It's all About
The BIG Wet of 2011

Wow! I would only be understating how good this dry season has been on the Daly if tried to explain it.

2011 will go down as one of the best wets on record at the Daly, not because it was the fastest rise to 14.93 metres the river has ever recorded, or because it was the 3rd or 4th highest river on record or because Darwin recorded more than 3300mm of rainfall.

It will be because of the dry season fishing we have been experiencing.

June is normally a pretty good month at the Daly as a general rule, it varies a little but is always consistent. This year though has been unbelievable.... I have never recorded fish catch rates as high as this in the past 12 years of either visiting or guiding the Daly.

Col Cordingley (the NT's Barra Legend) now at 73years of age was telling me just last week that he has not had fishing this good for at least 20years that he can remember.

Over the past 4 weeks our day trips have been producing catch numbers between 20 to 45 fish per day. We have released countless fish over 90cm and landed many more over 80cm. It will certainly stay etched in my mind for a very long time. There is a pic hereabouts of Robyn Wood with a 93cm Barra she landed when the river temp was running at 20.4degs Celsius (who said they don't like cold water!!)

The Daly is a magical river and every year it seems to produce an exceptional fishing period. Last season for example was a poor wet and looked like the fishing was going to go pear shaped until we had some unseasonal heavy falls of rain in May. It made the fishing a little difficult at first but went on the produce some of best winter fishing on record (until this year) we were fishing run-off water right through to mid June 2010 with some great fish numbers and sizes.

This year is also the first season with reduced bag limits on Daly River Barra and new controls to reduce the over harvesting of our Freshwater Shrimp (Cherabin). The NT fisheries and AFANT (Amateur Fisherman's Association of the Northern Territory) have been successful in convincing the NT government to put the new regulations in place just in time and with the huge wet we have just had I am sure that it will be the start of an even better fishery.

We will shut our Daly River Camp down at the end of July to have a bit of a break. I am heading down south to chase a few Snapper and Jewies on my time off.

John will still be still be operating out of Darwin and will keep everyone up to speed with what is happening during the build up.

All the best for the rest of 2011
Darbs