KAKADU BILLABONGS

For many anglers interstate travel has been out of the question for quite a while now due to Covid restrictions. Borders open and close according to case numbers, but unlike N.S.W. and Victoria, Queensland has been relatively spared from the Coved surge at the time of writing. We originally planned this trip to the Northern Territory for July but a sudden lockdown in Queensland put paid to those plans. When things came together our trip was scheduled in September. By this stage the water in the billabongs was warming up, the crocs were increasingly frisky and the barramundi were biting. There had also been some early rain.

I flew up with Ross McCubbin and Roxsean Edwards met us at the airport and was already packed and ready. Rocky is one of the most experienced female barra anglers I know and both Ross and I have fished with Rocky many times before. Barra fishing is her passion. Our plan for this trip was to fish some of the more remote billabongs in and around Kakadu National Park.

The bush tracks and lack of boat ramps in some places made life interesting and the crocodiles were quite aggressive. Billabong fishing is not about catching metre long barra. In