The start of February means the opening of the barramundi season and the excitement is at fever pitch up until midday when we can then catch them.

Last month was a real fizzer with consistent strong winds with the big tides to make fishing very hard. We have just started our monsoon season with some good rain starting to fall. This will hopefully turn the fishing around and fire up the barramundi and with good numbers around it should be an awesome time to be out on the water.

When the water flows over the road is the time to use soft plastics and Ron at the Point Garage has a good supply of them in nice colours. Sight casting is the go as you can see the fin making a wave as they feed in the shallows. Placing your lure within a foot of them usually gets a strike and the adrenalin rush from seeing them jump all over the place is awesome.

Most will be small rats but there will always be the exception. A bloke driving through a culvert with water flowing over it was able to get out and pick up a 94cm barramundi that had jumped the wrong way and beached itself .

The mouth of the river will be firing and the beach is a good place to start. Work your lures just off the beach as the tide builds for some great action. There are plenty of rocks to snag your lures so be careful. We have a 13ft saltwater crocodile that cruises the beach at this time of year so going in to retrieve your lure is not advisable.

We always get a visitor called Phil who has caught great numbers of fish off the beach using live bait. He is willing to help as long as you do not camp right beside him and he has great advise.

Mud crabs will be around and the best place to look will be out along the front. Please have plenty of rope on them, I suggest you tie the float to a tree as the big tides can move pots when the wind stirs it up. Please do the right thing and not check pots that are not your own. A professional crabber was caught checking the wrong pots and the $2,200 fine did not go away when he stated that everyone else did it.

We have some great charter businesses up here to help you and you will not go wrong in using their services. Kerry D charters does day and half day trips in an 8.5m vessel set up for comfortable fishing (07 4745 9275) and Gavin New (Groover) trading as Carpentaria Barramundi and Sport Fishing Charters caught over 40m+ barramundi last season (0408 796 705). We also have a new hunting charter business starting up and I will provide details soon.

Please make sure to contact the Normanton police (07 4745 1133) before travelling up as the road can get cut off by water for up to a month. The State Government has been working to fix the problem and have raised the Cordoroy Creek section by 0.9m, which should help shorten the cut off due to floods.