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-Early March Report

By Geoff Corry

The wet has been a bit of a fizzer with only half our February rainfall average falling in the Shady Camp area. The run-off fishing in this area will be grim as the water is falling fast and there are more boats then places to fish, which makes it very hard. Very few coastal creeks are running fresh and for the ones that are you need to be there before daylight to beat other boats. I would hate to be on a Mothership at the mouth of Shady with nowhere to go.

The South Alligator River looks a little better with good catchment rain early on. There are reports of fish but nothing spectacular. It’s still a bit early for the South as the fish will be moving up from the river mouth. Big tides are best for fishing the river above the bridge and small tides for fishing the mouth.

The Daly will be the place to be as it has had plenty of rain. Channel Point on the coast had over 200mm last week and lots of rain in the catchment area. Again tides are the most important thing in fishing up here and for the Daly small tides are the go. A friend of mine fished it last weekend he caught twenty Barra and lost just as many. The biggest was an 88cm on fly. He said there were fish boofing everywhere on small scats and rainbow fish.

The Adelaide River is producing fish on the small tides but with no run-off to speak of it’s hard to find them. The river has fresh water running down from the catchment area so the best place to fish is down near the narrows. Any eddy at the mouth of creeks or eddy’s near the rock bars will produce fish. I fished it last neep tides and we managed six Barra the biggest being 96cm Barra and a Black Jew fish on lure.