the water, and within a few casts Tegan actually hooked what turned out to be a massive 80cm long barra!  We couldn’t believe it.  With such luck right from the beginning, it had to go downhill.  Not for Tegan, as she hooked 2 progressively smaller barra within the next 10 casts.  She was making it look easy.  I, on the other hand, got a couple bites but that was it.  Sadly though, all the fun and games came to an end and over the next couple hours there were no more fish to be had except one little catfish that I think ran into my hook and caught itself.  Tegan’s skill probably had the rest of the fish in the river talking and staying away anyway.  However, our first attempt could be considered a resounding success.  They’re out there, and they’re biting.  By the end of this adventure we might actually have some decent fish tales to tell.