North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

The government announced an ongoing $50m spend on NT fishing not so long ago.

A worthwhile project would be to put the best possible net across Manton Dam near the wall.

Despite years of stocking, Manton Dam has historically produced fish up to the 90s with only an occasional metery, suggesting the big ones are getting past the net and going over the wall during floods. Plenty of fish have been found below the dam wall, illustrating the problem.

Investing in a better net might be worthwhile. The dam is a wonderful fishing spot, near Darwin, easily accessible on a sealed road, with fewer seasonal variations than the wild 'bongs, and a relatively small croc danger.

Good idea, I reckon the dead water probably kills off a few too

Its gonna have to be a good setup one year we went out after a cyclone it flooded hard enough to go over the handrail on the walkway in the spillway it destroyed it blowing 20m or more of the planks down the river.

All the boats flying around chew them up a bit too like in the pic below ....

Also a pic of a wall jumper that survived... just blind in one eye and a bit scaled.

Both were caught on lures despite their condition

Heaps of dead ones this yr too below the wall...some knob ran a knife through the support ropes while it was pumping over. Got me stuffed what some people are thinking when thiy do this sh!t... so even if it's 100% escape proof it'll only take one DH to wreck it.

I don't go there expecting to get onto many but when you do they are usually rippers.

137 is the biggest I've heard of from there to date.

Great pix

Shame the engineers didn't have the foresight to build a bit of a slope at the bottom so any fish life going over slides happily into Manton River/Adelaide River.

Same for Darwin River Dam wall, it would be nice to have Middle Arm and the harbour get a few meteries each Wet.

That 137 must have been well kept secret. I have seen a pic of a 124 from Manton, but that's it for really big ones, everything else has been up to a metre, a few fish just over a metre.