Kakadu dreams..A Croc, a Doc and a Barra! pt 4. click older post at foot of page to move back

On the last cast and the last snag of the morning this Barramundi decided to put in an appearance. It was a fine moment as Dr. Keith and I had started salivating hours before and had all but given up the chance of a BBQ fish lunch. After half an hour in the coals the skin peeled back to reveal perfectly cooked Barra!

The river looking fine in the early evening light. This was a point of much activity during the day and even more so during the dark hours when a torch shone in the water would reveal scores of small Barra and various other fish. Late at night a large crocodile fed on the plentiful fish supplies but unfortunately I never saw him in the act!

Shoals of Tarpon couldn't resist the surface lures. Usually they would flash behind the lure before actually hitting it. Hooking up was another matter altogether!

A chug bug gave the doctor his first surface caught Barramundi. 

A better stamp of Barra was found in the deeper water. Plenty of submerged snags always guaranteed a heart stopping fight and tested the tackle to a maximum.

Sneaky salt water crocodiles never seemed to be far away and the slap of the rubber frog landing in the water seemed to be work like a dinner bell. This one swam thirty metres directly towards me to investigate the disturbance.

It was a different experience to fish from a boat after ten days of walking the banks. Although much easier the fishing seemed to be far less productive.

Fire baked Barra for lunch.

In certain areas of the river Paper Bark leaves and flowers formed a floating surface mat and prevented fishing.

A frog hunting tree snake that moved effortlessly through the branches of a tree when I approached. Surprising not many snakes were about. Possibly the adverse
 effect of Cane toads is the reason. Apparently the local goannas have taken a massive population crash thanks to the toad infestation.

This lovely deep corner was inhabited by a shoal of average sized Barra,  a couple of big Sooty grunter and a shoal of small catfish.

The river held some very good mullet but as usual with mullet, they weren't playing ball.  I briefly hooked one on a soft plastic crayfish lure which was by far the closest I came to success.  These nice specimens completely ignored my perfectly laid trap!

A pleasant time of day when the when the heat quickly dissipated giving way to the coolness of the night. Perfect time to throw a line!

The scourge of the northern territory! If the mosquitoes weren't hammering me then these delightful little ants would get stuck in and have a go. People say they are pretty good to eat which is exactly what I'll be doing next time one bites me - a taste of it's own medicine;) 

The resident wallabies were unused to seeing humans and were pretty curious when they saw me flicking lures. usually they would hop a little way off and continue grazing.

This buzzard enjoyed a dead Barra I put out near a shallow billabong. After sitting in a tree for two hours he eventually came down, chased the resident crow away and fed while his mate kept watch. 

Shallow glides provided ideal crocodile free spots to cool off and have a wash.

Australia's enemy: the Cane toad. As night fell an army of toads emerged - so many it was pointless to destroy them.

A fine example of an Archer fish that wasn't put off by a relatively large lure.

A close up showing a big Saratoga lightly hooked in the scissors. The design is specialised to feeding from the surface. Powerful jaws, upturned mouth and eyes close to the top of the head all help to put the odds in the favour of the fish and not the prey.

Saratoga damage after three days fishing. The big ones clamped down hard on the lures which  combined with their hard mouths mean hook ups often only lasted a few seconds. A couple of firm strikes helped drive the hooks home.

A fizzer after a day of fishing

After four days of being in the bush I had eaten enough food to at least be able to push my bicycle to new hunting grounds. It was still highly overloaded which combined with the rough roads was a recipe for disaster.  After fishing a stretch for a couple of days I would move ten kilometres downstream to start exploring new water.

A good place to hide from crocodiles

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Kakadu dreams..In search of new waters. pt 3

After the loss of the Heddon baby torpedo, I brought out the back-up lure; River 2 sea tango prop! A lovely, noisy little surface fizzer that quickly caught the attention of the river's inhabitants. This big Saratoga mistook it for something tasty. Note how unscathed the body still is!

