Dave Borg Story Line

From: borgy [[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, 3 July 2001 10:14 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: N.T. Barra Fishing Trip

My name is Dave Borg, and I would like to tell you about a trip I went on 6 weeks ago. My good friend David �Toothy� McLean, my ex-brother-in-law, John Parenzan and my brother-in-law, Darrel Wollaston, and our families went to the Northern Territory for four weeks. All in all, there was 16 people, four 4wds, 3 camper-trailers, one trailer load of gear, and lot of other stuff�well, lets just say, most of the other stuff was fishing gear.

We left Adelaide at 4:30 am on a Saturday morning and met Toothy and Darrel at McDonalds, Port Augusta (Toothy and Darrel being from Port Lincoln). Toothy and Darrel arrived about 9:30 am. We all had breakfast and much discussion about the coming 4 weeks together. We left Port Augusta at about 10:30 am, and headed off up to Coober Pedy. We spent a bit of time sightseeing, and spent the night there.

We left Coober at about 10 the next morning and made our way up to Uluru (Ayers Rock). We spent the night at the Yulara Resort (very expensive), done a bit of sightseeing, but didn't climb the rock, due to the death of an aboriginal elder. When we left the rock, we headed to Alice Springs, but camped about 30 kms out of Alice. We left there at about 9 in the morning and headed to Tennant Creek. We spent the night at Three Ways, about 20 kms from Tennant Creek. We left there at 9 in the morning and headed to the Roper River for some serious Barra fishing. We arrived at the Roper about 6pm and set up camp for the night at the Roper Bar Caravan Park.

We all got up about 6am and headed down to the river, to launch one of our boats. Four of us got in the boat and headed about 10kms down river to try our luck at catching a Barra. After 3 hours of casting lures and moving from spot to spot with no luck, we decided to call it a day and head back to camp. Later on that night we were talking to some Queenslanders that had caught 6 barra the day before, they told us they had caught them 60kms down river.

We were leaving the next day to head to Kakadu National Park, so we decided that night we would try our luck casting a lure on the Roper Bar Crossing. We headed down there about 6pm. At about 6:30pm my young nephew, John, hooked a Barra, but being inexperienced and excited, he lost it. Next was my other nephews� turn, same thing twice�these young kids were starting to show us oldies up! At about 7:30 I decided I`d had enough 2 more cast`s and I`m off, well first cast bang I had one. I fought him for about 3 to 4 mins (seemed like ten), I brang it in, my mate Toothy netted it, I was ecstatic, it was 88cms long and weighed 9 kilo.

No one else caught a fish that night, However we did find out that the Queenslanders had lied to us and had actually caught their fish on the Bar as well. We did try fishing on the Bar again the next morning before we left but to no avail.

When we all got back to Mataranka some of us decided to have a nice warm swim in the 34 deg. Thermal pool. It was absolutely relaxing. From there we went to Kakadu Nat Park, heaps of sight seeing, one place we went to was called Muirella Park, There was a billabong there and we were told it contained some nice sized Barra, so we decided we would launch both boats and once again try our luck. This time I caught a nice size Saratoga, my brother in law Darrel caught 2 Barra one 65cms the other 67cms.

One thing I won't be doing again for sure is fishing in my boat after dark, the reason being, getting harassed by a 14ft saltwater croc. After 5 days in Kakadu we headed in to Darwin for a couple of days, from there it was off to Litchfield Nat Park, lots more sightseeing. By now I was starting to have withdrawals from not catching a Barra for so long so it was time to head to the Daly River, we were all looking forward to this as some of us had been there 2 years earlier.

We arrived at the Daly on Monday about lunchtime and were supposed to stay there for a week, but after 4 days of boating up and down river we had only managed to land 2 Barra, a bit different from 2 years earlier. We all decided that we would go back to the Roper as we had heard that the fish were still biting well. We got back to the Roper on the Saturday and stayed till the following Wednesday.

Over this four day period we had a marvellous time landing 22 Barra in total ranging from 78cms to 93cms (6kgs to 12kgs) we probably would have lost just as many. If anyone is planning a Barra fishing trip I strongly recommend you try the Roper River, The caravan park there is excellent and Ian and Emma Pope (owners) will be only happy to help you with any fishing info you might need, as they did with us. I have sent a couple of photos for you to look at.

The rod I used was a self custom-built medium action 5ft. 6� along with a shimano baitcaster reel filled with Platypus super~braid line 9kg. We are already planing our next trip to the Roper in 2 years time this time it will be nine guys with no kids or wives, for 3 weeks of total fishing.