What else could it be, we agreed.

Maternal instinct had governed its actions, and it was clearly trying to lead us away from the pups.

“Never seen that before,” I said to the blokes.

Likewise, I’d never before seen as many red-tail black cockatoos as we encountered further along our way.

There must have been thousands in the scattered flock, some in trees and some grazing on what must have been blackened grass seeds after the fires.

“Few bucks there,” someone said.

Overseas, these big colourful parrots can fetch up to $30 000 a mating pair.

We knew we had reached the upper freshwater section of the river when we began to encounter tall cycads with thick grey trunks.

Like many Top End rivers in the middle of the dry season, this waterway’s narrow upper reaches – although pure freshwater from its catchment still draining its wet season storage – rose and fell with the bigger tides.

In due course, we found what we were looking for: an area of bank that was open enough to stand and cast from.

More importantly, a tangled web of partly-submerged dead timber reached out from the opposite bank and was well within range.

Now, you would have bet Palmerston to a pebble that a whole bunch of barra were holed up in that snag, ready to tear out and take our mixed lure offerings.

But there was no sign of a fish, not even after several dozen probing cats for each of us.

We moved on to the next opening which presented an interesting situation.

For more than 50 metres, the river was under a blanket of floating trees and leaves – a veritable tidal log jam which was definitely worth checking out at either end.

Fortunately, I was one of two who checked out the end where the barra were queued up.

This was more like it – a fish every cast.

They weren’t big – as many under the 55 cm legal size as over it – but that was just as well because knockdown-battle tactics were essential in such tight, structured water.

And so it went on…some openings produced fish and others were devoid.

By mid-afternoon, we tallied 28 barra, and we’d been hammered by a couple of big fish that had all the advantage in that narrow, timbered river stretch.

There was justifiable merriment on the return drive.

We never saw that protective dingo bitch again, but the black cockatoos were still there to screech their annoyance as we passed, and a big old lone buffalo thundered off in the distance before we could even get close.

 

 

You couldn’t ask for better fishing tides than those this weekend.

Falling just after the neaps and just before the bigger springs, water clarity will still be excellent both offshore and in the rivers and estuaries, but increased flow rates will have the predatory species out there and hunting.

Weather permitting, the bluewater will continue to go off with mackerel and tuna species.

For barra, it’s hard to go past Darwin Harbour and Shoal Bay in the salt, and Corroboree and Four Mile Hole in the fresh.

If the catches of our local charter fleet are anything to go by, there are plenty of tasty reef fish on the bite on both inshore and offshore reefs, and tidal conditions this weekend are just perfect to chase them too.