After a few days on the river I managed to hurt my right leg, probably from jumping down a bank. It meant limping was the order of the day and after the first move of camp downstream I was pretty stuffed after pushing the bike for 10km. The weather was warming up too, which seemed to bring out many more blood-sucking March flies, which I wasn't really in the mood for! So a short siesta was in order.

As I passed a big Paper Bark swamp, I noticed a group of pigs working the margins, so I quietly sat down under a tree and watched as they came around the swamp in my direction. That's sometimes the beauty of the bicycle - it's quiet so you can come and go undetected whereas in a car it's usually over before you know what's around the corner. Eight adult pigs and 4 piglets intently dug and nosed the swamp until they were 40 yards from me. As you can imagine, being feral animals, they are not overly popular, particularly in the national parks. Along with the pigs, water buffalo and horses cause a significant amount of damage to the ecology of the park, so in the last decades culling programs have been introduced. Although many thousands of buffalo have been removed, judging by the spoors, many still remain.

Even if my bike had been less loaded and if my leg had been less painful, I probably would have still pushed for 50km on this track. An extremely uneven surface has resulted from buffalo wandering around on the clay in the wet season. Some short patches were smooth sand, but these were few and far between. At least I could pass the time counting numerous trees :)

I passed many swamps on my search for new fishing grounds and most were decorated with a few different types of water lily. These small flowers covered an area of a couple of hectares; a pretty sight indeed amongst the surrounding dry, brown bushscape.

My trusty bike that has so far carried me for 20,000 km around the world. A little overloaded at this point!!

Although the river wasn't particularly deep, I chose to remove my luggage to cross instead of pushing. The track on the far bank was deep bull dust (fine dust) that loves to stick to wet things. Not good for the drive chain so worth the extra effort to cross. It also seemed pretty crocodile safe, which was good, otherwise I could easily have waited for a day before a car came to help me across.

To find the river again meant leaving the track and pushing through the bush for a km or two -  sometimes open and easy, like here, and sometimes thick making it hard going. However, Graham had found some very detailed maps for me and had also lent me his GPS, which made things a lot easier. At least I wasn't stabbing in the dark, but had a fair idea of where I was heading.

Early morning trying to get over a night of mosquito trauma. My tent zip had given up on me the evening before after long service of maybe 700+ nights. Not bad going, and it had to happen sooner or later, but next to a Kakadu swamp wasn't the best place for it to break. At least Graham had left me a can of RID ... I owe you one mate!

Finding a fishing spot was often hard along the deep stretches of the river. Twisted bamboo thickets and other thick vegetation often cloaked the river bank, but where it was possible to make a cast, a hook-up would usually result. There was always the thought of sneaky, sly crocodiles watching me, so one spot would never be fished for too long or too regularly. The idea of getting plucked from the bank and dragged into the river was always on my mind so I stood in trees, hopefully far enough out of reach! On the Adelaide river there are famous jumping crocodiles tempted out for the tourists. Seeing those photos made me realise I was probably in easy reach for our reptilian friends, so maybe I'm just very lucky or too skinny for them to take an interest?
This lovely Saratoga was the second to take a liking to my home made spinner. NICE!

One day when I was idly lying around avoiding the hot sun at siesta time I spotted the Simpson's toxic fish lure hanging from my handle bar bag. Marion had given it to me back in Perth and, looking at it now, I started to wonder what would happen if I threw in the river. So I rigged it with a couple of Owner hooks and headed down to the water. It turned out to be a fairly effective surface lure and, after 20 strikes in around an hour, I was convinced! Unfortunately hook-ups weren't happening very often, probably due to it's shape, so I went back to the fizzer.

A decent Barramundi that took a liking to the toxic fish

The colours start to show on a fine Sooty Grunter as the sun begins to set

The insect life was rich along the river. This Praying Mantis came for a closer look at what I was up to and decided to clean its legs whilst sitting on my arm. The diversity of spiders was also vast and everywhere I looked a new variety would appear, usually on the lookout for prey. Not everyone's cup of tea, but paradise for me!

