But it's not only tidal heights that make this weekend good for barra; it's also the fall of the tides (there's an unintended pun if ever I wrote one).

The fact that Saturday's low is higher than Sunday's tells us that we are coming off the neaps and moving to the peak springs rather than the other way around.

It just doesn't get any better than that because barra almost always bite better when the tides are progressively gaining movement than becoming more sluggish.

It's all to do with the food chain.

Up the arms, or any similar tropical mangrove habitat, when the tides start gaining movement, the flow of water increases and rises both higher and more rapidly into the mangroves, and everything aquatic goes with it.

Small foraging fish push the envelope to the max, swimming the very edges of each swirling, making-tide incursion.

Their focus is the delectable decaying vegetation, strewn over the gnarled mangrove roots and buzzing with bacterial decomposition.

Barra and other predators know this, which is why they are right up the proverbial butt of the little foragers.

As anglers, it's pretty hard to target the barra up there in the mangrove jungle, but we can sure have a shot at them at the starting gate - where mudflat and mangrove meet and anything with fins will be there to ride the tide into the rich forest.

Once the tide has flooded the mangroves, and everything is in there eating everything, it's probably a good time to park your boat in the shade and have a bite yourself.

With any luck, you'll already have nailed a couple of legal salties, enticed from the knee-deep mangrove edges to take your subtly twitched tiger-lily Bomber, or your guns n' roses Classic Just Under.

But if you've missed out, remember: the top of the big spring tide is just intermission, and what goes into the mangroves comes out of the mangroves, albeit often as not in the stomach of something larger.

I reckon that luminary 16th century fisherbloke, Isaac Walton, author of "The Compleat Angler", got it right when he approximately wrote fish exist in the sea only as food for other fish.

And that really is the key to angling success; understand it, be there when it happens and give them something vaguely familiar to munch on.

When the tide starts receding - firstly from the mangroves and then off the mudflats - the barra will be there at the bottlenecks, the drains and gutters that funnel the falling tide into the main estuary itself.

On both days this weekend, the high tide will be too early to fish its approach in daylight hours, so you may as well have a leisurely start about 8.00 am on Saturday and no later than 10.00 am on Sunday.

You'll be fishing the bottom half of the dropping tide and, if you're keen or desperate, you'll be able to fish the afternoon rising tide all the way to the mangroves.

If you get up a good sweat during the day, then you're probably in with half a chance.