▲TopNorthern Territory Wet Season - The Build Up

Well with rick from Spooled hot on my tail to put something new up, I find myself perched in front of my computer in 36 degrees Celsius with the humidity reaching 98%. While the sweat runs down the crack of my bum I’m mumbling through gritted teeth, “What the hell can I write about!” Then bang it comes to me, “Rain.” Where did it go? The Top End had a great start to the Wet Season especially for the Daly and Kakadu areas, however the costal rain has been poor and there has been minimal rainfall in the Mary River system catchments.

My understanding of how our Wet Season works is that central Australia heats up over summer, this heat draws the moisture and monsoon rains down from Indonesia and the rain falls along the coast until our entire rivers flood, not huge I must add but nether the less flood level. At the end of the Wet Season the rain reaches inland and cools Central Australia and this cooling effect pushes the monsoonal rains back to our North.

Well this year it has all happened to plan. When it’s not obvious from outside my window I’ve been watching the rain fall on my favourite www.bom.com.au , (Bureau of Meteorology) site. Then something unexpected happened, in January the rain fell and went down and flooded Central Australia, and now the Birdsville track is experiencing one of the biggest floods I can remember. The cooling effect has happened earlier, and the monsoon has moved back to New Guinea. So, February which is normally one of our wettest months has had below average rainfall.

So where does this leave the poor old Barramundi fishermen. It’s early days yet, we have experienced most of our rain late in the last few years and if my memory serves me correct the last big rains were the week leading up to April twentieth last year. The area most in need of rain is Shady Camp or the Mary River system. Early in the wet they had just enough rain to fill the billabongs. In Corroboree Billabong there was just enough water to cover the weeds but not enough water for the river to flow. The use of barrages to hold the water back not was helping. With decaying weeds and no water flow, this created a lack of oxygen in the water. Along with stifling heat we experienced massive fish kills at Shady Camp Billabong. Barramundi over the meter mark were found dead. For the fishing to be great in this area we will need lots of coastal rain and a bit in the catchments would not hurt

As for the other rivers like the Daly, East & South Alligator, large tidal influence keeps the surface water moving. This helps raise the oxygen level in the water keeping the fish alive. These rivers have had good rainfall to give them a flush, but some more rain definitely won’t hurt. The rivers are all fishing quite well at the moment and who knows if the rain comes back we may get two run-off’s this year.

In the mean time here in Darwin town we are going through the build-up again. Which is stinking hot and humidity through the roof and I’ve got some pr%ck from Spooled in my ear continually wanting me to write something :)