Townsville's barramundi season opened on a wet, windy whimper for one of the region's regular YouTube guides, with Fishing Townsville's first 2026 outing producing three undersized rats across nearly three hours of casting and a procession of sharks happy to keep the angler company.
The channel's host, fishing alongside regular partner Candy in mangrove country off Magnetic Island, copped opening day on the back of 4 m tides and storm cells before backing up on lighter neap tides for the recap that landed on YouTube. Both sessions were a grind.
"Oh, it feels good to be back out here. Chasing them, mate," he said in the opening minutes, working a Garmin LiveScope through 1.5 m of warm water as he tried to convince a single fish to commit. "It looks really good down there in terms of the structure, we're not really seeing barra. You kind of have that one fish look at you."
When the first hookup did come, it was the smallest barra of the trip and well short of the 58 cm legal limit. "Hey, first barrow 2026 season," he said. "Oh dear. Poor little fella. Well, we're on the board for barra. Now we have to get on the board for legal barra."
A recurring theme through the morning was the bull sharks crowding the same drains and timber the barra were holding on. "There's Mr. Shark right out the back. Two sharks now," he said early in the trip, before another patrolling fish later spooked a school he was working. By the third hour the count was three barramundi in the boat — none over 56 cm — alongside a couple of small cod and a stray javelin fish that grabbed Candy's lure.
The LiveScope, which the host has leaned on heavily through the dry season, showed him exactly the problem: a handful of barra moving rather than the schools the area normally holds at the season opener. "We did find fish. We can find barrers on the live, but yeah, they're very fleety. They're not just holding in one spot in a big school," he said. "Which could well be the result of a lack of flow of water."
By lunchtime the wind had dropped, the sun had come out and the verdict was in. "Three little buzzes, a couple little cods, and a very quiet day," he said. "Everyone we spoke to on the water, same sort of thing. Was only finding a couple of small ones. So yeah, we'll blame the neep tides. Can't be us. So we'll blame the tides."
The back end of the video carries a disclaimer of sorts. After breaking off and pushing south past Pie Face for one more crack on a fresh tide, the host returned home empty-handed in a fresh storm cell. "I returned home later that morning with zero fish and a wet ass," he summed up. "Fingers crossed things improve for us soon."
For anyone heading north to chase Townsville's early-season barra, the report points the same way as the last few openers: tides are doing more of the talking than the lures, the bull sharks are thick in the mangrove drains, and a 56 cm rat is, for now, what a good day looks like.