The Shallows, late evening. The great beauty of the river here is that there are many crossing points where the crocodiles can't make a surprise attack. I was convinced, though, that every night a crocodile moved into this area to feed on the abundant fish. I can't believe a kg Barra can make a splash like a man jumping into the river so must have been crocy. It was always late and I was always tucked up in bed and too lazy to go on midnight crocodile forays.

A lovely looking Archer Fish that had to have the little spinner

I quickly took this shot a moment after a crocodile had tried to annihilate my trusty frog. I got the distinct impression he didn't like the plop plop plop noise the frog kept making as it swam over his head. The strike caused a rather impressive splash and at the same moment I struck the lure out of the way.

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Kakadu dreams. Saratoga madness. pt 2

The more I explored the river the more potential started to show itself and good Saratoga like this one started regularly hitting the lures! Sometimes on every cast a fish would break the surface and try its hardest to chomp the lure. A step up to the rubber frog meant only the bigger fish would have a chance to get hooked..oh and crocodiles! After a while I discovered that often a few casts would be needed to draw the fish from their snaggy retreats. In one particular spot after maybe ten retrieves a crocodile suddenly appeared on the surface, in the path of froggy! I of course found this interesting and continued to wind the lure towards me...and as the lure passed by..SLAM the crocodile tried his best to nail it. In a spray of white water I jerked the rod and the scum frog flew to freedom! I'd already lost one lure to a reptilian friend and wasn't quite ready to part with the frog! He still had some work to do..

One of the better Barramundi that took a liking to the little surface lure. It seems the Baby Torpedo is just perfect for fish of this size to engulf easily!

After a few days of testing some different lures on the river I became convinced that an inline spinner would be absolutely devastating. I had tried to buy a spinner in the shops in Darwin but no one seemed to stock them - the closest I came was a spinner bait. So around siesta time when fishing was low and it was too hot to be poking around in the bush I set about building a spinner. A little length of 100lb wire leader, a spinner bait blade, a few crimps and hey presto a lovely spinner was ready for testing in the shallows! First cast and this lovely Saratoga was all over the spinner along with three of his mates.

Next cast and this feisty little Sooty Grunter had a go. Next two casts and two Barra took the spinner! not bad for a quick DIY lure. Further testing would follow later in the day!

As the sun began to sink towards the western horizon over the big paper bark swamp I made my way from camp downstream to the deeper darker water armed with my new spinner. First cast into the deep water and immediately a bow appeared heading in the direction of the little lure. After a solid hit this beautiful Saratoga erupted through the water's surface and cartwheeled through the air. Somehow the little hooks I had chosen for the spinner didn't bend and also held in the fish's hard toothy jaw, and after a few minutes of battle my prize and dream lay on the bank. Not bad for a makeshift lure.

Colours of the Saratoga

Another good Archer Fish nails the torpedo

And a big Sooty Grunter decided to venture from his hideout in a clear pool to check out the surface commotion...Big mistake!

A deeper pool on the river - home to a good shoal of Barramundi and big Mullet

A good chunky Barramundi that also couldn't resist the temptation to have a go at the surface lure. I will remember the sound of the take for a while..no gentle sipping from this fish. Just an all out engulfing munch.

Another game little Barra from a clear pool under the paper bark trees. The thick, rich but subtle smell of the paper bark flowers drifted down the river everyday and intensified as the day cooled towards the evening. I began to understand why come night time the bats were excited. The sweet smell must have been driving them wild all day. Come night time they were desperate for the honey.

The design of the Barramundi....very well suited to sucking frogs and beasties from the water's surface. Sometimes at night the volume of some'boofs' was incredible. I think even a mouse would be a target if he made the unwise decision to swim the river.

A Barramundi's eye is large and very sensitive. Even on the darkest of nights potential Barra snacks won't be safe. The Barra will see and sense with very little difficulty

Saratoga have evolved as surface feeding machines. A huge mouth and small sharp teeth mean few frogs will escape. Usually with these fish they eat first and ask questions later. On quite a few occasions they had eaten my lure before I had even shut the bail arm! Now that's pretty keen..maybe verging on being greedy!

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