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To its credit, the Darwin Game Fishing Club has been phoning team skippers to canvass their thoughts on whether the Classic should be postponed by a month or so.

It seems that most still want it to go ahead as scheduled because it’s too late to change plans, especially for the many interstaters.

So, getting back to the troops, what a wonderful public relations exercise it would be for the Australian Army to lend its support to this 25 th Anniversary Barra Classic.

And what an amazing opportunity for a blitzkrieg-style training exercise!

Even if our boys in green were on standby with barges, heavy-vehicle-moving equipment and all those amazing resources they have for moving thousands of troops across even the most-difficult land and water terrain, then this Barra Classic could go down in history as the one that nearly got away, but didn’t!

Even if there is no more rain, the river will rise further with all that water to come down from Katherine.

That takes about four days.

Then there’ll be another week at least before it starts falling.

With the prospect of more heavy rain to come, I wouldn’t want to be a Barra Classic organiser for quids at the moment.

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The fishing may have been tough at last week’s Aurora Kakadu Klash, but the South Alligator River came to life with the bigger spring tides that followed.

Brooke Creek near the river mouth fired up with plenty of metre-plus barra.

Craig Grosvenor from Got One at Berrimah reports big schools of mullet working the edges of the creek.

“Barra have been ‘boofing’ like crazy,” he said.

Shady Camp and the Mary River turned up some quality barra, both at the mouth and off the barrages.

The biggest so far reported measured all of 130 cm.

Mind you, it’s back to neap tides this weekend, and therefore minimal tidal movement.

That should be perfect for a continuation of the great jewie fishing that has been taking place this year.

Charles Point patches seems to be the black jew hotspot.

My old mate, visiting national angling and four-wheel-drive writer, Dick Eussen, spent a day aboard Ocean Fox from Arafura Bluewater Charters and reckoned he’d never seen black jew fishing like it before.

“I’m getting too old for that sort of stuff,” Dick told me.

“Two or three big jewies are enough for me; they fight just too damn hard,” he said.

“I spent most of the day taking photos of others catching jew.”

It’s good to hear reports that an increasing number of anglers are enjoying success fishing from landbased locations.

There’ve been some epic shark-fighting battles at both Mandorah Wharf and Channel Island Bridge at night.

At the East Arm boat ramp, both queenfish and GTs have been smashing bait schools, and barra to 75 cm were caught casting along the mangrove edges beside the ramp.

Rebel surface poppers seemed to trigger the fish into biting.