Daly River - NT March 2006
I
met my friends Dave Armstrong & Scott Weildon at Darwin Airport late on
a Friday night in Early March 2006 for a weeks fishing on the Daly
River. We had decided to fish the Daly River run off on our own. Staying
at Wooliana as in previous years renting one of the hire boats.
We arrived at 4.00am camping
outside the Daly River Pub until sun up and then making our way back to
Wooliana for a 7am check in. The river was lower than we had anticipated
at
5m due to the poor wet. But after a quick unpack we hit the river making
our way down to Elizabeth Creek after hearing good reports of 30-40
Barra per session. Not surprisingly the creek was packed with 20
other boats with the same intention.
Instead we fished the run
off creek 200m down river of Elizabeth Creek and managed to land 6 Barra
on the changing tide. Most were smallish Barra between 48 - 58cm.
But even so we were very happy with our 1st days fishing.
The next six days we
returned to Elizabeth Creek 2 hours before the changing tide. Being
weekdays
we
had the creek to ourselves with the exception of Preston Higgins (of
Prestons Inland charters). Each day we peppered the run off creek with
Tsunami and River 2 Sea soft plastics.
The
Barra were congregated in the fast running water on the colour change
chasing the mullet exiting the creek mouth. Each day we landed good fish
as well as losing some even bigger Barra that just steam trained back
towards the snags. In total
we landed an amazing 52 Barra for the week the average size being
82cm (the biggest 91cm caught by Scotty).
The run off tide was kept
alive by continual daily torrential rain storms. Fortunately the main
water mass originating from Katherine didn't arrive until the last day
when the river again dramatically rose and the creek slowed along with
the fish.
Our week was sensational and
hard to beat. Certainly as Dave and Scotty had not fished the Daly River
before! Timing is everything and we were extremely lucky with our timing
in March 2006.
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