Vying to land barra and trophies at nationals

The 20th Club Marine Barra Nationals hosted by the Palmerston Game Fishing Club will begin on the magnificent Daly River on Monday.

Chris Errity with a solid 101cm barra caught on the Daly a few years ago on orientation day

The 20th Club Marine Barra Nationals hosted by the Palmerston Game Fishing Club will begin on the magnificent Daly River on Monday.

With 60 teams competing this normally peaceful waterway will come to life with about 180 competitors vying for the champion angler and champion team trophy.

Banyan Farm is the superb venue for this event and is perfectly suited to cater for such a large number of keen fishermen.

This year I will be fishing with good mates Steve Bormann and Andrew Maher in our third attempt to take the champion team trophy.

We have finished in the top 10 in our past two attempts and are keen to perform even better this year.

Even though there has been a below average wet season this year signs are promising with large numbers of barra in the 60s and 70s being caught on the river this year.

This year the competition will be run over large spring tides with much movement ­experienced on the first three days before dropping to more neap tides with less movement by the last day.

Hopefully these larger tides will get some larger barramundi moving and feeding up the river as they chase the schools of mullet that often ride these larger tides up the river.

In fact, with the river back down to less than a metre over the crossing it is likely that large tidal bores will be witnessed on the first couple of days.

We will, of course, all be hoping a few metre-plus barra will be landed during the five days of competition fishing.

Fast trolling up the middle of the river with large shallow diving lures such as Reidy’s B52s and bombers should work very well on the incoming tide.

As the tide recedes, casting a various array of soft plastics to run-offs and eddies will be the method most commonly used.