Shady Camp when it just won't rain...

The first time I drove to the Shady Camp barrage, I was rather unimpressed.  Not being familiar with the NT's floodplains, it struck me as barren.  Over the past year and a half it has proved itself a most fertile place. And with every visit the natural cast changes.  Of course the agile wallabies are always there, and the boobook owls that roost in the left hand camping ground's trees.  But what I really mean are those nights when, in a drizzly, light rain, green tree frogs emerge in force, clinging on every rock and low tree limb.  Or when the giant stink flowers of a certain kind of yam were found beneath one of the shady old figs, bestowing in a 50 meter radius the odour of maggoty carrion.

Usually at this time of year the place is thick with mosquitoes: I've travelled to 25 countries, and nothing comes close to the mosquito population of Shady after rain.  Few mosquitoes were there last weekend; though still enough to leave rounds of bites on whatever parts of my frame happened to press against our tent's mesh as I slept. Instead, last weekend, tiny insects were in plague proportions: minuscule moths of several varieties, miniature cockroaches, beetles of many kinds. In ears, mouths, crowding to any unfortunate light.
And this fella too:

But everyone really heads to Shady Camp for the fish, fish that last weekend were unforthcoming.
The lack of a wet so far has meant the fish are yet to fire.  Driving there, dreaming of all the freshly spawned fish awaiting high tide so they could slip upstream across the barrage, imagining catching those fish on the saltwater side - now released from the several month no-fishing season - I recalled the 19 fish my partner and I caught around this time last: all fish over-size, captured in under three hours by yo-yoing 4inch stickbaits in the current on bream tackle!

Arriving at the barrage, I could see that things weren't right: no-one fishing except two blokes drinking by their ute.  After a chat with them - friendly old Darwin locals who recounted the 8 hour drive to Shady when they were kids - I gathered no-one had done any good despite there being 10 people fishing the high tide two hours ago.
Still, fisherman not catching fish in the NT doesn't generally mean there are no fish there... one just has to have an inkling how to catch them.  Well, at least that is sometimes the case.
So off I tramped with a 1000 Stella and my 2lb - 6lb Millerrod Ultra Finesse Breambuster, loaded with 4lb Untika trout braid and a cast of 2 - 2.5 inch stickbaits on weedless Decoy jig heads.  First cast, nothing.
Second cast and i felt that familiar, lip of the barrage, rattling hit as a fish darted out to grab what it thought was a little mullet about to be sucked over by the current...

OSP Mylar Minnow

 Third cast and so forth...

OSP Mylar Minnow

A particularly bronze 'rat' on a Megabass Tiny XLayer

And all the other photos were worse than this fish, caught on a Fish Arrow flash J

 An hour later, as the sun was setting and the mosquitoes began sticking my skin, I had landed 8 barra up to 40cm.  Most people call barra this size 'rats'.  There is an odd phenomenon in the barra fishing world where fisherman act as though catching small fish is a curse.  I'm one of those bream and trout luring, southern weirdos who is just happy to catch any fish, and catch as many as possible.  Each fish is a unit of happiness for me.  As a teenage, competition match angler, I once even won a coarse angling comp by catching five galaxias smaller than my little finger, using single maggots on size 22 hooks.

The problem with this attitude towards smaller barra is that, having fished at least 3 times a week in the NT for the past year, not only do I even see anglers regularly catching any fish, let alone 'rats'; but all the bigger barra I have seen caught in the past year have really had more to do with chance than angler skill.  Take a busy day at the Shady barrage for example, where you have 10 fisherman, half with wire traces, casting generally similar paddle-tailed soft plastics.  Unless the fishing is particularly miserable, someone is certain to hook something and that someone will hook that something not due to a skill the 9 other anglers lack, but due to the lucklessness of an unfortunate fish that will soon be flopping amongst beers in an esky.  This equates to simple statistical probability, not a skilful bending of fate to the angler's wily will.

A Darwin beach 'rat' on a Bassday Sugar Minnow, 3lb fluoro, a 2lb-4lb Daiko Elize JDM trout rod and 1000 Stella.

Of course there are some barra anglers who regularly catch meter plus fish.  Those I know who accomplish this impressive feat have boats and go to remote, big rivers.  But as to being land based, I recall days spent fishing the run-off at the three bridges in Kakadu where i would average between 30 to 50 fish of all sizes a day whilst seeing perhaps ten - if lucky - fish caught the entire day by all other anglers combined, most of whom stick to the trusty white, pre-rigged squidgy fish.  They would dismissively scoff at the 'rats' I was catching, then fall silent when I battled out a 70 or 80 cm fish on what was racks-weight bream gear.  As the proverb goes, you can catch a big fish on a small hook, but not a small fish on a big hook.  Though I guess the logic of using heavier tackle is that you may not catch nearly as many fish as a light tackle angler, but if you hook that big one you've a much better chance of landing her.  Never mind all the practice one gets playing fish on light tackle!  When things are all said and done, I think the dismissal of and purported disappointment with catching 'rats' is all empty posturing, and folks are really inwardly pleased, like me, just catching any fish.

Back to Shady Camp on the weekend.  After being mildy titillated by the 8 'rats' i hooked in an hour, I set my alarm to wake for the 2AM high tide.  As usual I expected a few of those dirty bait fishermen to be illegally chucking their mullet off the barrage in the post-midnight hours - Fisheries really need to do something about this.  But when my alarm rang, I awoke to rain, put on snooze and awoke at 9am, only 7 hours late for the night's high tide.  Sure enough in the morning I found traces of the dirty baitos' illegal fishing: a big catfish half dead in the shallows that had partially dried in the sun and somehow made its way back to the water to slowly die; the usual rubbish and beers left across the barrage with hooks and tangled line; and the poor little 'rat' below that had been oddly released after probably being gut hooked.  Perhaps the baitos thought it too small for eating...

By 10am I was fishing and things weren't looking good: already boats were returning.  I spoke to some blokes who had been in the salt all night, resulting in just two fish.  A few hours later, with only a few follows to show, I was packing up when a couple parked their car, wobbled onto the barrage and proceeded to fish.  A few casts later one of them hooked a 75cm fish at her feet, casting a big pre-rigged Bozo on a wire trace.  It was the first time she had ever used a lure.  I felt broken, watching them kill the fish, then watching her cast at every big mullet yelling Barra, Barra. By this time things were getting crowded, so I left a few hours before high tide.

Off to nearby Stream X for a bit of fun in the fast water:

Smith Camion

Ito Craft Emishi

Duo tiny popper

My biggest spotted grunter so far, taken in slower water on a Next One Drug Shad

After 10 tarpon, a missed barra of around 50cm and noticing the small crocodiles growing bigger as I headed upstream, then having a bolt of lightning land a few hundred meters away, we were off to the Corroboree Park Tavern for a well earned meal, then back to Darwin for work early the next day, with lightning following us the entire way.