After a reasonable trip to Shady a couple of weeks back I decided I wanted to have a look at the South. I had never fished up the top before and only once ventured to the mouth with the FFF New Years Eve crew. Liam (Lar2784) was keen as always so we planned for an overnighter mid week. After checking the tides we decided there was no need to leave early, arriving at the ramp at mid day. The boat was launched, the sounder/plotter trip reset. Hit the throttle and the unit switched off.
I'd never had any issues with my Lowrance before this in 18 months of flat out use. Anyways the unit wouldn't turn back on. A quick check and all fuses and wiring look ok. Not a good start to the trip I was thinking. So on went the Furuno sounder and the Lowrance back in its box. At least we had a sounder if not the plotter. 
We headed upstream until we got to Nourlangie Creek. There was a lot of water pumping out so decided to head up the top for a look. Saw Richieboy's boat flying back down the creek, pretty hard to miss that one!
Once at the top I threw on a squidgie in drop bear color and proceded to cast at likely spots. Wasn't long and my squidgie was hit hard and running me into the snags. A short but tough battle and a fat swampy 74cm barra was in the boat. Well that was the pressure off to get a fish at the south. 
We didn't see anymore real action here so headed back out to the main river and up to the top. 
About half way up we came across a couple of boats trolling what looked like a nothing section, but on the opposite bank was a nice little creek flowing out into the main channel where there were a few snags. So we anchored up and threw our lures and mine was hit on the first two casts before finally hooking up on the 3rd. Another swampy barra was produced and the score was now 2-Zip! Liam then closed the gap with a swampy of his own. Another one for me and the spot went quiet, although was still more productive than the trolling run opposite.
We continued the run up stream once again passing Richieboy on his way back down and not long after arrived at the sign where the river is roped off. There was a lot of water up top and after only a couple of casts decided to look for a more likely spot. The next two casts into a creek mouth produced a double hookup on tarpon so spun the boat around to try a second pass and maybe find a barra but this time even the tarpon weren’t interested. We drifted back to the junction where the river divided and headed up onto the floodplains. Where the channel narrowed we pushed up onto the grassy bank and proceded to cast to the opposite bank regularly landing good sized tarpon. The guys a bit further up from us also sounded like they were having fun on the tarpon. I changed from the small squidgie I had been using to my new home made lure that I created after our success at shady camp with a plain old mangrove root. A few casts later and it had its first victim, not a tarpon like the squidgie but of course a barra!
It was only a rat but was a good sign and proved my lure worked. 
A few more tarpon and two more barra and it was time to move on as it was getting late and we needed to explore a bit more before finding a place to set up for the night. By now the tide was near low and small drains were pumping into the main river with small waterfalls forming along the banks. It was pretty impressive to see as we drifted with the flood water. However there was no barra or bait action and nothing would take a lure as we cast at every likely looking spot. We gave up on drifting as the drains became further apart, now motoring from one to the next. As we approached one of the drains I cut the motor a couple of hundred metres short and pointed out to Liam a splash in the front and some bait movement on the surface. As we passed we threw our lures in and immediately I’m onto a nice barra. A quick fight as we continued to drift and a 65cm fish made its way to the net. There were fish boofing along the banks in this section and I mentioned to Liam “This is the spot mate!” We crept our way back to the front of the drain and threw the anchor trying not to spook the fish, but that wasn’t going to happen as there was so many boofing along the bank, in the drain and up in the trees! It was like machine guns going off at some stages.
The score was pretty poor at 5-2 in my favour before this spot but this score was about to change dramatically. The fish continued to go crazy for the next four hours before the water had risen and the fish moved up onto the floodplain with the tide. In that time the score had risen to something like 25-15 legal fish landed still in my favour, however Liam was leading 4-1 in the powertail stakes!
This score could have been in the hundreds if the fish weren’t feeding on the smallest of bait. (1cm long scats and 1-2cm rainbows) It was hard to think you could throw a lure in amongst them without a hookup really. I had now caught at least a dozen on my home made lure confirming that the hook attachments were solid and the lure itself was strong enough to handle a beating. The rest were caught on rubbers as the fish wouldn’t take hard bodies other than poppers, and squidgies were easily the best of the rubbers. Most of the fish we caught in this spot were nice and clean unlike the swampies we’d caught before, so kept 4 to take home. Once the session had died down I started the job of filleting while Liam was now chasing them near the bottom rather than on the surface. Of course as it turns out the big fish always bite when you’re in the middle of something else, with Liam landing the two biggest fish of the trip at 80 and 82. 
The session was now over so we had a feed and hit the hay. Following the golden rule of never leave fish to find fish we stayed put hoping that it would again fire up at the low tide in the morning. Just like clockwork the fish appeared again on the dead low tide and began to feed on the incoming. We landed another dozen legal fish each before deciding we should have a bit more of a look around the river. We drove on downstream to flick a few more of the draining gutters and picked up a couple of fish at each of the likely looking spots but none were near as productive as our original spot so we headed back up. By now our spot had flooded again and the fish were up inside the creek. I thought we’d go for a walk as we could hear them feeding at a waterfall further up the creek. There was a small eroded channel a bit over a metre wide with a waterfall dropping about a metre or so into the channel. The channel was full of 30cm long Powertail acting like buckets under the waterfall catching anything that went over. There were also a number of barra feeding right up there but it would have been suicide to throw a lure in amongst them!
Back to the boat and across to the opposite bank where some cleaner black water was trickling into the main river. We boated up as far as we could then on foot to where we could hear running water. A nice channel of flood water was pumping down into a bit of a pool creating a big back eddy. It was pretty tight in there as it was surrounded by mangroves but it was pretty much a legal fish a cast if you could get your lure in the water!
Then it was lock the drag and hang on or you were gonna be in the timber in no time. We got a few more here before the water got too high and we had to get out before we got stuck. Again we ventured up top to find the fellas that had been there catching tarpon the day before had left a bit of advertising in the trees along with some of there art work.
After that we headed back to Nourlangie but the tide was too high and nothing looked extremely fishy. Happy with our efforts and a productive first trip to the top of the south, decided to head home at a reasonable hour for a change. Apart from my Lowrance sounder packing it in is was a pretty awesome trip. We landed over 60 legal barra most being between 65 and 75cm and didn’t get rained on once which was a welcome change. Will be back to visit that river again soon I think. 
Cheers
Moonman
Photobucket makes it so easy really 
