Barra battlers

My annual pilgrimage to the Northern Territory to photograph and video two of this nation’s premier barramundi-fishing tournaments is always looked forward to in earnest.

Palmerston Game Fishing Club’s Club Marine Barra Nationals and Darwin Game Fishing Club’s NT Barramundi Classic are held on the iconic Daly River about 220km south of the city of Darwin and attract competitors from around the country... even a few from overseas.

Some of these competitors have been fishing one or both of these comps for decades. Having fished both quite a few times myself it is always great to catch up with old acquaintances and also check out the latest and greatest in barra boats, engines and accessories.

Typically when the wet season sets in, the Top End is on the receiving end of a good drenching; anything up to three metres of monsoonal rain. This deluge falls in the watershed and locally around the floodplains of the mighty rivers, of which the Daly is one.

This local rain covers the floodplains and the many billabongs that are home to barra of the last three- or four-year classes. The fish get flushed out into the rivers to continue their life cycle, and the billabongs are cleansed in the process. 

The 2012/13 wet season saw no localised rain till late-April and when the high water came downstream the feeders off the billabongs had a reverse current of sorts and the billabongs were filled by the rising river. This caused a calamity with fish stocks, billabongs becoming stagnant and when they did drain, the water was basically de-oxygenated and failed to support fish life.

The barra were out of there and the only ones to be caught were those coming in and ebbing out with the coastal tides entering the system 70km away. To indicate how such a meagre wet season can affect fish numbers, take the Barra Nationals in 2012. 

A bumper wet season saw good and sustained flood levels and the tournament realised over 2,500 fish over 40cm for competitors and 25 of those were over the Holy Grail mark of one metre in length. These results are in stark contrast to those of 2013 where just 690 fish were caught and seven were over the metre on the measuring boards.

But in any case, the boats that fished these tournaments up to 30 years ago are a far cry from those in use today. In 1982, if you were huddled in a 12-foot Manta Craft with a 15hp two-stroke Mariner you were up there with the best of them. The real guns that were the head turners had their boats adorned with a short casting deck and another five horses. No one had a depth sounder or GPS. Such technology wasn’t even heard of unless you knew someone who was a merchant skipper. I used one in the mid 80s and their bulk would take up more space in a small boat than a decent-sized beer esky!

A survey of these two tournaments indicates how far we have come in every aspect of our Top End boating and fishing when it comes to equipment and software.

The average length of competing boats has jumped from 3.75m (the old Manta Craft punts) to a respectable 5.6m, a growth of just under 67 per cent. With the average horsepower bolted onto tournament transoms now 130, an increase over that relatively short time of a whopping 869 per cent.

Forty five per cent of these power plants wore the Suzuki badge. This leading figure has a direct bearing to the brand of boat and in the majority of cases they were boats from GS Marine, a now defunct builder operating out of Darwin who held a Suzuki franchise. They were a damn good boat and I have heard rumours that an enterprising individual has bought the jigs and plans and they may well go into production again.

Yamaha picked up 36 per cent of the transoms whilst Evinrude ETEC motors made up for around 13 per cent of the overall field. Honda and Mercury were in the minority with both struggling to get to seven per cent. A couple of obsolete yet-still-running Tohatsu and Johnson outboards plied the waterway as well.

I spent three days in between these two tournaments with Dave Silva, who in a past life was a regional sales representative for Navico, the company that produces Lowrance products. He has two HDS-12 units installed running off a side-structure scanning transducer bolted onto his 6.25m Bar Crusher. We were having a fish while filming a video clip for Halco Lures so getting fish was a matter of urgency and considering the harsh fish counts experienced in the Barra Nationals, it was more than a little worrying.

Watching Dave convert screen information into action was gold! 

With lines trolled long, Dave makes a call of "good fish 80 feet to the right fellas." The boat is swung out into the river. "Should be nearly on him now," was the call. Whack! "I’m on," is the next call and a metre of chrome barra launches into the atmosphere. 

In a seemingly fishless river we landed 14 barra for the cameras, four of those over a metre in length. In fact, if we had caught those in the previous tournament, or the one to follow, we would have been on the top step of the dais for the presentation of trophies.

This technology is deadly and is something to seriously contemplate if you are a competitive angler with a penchant for creek, river and estuary fishing.

Team Humminbird fished both tournaments and were armed with their most recent innovation in their Humminbird 360 Imaging. This sonar system allows one to view 150 feet or 46 metres all round with a transducer that is deployed electronically via a transom-mounted shaft. In effect it is no different in its functionality than that deployed on major shipping or submarines, though scaled down somewhat to fit it with the economics of recreational fishing. Their headsets are also capable of running side scan and normal depth sounding as well.

Lowrance proved to be the more popular choice of electronics commanding 58 per cent of the field, whilE Humminbird made up for 40 per cent of the cabinets, with Simrad trailing at just two per cent.

These were supporting depth sounders, GPS cabinets, drink cups, rod holders, radio antennas and anything else that needed holding up or pointing in a particular direction. You should check out an unbelievable array of options on www.ram-mount.com.au

Meantime, the Barra Classic has a 'no anchoring' rule. This rule prevents boats blocking up creeks preventing easy access by casting anglers passing by and those trolling the edges of the mainstream. Since this rule was brought into play a few years ago there has been a visible increase in the number of bow-mount electric motors.

Over the two tournaments 76 per cent of the boats put their Minn Kotas to good use. And they were the stand-alone brand with no competition to be seen on the river.

To the uninitiated, the functionality of Minn Kota’s iPilot is bewildering to say the least. Its integrated GPS will allow you to record six separate tracks and, on command, take the boat on either of those selected, taking into account changing currents and prevailing winds. This is a boon for those who have mapped out the underwater fish structures and it frees up the skipper to concentrate on fishing.

The ‘Spot Lock’ function is referred to by many as ‘Anchor Lock’ and this electronic anchor will hold you within five feet or one and a half metres of the GPS co-ordinate, which may be one of six stored in its memory. It can also return you to that position from a quarter of a mile distant should you command it.

These units also have cruise control and Advanced Auto Pilot that allow you to point it in a set direction and it will hold you on that course until directed otherwise. The control piece for the unit is a Co-Pilot which you may hang around your neck; no more foot pedals that tangle.

All of this was what was on top of the water. New and weird lures of all different types saw the light of day then the gloomy depths of the Daly River in the never-ending pursuit of a tournament-winning fish.

Now it is only a matter of time to see what Mother Nature serves up to us next wet season. With any luck it will be raining barra'.