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ARNHEMLAND BARRAMUNDI NATURE LODGE

With any luck it won’t get the opportunity to do that, because barra are suckers for that crank-twitch-pause technique and will often slam the lure as it floats towards the surface.

So what happened next was exactly that: a big barra was sucked in by the erratically-behaving Mantaray.

Out of the water she came, all 116 cm of her.

Kev reckoned it was a beautifully-conditioned big female barra, and was full of life when he released at the side of the boat.

Kev was using a grey-ghost-coloured Mantaray, but only managed one more cast before he had to wave goodbye to it.

That’s because an even bigger girl – a whopper which Kev estimated at 120 cm – walloped the grey ghost, erupted from the water and tail-walked into the mangroves where it effectively shredded the line, broke free and swam off with the Mantaray which was then more of a ghost than ever.

It’s all well and good to land a 116, but to lose a 120 on the very next cast definitely takes the shine off an otherwise great catch.

As luck would have it, Kev dealt with the situation in breath-taking fashion: he tied on an Elton John-coloured Mantaray, tossed it into the briny, cranked it down, paused, twitched, paused, and hooked a knock-your-socks-off, 128 cm absolute mother of a barra.

Kev has caught his share of big barra, but suddenly he found himself connected to the biggest barra he had ever hooked.

“Talk about fit,” he told me. “It jumped completely out of the water at least five times!”

Nerve-racking stuff, for sure, but Kev kept his cool and put a sparkling polish to the end of this incredible session by landing and releasing one of the biggest barra caught in the Top End this year.

The next report – from much further afar – also involves some sad barra losses.

Neil Taylor and mates have spent the last fortnight at King Ash Bay in the McArthur River near Borroloola.

Neil reckons they found a patch of spirited, metre-plus barra out around the islands in the Sir Edward Pellew Group.

Unfortunately, their attempts at landing these fish have been frustrated by two-metre-long bull whalers which have been tearing their barra apart before they could be scooped into the landing net.

Sacrificing such beautiful big fish in that tragic fashion would almost make you go fish somewhere else.

Back close to Darwin again, Blesser’s Creek near the Dinah Beach boat ramp has been producing barra to 80 cm with remarkable consistency over the last fortnight.

Roger Sinclair reports experiencing exciting action using shad-style Tropic Angler Swik soft plastics.

On the inland freshwater scene, Hardies Lagoon on the Mary River is definitely worth a play, particularly during the cool of night.

One tip though: take plenty of mozzie repellant.

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The NT Guide Fishing Industry Association Annual General Meeting will be held at the Darwin Trailer Boat Club at 7.00 pm Thursday 26 October.

The main topic for discussion at the meeting will be the introduction of Fishing Tour Operator licence fees on 1 July 2007 .