Barra Fishing

I was told the pickup would be at the Kununurra Visitor Centre at 6:00 am. With an hour’s drive to Kununurra I had to set the alarm for 4:30 am. Pretty darn early wake up call for a holiday. I arrived in town only to find the pickup was 6:30, half an hour of sleep wasted. We were in the water by 7:30, cruised about 7 kms downstream to a mud bank, passing numerous saltwater crocodiles on the way. where we set about catching live bait with a throw net. There were 3 clients plus the tour guide in the boat. The guide was catching baitfish with a throw net, one person was asked to hold the bucket and the other two were asked to keep watch for crocodiles.

Collecting live bait on the Ord River

With sufficient live bait in the bucket we headed for the first spot. They use overhead bait casting reels for barra fishing and none of us had used one before. So the guide gives us a demonstration, he put on a live bait, demonstrates the casting technique, lands the bait near a submerged log and bang, he hooks a good sized barra which was promptly returned to the water. About 5 mins later one of the other guys hooks on to a good size barra, after about a 5 min struggle it’s in the boat and measures 73 cms. Good size however it’s early in the day and it’s pretty hot so he decides to return it to the water. I managed to hook up but 30 secs later it spat the hook out and disappeared

Barra fishing on the Ord River

The action died off so we moved to another spot but 4 hrs later and many good snags later all we had to show was several hook ups, no barra landed and numerous cat fish. In the last hour we moved back upstream and trolled lures behind the boat past a group of sunken trees and within the first 5 mins the guy who threw the barra back in the morning had another legal size barra in the boat. As luck would have it, I was on the side of the boat furthest from the trees and the barra were not venturing out that far. Finally with the boat turned around and trolling next to the trees I got a hit, but from the start it did not feel particularly big. I did land it and sure enough it was 53 cm, just 2 cms short. After 6hrs on the water it was back to camp with nothing and facing the prospect of baked beans on toast as I had confidently told Jacky not to lift any meat out of the freezer because I was bringing home fish for tea. Instead we had fish and chips at the Lake Argyle Café

There was one last piece of entertainment at the boat ramp, within 5 mins of trying up the boat a “saltie” poked his nose out of the water. It turns out that he is a regular and is waiting for a feed of fish frames once the fish filleting is finished. The guide takes the frame down near the water and waves it around, the croc hauls himself out of the water and snatches the fish frame out of the air.

Tripod the 3 legged crocodile

Feeding Tripod

This particular croc was about 4 mtrs and had the nickname of “Tripod”, there are 2 other regular crocs in the area of the boat ramp and one of them is about 5.5 mtrs and about 2 seasons ago it took a dislike to this particular croc and chased him around the boat ramp, finally managed to grab the leg of this croc and simply tore it off. Surprisingly the croc survived but he is pretty wary of the larger croc.