By Kane Dysart

These days more and more switched on barra anglers are taking advantage of the dark of night to escape the crowds and fulfil their fishing addictions.

Dusk til dawn is prime barra time!

Steve Joy with a metre of chrome fizzer munching barra!

The benefits of midnight raids generally speak for themselves and as an added bonus you are always guaranteed a parking spot at the boat ramp. One undeniable benefit though, is that old bucket mouth, the barramundi, generally feeds more actively under the cover of darkness especially on surface lures!
How can you go wrong? Did I forget to mention the torturing effects of sleep deprivation, the thick black swarms of blood sucking mosquitoes and last, but not least, the increasingly curious man eating crocs? Hey, if it was too easy everyone would be doing it!
Nocturnal
As far as nocturnal predators go the mighty barramundi has evolved with the best of them. Equipped with specialized adaptations such as oversized, light sensitive eyes, highly receptive lateral sensors and an outward extending cavernous mouth, which they use to stun and envelop their prey. Barra definitely rule in our northern estuarine and inland waters.
There is no mistaking the highly audible sound a barra makes as it sucks its nervous prey violently from the water’s surface in a depth charge like implosion. This feeding trait, commonly referred to as a ‘boof’, is a big part of what I reckon barra fishing is all about. On a pitch black night, the silence shattering detonation on your surface lure when a barra boofs you at your rod tip is literally enough to cause your heart to miss a few beats. This is frequently followed by a millisecond of madness as your brain attempts to register whether you have hooked up or been attacked by a croc!

Moonlighting
Most keen fishos are well aware of the relationship between the lunar cycle and fish behaviour. The ancient Polynesians even developed a fishing calendar for forecasting the fishing potential for any given day based on the moon. This symbiotic relationship is no more apparent than when fishing for barra at night, where choosing the right moon phase can make a big difference and often prove the difference between success and failure.
There are many theories out there as to what moon phase barra bite the best – and this also varies at different locations. A good mate of mine, who regularly night fishes the Fitzroy River in the Kimberleys, swears by the lead up to the new or dark moon, whereas I have found the five days prior to the full moon are more productive in my local waters. That’s not to say I haven’t caught fish during the new moon period. I do, however, prefer a bit of moonlight as I believe it helps the barra locate your lures and it’s generally easier to see and navigate, which always helps.
When fishing in some saltwater locations on the darker phase of the moon it’s also worth noting that phosphorescence can make fishing with lures almost impossible. The bright luminous glow down your line to your lure can make it a futile exercise and in these situations you are probably better off using bait or just staying in bed!
The periods of dusk and dawn are also proven, productive times to fish. One popular theory is that barra catch their prey unaware and somewhat disorientated by the changing light conditions. Following the same theory, periods of cloud cover over the moon can sometimes trigger a bite and there are times I’ve seen a hot surface bite go quiet as soon as clouds covered the moon, only to fire up again when they passed.
It is understood that tides have a major influence on fish activity in salt and brackish waters. However, I have recently adopted a theory that tides affect the feeding habits of barra in both salt and fresh waters! Right now you are probably thinking I’m crazy, but please here me out!
Even to this day, the scientific reasoning for much of these phenomena is not fully understood. However, many marine biologists now believe that the gravitational pull exerted by the sun and moon is sensed by fish through their highly sensitive lateral lines and built-in sensory systems, which in turn affects their feeding habits.
During the new and full moon phases, relative to earth, the sun and moon are approximately in a straight line and their gravitational fields pull in the same direction causing the tidal bulge to form and move around the earth with the transit of the moon. This varying gravitational force acts as much on freshwater as it does the salt and even though there is no perceptible tide, freshwater fish are triggered to feed similarly to their saltwater cousins.
In salt water the turn or slack of the tide is traditionally one of the peak times to fish, as the moon’s gravitational pull weakens the water slows and allows barramundi to freely move and feed throughout the water column with a lot less expended energy. Makes sense doesn’t it? Now here comes the interesting part, a phenomenon I have observed while fishing freshwater billabongs and impoundments where there is no tidal influence at all is that a hot barra bite will often coincide with the time of a tidal change. Obviously barramundi are a lot more attuned to the moon’s gravitational cycles than we dumb humans, after all we need tide charts to work these sorts of complicated things out!

