WET SEASON RUN OFF
“On big tides large barramundi use the tide to move up river chasing baby barra and mullet and even when the water is filthy the fishing can be excellent.”
In northern Australia there are only two seasons, the wet and the dry. Each year barramundi fishermen across the country cross their fingers hoping for sustained heavy rains in the north. These rains are the life blood of all the coastal ecosystems, in exactly the same way that rain is to farmers, native animals and vegetation. In the Northern Territory in the 2018/19 wet season the rains never came in a sustained way. While some rivers had a run off of sorts, in general it was a miserable wet season in most of the catchments, and the fishing was very poor. I’ve never seen the Daly River in such poor condition. When the rains don’t come, the fish don’t either. I’ve fished this river for many years. In seasons where the wet season run off is long and sustained and the floodplains fill, there is a myriad of life, and catches of 20 to 40 barra in a day are quite common. Last year I fished for 8 days and never
