Major fishing competition the Barra Nationals gets under way after six-week delay due to flooding

It’s Australia’s biggest annual barramundi fishing competition, and it’s happening on a remote river in the Northern Territory.

The Barra Nationals have been drawing anglers from across the country to the same stretch of the Daly River, south of Darwin, for 30 years.

The rules are simple. Teams are made up of three anglers, they have a week to fish a 50-kilometre stretch of the river, and they’re scored on the total length of their top five fish of each day — taking a photo of their catch next to a ruler before throwing it back in the water

The team with the highest score at the end of the week are crowned the winners.

Over the first three days of the competition alone, 1,419 fish were caught, with a total length of nearly 830 metres and a combined weight over 3.9 tonnes.

About 150 competitors from 50 teams have travelled from around Australia to the remote river this year, with one keen group bringing their boat from Tasmania.

Participant Tracy Chelepy, who is competing with her team the Bamboo Pandas. said she had been travelling to the event from Rockhampton in Queensland for six years.

“We travel for three days [to get here] — you drive in and you’re like ‘let’s bring it, it’s the Barra Nationals’,” she said.

Record floods fail to stop competition

The community of Daly River / Nauiyu experienced its worst flood on record earlier this year.

At the flood’s peak, houses were submerged up to their roofs in the community, which sits on the banks of the Daly River.

Less than five kilometres downstream of the community is the Banyan Farm Tourist Park, which hosts the Barra Nationals every year, transforming into a hub of fishing and live entertainment.

Three months ago, a video of a tinny driving through the park’s flooded outdoor dining hall went viral on social media.

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Kerri Draper, who owns the tourist park with her husband and has hosted the Barra Nationals at the park since 1998, said it was a while before she could bring herself to watch the footage

She said as soon as the floodwater had receded, a team of volunteers had gotten to work to ensure the park could reopen in time for the tourist season, and, most importantly, the Barra Nationals.

“Most of them were retirees, so between the ages of 65 and 70 — but you should’ve seen that crew on the shovels, they were fantastic,” she said.

“It’s great to have the event here. It’s a lot of hard work, but once it kicks off it’s a great week.”

Delayed start presents new obstacles

Despite the work of the crew at Banyan Farm, the flooding meant this year’s competition was delayed by about six weeks.

Darryl Smart is the president of the Palmerston Game Fishing Club, which organises the tournament.

He said the delayed start date had added a new element for anglers to contend with.

“There’s a lot more big crocodiles out now with the cooler weather, which is good. If they could stay on the banks, that’d be even better,” he said.

Even though the recent flooding took the river to record levels, the late start to this year’s competition means the water is lower than it normally is.

That presents some risks, as fisher Will Simpson and his team the Metery Maniacs found out the hard way.

“We hit a log … we started sinking so we had to turn around and make like a cat and scram,” he said.

“[We were going] about 76 kilometres an hour.”

With crocodiles a frequent sight on the river banks, it’s easy to see why.

One team will be crowned the champions when the competition ends on Sunday.