Nah, There’s No Barra Here, Mate

There’s been a lot of conjecture over the years about barramundi in the Exmouth area. A lot of the ‘experts’ (my definition of expert is that X is the unknown quantity, and spurt is a drip under pressure) have said they don’t come this far south and if they did they would not become established. The reasons I’ve heard to support these theories are varied and diverse. They range from the water being too cold to sustain a long enough breeding season to predation from more voracious species (I have no doubt that the old mangrove jack enjoys a good feed of fingerlings when the mood takes him!). Although you do see the odd one even in the colder months, they certainly are more active in the warmer months from December through to March/April, when the water starts to cool down again. I’ve had a lot of discussions (and arguments) over the years as to whether they are here or not. It usually goes something like this. “So what sort of fish do you get here mate?” “Well, we get queenies, GTs, blah blah, mangrove jack, blah blah, permit, longtail tuna, barra.” “What? You don’t get barra here, you don’t get them this far south, the water’s too cold.” “Yeah we do get them, they are actually quite prolific, you can jump in the water in the summer with a snorkel and goggles and watch them cruising around.” Generally, the conversation goes one or two ways after this, something along the lines of misidentification (“must be sand bass mate”) or “you’ve been in the sun too long”. Still, after eight years at Wilderness Island I’ve only caught a couple myself and not being much of a photographer (I don’t even own a camera), I don’t have any photographic evidence to support my case. This usually turns the argument in favour of the other party so I end up just saying “well maybe you are right”. I’ve never understood people asking a question about something they don’t know much about, like someone else’s backyard, and then arguing about the answer they are given. Don’t get me wrong, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but if you were walking through the middle of Africa and you asked a little black tribesman about the hunting habits of the pack of hyena that’s been following you, I reckon you wouldn’t start arguing with him if you didn’t like the answer. It seems though that someone has forgotten to mention these non-proliferation theories to the barra. Every year there seems to be more getting caught. I don’t know if there are more of them but I suspect people are catching onto the fact that they are here and thus, targeting them and coming up with good results. There are a lot of crew now in Exmouth who have had great success when targeting barra. I know a couple of young blokes, Michael and Braden, who have done really well at the marina. I won’t give their secrets away but they get them when they target them. A friend of mine who used to fish at Wilderness Island a lot caught two at the same spot one particular day. No great feat you might say, but in July when the water temperature was 17 degrees (there is another theory that they won’t feed when the water temperature is below 26C). One fish was about 60cm long and the other he said was around a metre. He had played the fish out on his 9-weight fly rod, but unfortunately was fishing by himself and the tippet on his fly line snapped when he was trying to land the fish. We had Mike ‘Thommo’ Thomson Shelagh Pascoe with a genuine Exmouth Gulf barramundi! doing a TV show on Just Add Water and he hooked up on one as well. It was all caught on film with no fish landed, a snapped line after a brief fight and blurry footage. I have on a couple of occasions taken a GoPro for a swim to some of the places that we regularly see barra in the summer time. Typically, every time you go to do something you have been meaning to do for a while, nature throws a wobbly and the wind picks up or the water is murky, so no luck there either. So many nearly got it stories and still no evidence they are here. These fish are like the bloody Abominable Snowman. Everybody seems to have heard of someone who has seen one or caught one, but if you can’t produce a photo as evidence you are full of it. I certainly wont profess to being any sort of an expert when it comes to catching barra as you could gather from the preceding paragraphs. My train of thought is that all the other fish jump on the hook before the barra even wake up. I’ve tried dedicated barra lures, dead baits, fresh live baits and asked all the people who know a bit about it but still come up with cod and jacks. I guess I need to put in a bit more time and effort. Maybe its because we are so spoilt for choice out here that we don’t try a bit harder. You can probably imagine what it’s like. Off you go to have a crack at getting some barra. You go somewhere that you know they like to hang out, cast or troll your lure or try with baits and just start getting smashed by good-sized mangrove

jack. I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to resist fishing for what’s biting.Last November was a fairly early start to the water warming up in the eastern Exmouth Gulf. We had been getting out a bit and doing a lot of land-based fishing around the camp as we were starting to see a few barra mooching about the rockbars. One particular day was a bit windy so we decided to stay in close and just use the boat to get to our destination then fish from the shore. Kevin and Shelagh Pascoe were our clients for the week and Shelagh’s particular request was to catch a barra. I thought this was going to be extra tricky given her preference for using a handline. I did mention to her that using dead baits was probably going to attract other species a lot faster than what she was after. At least we managed to convince her that a rod was the way to go. As suspected, we were doing quite well catching mangrove jack and the odd estuarine cod and malabar groper. I had my old baitcaster with a hookless lure on and was using this to show Shelagh where to drop her baits. She had got the hang of the rod and lobbed a bait right in the sweet spot near a rock ledge. Almost immediately the line went tight and the fight was on. The fish stayed low in the water with no big jumps or anything, probably trying to snag Shelagh on the clusters of oysters and rocks. She did a sterling job and managed against some big odds to get her barra! Once again, I didn’t have the camera that I don’t own, but luckily Kevin had brought his along and managed to get a few shots before we released the fish. Not a huge one, but a Wilderness Island barra all the same, complete with photos.

Jim Alston
Grew up on station right next to Exmouth Gulf and always dreamed of living the life of Robinson Crusoe. He’s just about achieved his goal by setting up a fishing camp on the edge of the gulf at Wilderness Island.