12/03/2026
What a Wet Season the Top End has been experiencing. Not surprisingly, early Runoff at the Barra Lodge has been very fishy. Here's a report from Head Guide Trevor Robb:
The opening week for 2026 saw numerous return groups to the Barra Lodge. The first lot in was the South Australian Foodland group. After one of the group had landed a 103cm Barra last year, they were very keen to try and beat that this year, unfortunately the Barra had other plans and were a little elusive for the couple of days that they fished, some were caught, but the guys had to work hard for them.
Luckily, the Bluewater fishing was on fire!! We ended up with 5 of the 6 boats on the water out the front and everyone had their arms pulled out of their sockets by our Brassy Trevally, oversize Queenfish and big numbers of Spanish Mackerel, not to mention a few nice Golden Snapper, Blue Bone and Coral Trout for the table thrown in.
The next groups in saw not just unbelievable blue water fishing, but they also got to see the Barra Fishing pick up to how it should be here at the Barra Lodge, with boat captures of 50 plus barra a day per boat start coming in, throw in with that some nice 80 and 90cm models. On one day out, veteran guide Lance Butler put Geoff Frost (fishing with Bob Grieves) onto a healthy 101cm Liverpool River Barra, this same day I ventured to one of our rivers with Tim Terry and Peter Gibson, I had the plan going over to throw big lures around targeting size over numbers, we might have finished with only 21 Barra for the day, but 7 were over 90cm with 1 coming in at 102cms for Tim was a great result.
We had an interesting night during that second lot of clients at the lodge, 4 of the 6 sitting at the dinner table found themselves either on the Metre Board already or had just earnt the right to be on it. Something that you don't see every day at the Lodge.
With the floodplains full of water and the rivers running tanin, it can only mean good things to come in the coming weeks, watch this space.
Trevor Robb
