Fishos’ monsoon heaven

The prediction of our first monsoon of the wet season was certainly accurate, but who would have guessed that it would deliver such an ideal outcome?

Lucas Pel spent Xmas in a tinnie with his dad Tim down at the mouth of the South Alligator... catching a few quality barra, including this 82cm silver fish on a popper

The prediction of our first monsoon of the wet season was certainly accurate, but who would have guessed that it would deliver such an ideal outcome?

This monsoon was never expected to be a major, widespread and long-lasting event, but what there was of it streamed down from the northwest and put a blanket of water from Port Keats to central Arnhem Land.

All the rivers in between rose significantly as their catchments quickly filled up.

As always, the eyes of an army of anglers were focused on the Daly River which copped heaps.

All those flood waters at Edith River and the waters within the swollen Katherine River itself will all find their way down to the Daly.

Midweek, the Daly River Crossing was more than 8m under.

The barra are biting at the South Alligator River culvert, and the Aurora Kakadu staff – including chef Sebastian Jones, pictured here with a 71cm culvert barra – are having a ball.

While the rest of us were willing the wet weather over the Christmas/New Year break, Bonnie Keogh was holidaying in north Queensland, where she bagged a whopper 121cm barra at Lake Tinaroo.

A few diehard anglers raced down to the Daly, hoping for an early bout of run-off fishing, but it was not to be.

Not surprisingly, the Adelaide River rose a few metres, as did the Mary from the bridge all the way down to Shady Camp.

Good news is that there haven’t been any reports of fish kills on the Mary, especially above the barrage at Shady Camp.

Last year the freshwater lagoon at Shady was like an aquaculture pond full of small barra.

It looks like they all made it through the build-up and that’s great for places like Corroboree and Hardies over the next few years.

The rivers in Kakadu also fared well with the rain.

As early as last Monday, the South Alligator River culvert on the Arnhem Highway between the bridge and Aurora Kakadu Resort was going ballistic with hungry barra.

According to the resort’s general manager, Robert Potts, the fishos among the staff have been slipping up the road to toss a lure on the incoming tide as it backs up the floodwater.

We’re talking good fish here too, up to 76cm, and a metrey that was too big to handle in tight conditions.

According to Andy Ralph, barra to 68cm have also been caught at Magela Crossing which is clearly flowing.

Andy also reported that the Nourlangie bridges are flowing and the locals are “getting a few”.

At the end of the day, the rain the Top End received over the last few days is a good start to the wet season, and all predictions are that it will be followed by plenty more rain.

This should lead to a good Wet which will almost invariably be followed by a good run-off.

The bigger the Wet, the more flooding there is and the more run-off that takes place.

But what you don’t want are significant gaps.

Long gaps in the rain lead to lethal spikes in the fishery.

The worst Wets are those that arrive much later than normal.

We had one of those two years ago.

However, the worst on record was the 1991-92 wet season which in Darwin recorded just over a metre from October to April inclusive.

I remember that it hardly rained for the whole of December, January and February.

Massive fish kills were taking place right across the Top End.

At Corroboree Billabong, for example, there was a fish kill of barra in one stretch of the Rockhole that numbered thousands.

There are other factors associated with fish kills, but the common denominator is depleted oxygen levels, and that happens far more often with a late Wet.

A decent monsoon finally arrived that year, but it was in March and the run-off fishing to follow was abysmal.

Many fish had died, barra tucker (including little baby barras which bigger barras love to eat) was in short supply, and the conditions you look for during run-off fishing were not there, or at best didn’t last long.

So what is a good wet season?

As I wrote above, long gaps between rain are the enemy of the run-off, fishing-wise.

So a good Wet is one that exceeds the average (for Darwin, it’s about 1.7m) and there are no long gaps.

Fingers crossed that we do get another monsoonal burst soon.