Two days into a remote Top End mission for barramundi, mud crabs and "pretty much anything to try and get a feed," the ReelLoose Adventures crew finally hooked the fish the trip had been built around: a 102 cm barramundi caught on a hard-body lure from a snag-laced river in wild country.
The video opens with a one-line brief from the boat: "It's a huge mission to get here, but if it fires, this place can really go off." Day one started with barra holding tight to mangrove edges and rolling on the surface in a gutter that ran out of an incoming tide. The first fish in the esky was a 60-something-centimetre eating-size barra. "This is the perfect eating size, so he's going in the esky," one of the crew said. Two more came in quick succession, including an 85 cm fish hooked deep that was cleanly released. "Solid fish. This one's hooked good. So I'm going to let him go."
The river was alive with golden trevally, too. "That is a nice little golden king," one of the crew called as a chrome trevally came alongside the boat. The same fish picked up the hard body again on a slow swimbait roll, and a second golden was put back. "Beautiful golden colour. He's got a bit of a blemish on the back there, like he's got a healed wound, but check that out. He's going to go back. Good release on him."
Day two opened on a mud bank scout. "Squizzes up on a bank chasing mud crabs," the crew said as they jumped out of the tinny on a falling tide and worked the runoff gutters by hand. The first big bull came out under a foot, then another, then a third — "That's three big bucks here. Let's get out of here before we get stuck." A monstrous old shell sitting in the mud told them what was possible: "Monster crab claw. But he's dead. There's his old carropus there. Looks like something's had a feed on him. But that is a giant mud crab. Hopefully we can find a live one."
The move paid. The crew found two big barra rolling on the surface in a back eddy and ran straight into a double hook-up. "Oh, that was a good bar, too. Look how slow they're swimming, bro," one of them said. "Oh, they did brain damage when we let them go," another quipped on a fish they'd already caught and re-released that came back for another swipe. "And they just sulk. They're sulking so hard."
The metre fish came out of nowhere. "Wait, he's on. Up him, bro. Good fish. Oh, proper. You got a proper one," one of the crew called out as Jack — running 80 lb leader — locked up on a hard-body bite under a snag. "He's got 80 lb on," the boys said as the fish dug deeper. "I wish I had 80 lb on."
What followed was a careful four-handed effort to keep the fish out of the timber. "Just steady with him. Give him a little bit. Let him go down there. He should go in half. Yeah, you lucky bastard," one crew member called from the camera as the fish powered into deeper water. When it finally came up to the surface, the call was a nervous "First metre if it is. We'll see. It's probably 99."
It wasn't 99. "102," Jack said as the boys stretched the brag mat alongside the fish. "Top, the top of the thing that's touching that — oh, you got, you got a little bit on that. I reckon you got a metre on the dot, Jack."
For a fishing crew that runs in tight and chases barra mostly on lures in country where the river snags can take your leader off in a heartbeat, the metre fish is the one they'd come for. "Big fella," one of them said as the barra hung horizontally for a quick belly lift. "Oh, a bit of a release on her metery, eh? Way she goes. That is sick. Good job, man."
It's also a snapshot of why crews keep grinding through the long drives, the heat, the mud and the overnighters. "It's a huge mission to get here," the team said back at the start of the trip, "but if it fires, this place can really go off." On day two of one of those missions in early May 2026, the place fired.