A selection of proven night time barra weapons

Imitation is the key
A good angler will always pay particular attention to the type and habits of bait species that are commonly found in the areas they regularly fish. After all, the main reason the barra are there is for an easy feed. Alternatively, if you have already caught a fish, sacrificing it for science and inspecting its gut contents is also a good way to find out what the fish are feeding on.
Once the main prey has been established, it’s just a matter of selecting a lure and retrieve that closely imitates the species being preyed on. A good example of this is when barra are visibly feeding on popeyed mullet on the surface. In this situation, slowly worked surface lures come into their own, with walk the dog styles my weapons of choice. Similarly if the fish are feeding just under the surface, then a shallow diving minnow such as a Reidy’s B52 can often produce results.
Not all night fishing for barra revolves around the use of surface lures and there is many a time when deep diving minnows and slow rolled soft plastics come up trumps. It definitely pays to have a good selection of lures covering all depths and sizes.
When it comes to colour choice, it’s pretty black and white to me (pardon the pun.) A favourite of many night fishers, black and white lures seem to consistently produce. I’m not going to pretend and tell you that I know what a barra sees when they look up at your black popper spluttering past overhead. The truth is we don’t know and we can only speculate as to the effectiveness of one colour over another. I believe the profile and action imparted on a lure is more important than colour, nevertheless there are times when certain colours seem to work better than others.
Traditionally, black or dark coloured lures are thought to work best on the brighter phases of the moon due to the silhouette they provide against the bright night sky. However his theory was literally blown out of the water on a recent moonlit night. The barra were boofing everywhere at a junction in one of my favourite creeks, spraying hapless mullet all over the place. I was accompanied by a mate who was quite new to this type of fishing and after explaining to him the silhouette theory, I instructed him to tie on a black fizzer. We both began catching the odd fish but after a while things went quiet as the tide turned and began to run out. My mate jokingly suggested that he tie on a white fizzer just to be different, as he thought the fish were now sick of black.
‘You won’t catch anything on that mate, you need a black lure on the full moon’ I informed him. A couple of minutes later he was slammed by a good fish and proceeded to sledge me over my previous comments as he led the leaping barramundi to the waiting net. I casually put it down to a beginner’s luck until about five minutes later when he was on again! Three quality fish later and he had me rustling through my tackle box desperate to get my hands on a white fizzer. Strangely enough, since that night I try to carry a selection of black and white surface lures in my armoury.
Night Moves
Navigation can be difficult at night, so it pays to become intimate with the stretch of water you plan to fish. You should ultimately get to know where all of the fallen trees, weedbeds, rock bars and overhanging trees are during daylight hours so that you can recognize them at night. A trick I sometimes use when fishing snaggy areas, is to hang a glow stick in the trees or snags I will be casting to. This gives you a target and provides a gauge of how far you can cast before you end up in the shrubbery.
Head lamps are very handy when fishing at night, allowing you to have your hands free to tie knots and unhook fish. It also pays to have a decent spotlight in your boat for navigational purposes and keeping an eye the ever present crocodiles.
You should always try to remain as quiet as possible when fishing a night. Loud noise and bright lights should be kept to a minimum so as not to the alert the fish. If you can get away it, only switch your headlamp on when necessary. You won’t catch as many fish or make too many friends if you are shining torches and spotlights all over the place.
Recent advances in technology such as Minn Kota’s electric motors fitted with the new wireless I-Pilot, open up a whole new world of options for night fishing. The GPS enabled system gives you the ability to automatically hold your position and even records and stealthily retraces a productive fishing path – all while hands free.
Not for everyone
Night fishing for barra is definitely a challenge, but for those of us willing to put in the extra effort the results speak for themselves. While our wives and partners are probably quietly questioning our intentions on some of these midnight raids, they can rest assured that the real thrill of the chase is a metre of chrome plated barramundi launching itself out of the water, glistening in the moonlight with your lure securely lodged in the corner of its jaw, rather than some of the other more questionable late night pursuits such as loitering around seedy bars or nightclubs to the early hours of the morning. I know what I would rather be doing!