When I first came to the Northern Territory in 1985 it was to view a destination with then local Col Roberts (Wildfish Magazine today) the idea was to build a Floatel in the waters of Port Hurd Bathurst Island.This later for various reasons changed to the option of building a more permanent fixture that today is known as the The Barra Base.
In the process Rod Harrison and Dean Butler who were producing videos using John Haenke as the cameraman came to Barra Base and shot a video called "Top End Barra" it was during this that Rod requested that Dorothee and I host, in part American Flyfishing Legend Lefty Kreh on his upcoming down under tour.
The upshot was a video called the " New Frontier " Harro was admiring an approach we developed in the visual stalking of Mangrove flats for Barramundi ,Threadfin and anything else that showed its nose, The tour was very successful with Goose Creek (Saratoga) being included in the Barra base section,The Drysdale, Cobourg peninsula and New Guinea Black Bass .
The Mid 80's with Alex Julius then in the Fisheries Department and Mike Reid the Minister spearheaded what was to become a major tourism thrust that we still reap the benefits of today,Alex with Harro and John Haenke later spent a week producing a 10 Min promo of Fishing in the NT it recently was taken from Beta cam to a digital format and is uploaded here.
Names such as Alan Philiskirk, Phil Hall, Alex Julius,Gary ( bigfoot ) Simpson,Rod Harrison, Dean Butler, Lex Silvester and other locals obviously skinnier and much younger are here.
Hope you enjoy this 27 yr old video.
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15 seconds
boats and gear so different
ReplyDeletevery small boats - but croc numbers would have been lower back then given they could be shot and more fearful of humans
rods that were very soft or so it seemed
Your right about boats, I don't recall numbers being less No way could they be shot,I remember places like Corroboree and the Mary,South Alligator were full of really big Crocodiles, what's changed is the numbers of people interacting gear has come along way braid didn't exist and for the most part neither did sounders.
DeleteThis video epitomises the plan to promote NT Sport fishing and it worked for instance in 1986 there were about 4 mainland guides today there is 130 who on a yearly average run 28,000 day tours.