The 44th Daly River Barramundi Classic is under way, and once again hundreds of anglers have travelled deep into the Northern Territory for a competition that has been part of the Top End calendar since 1982. The barra are on the chew. So, it turns out, are the sharks.
Merv Hughes, the former Australian fast bowler, has been coming back for 20 years and still talks about the river like a first-timer.
"The first time you do it, you just fall in love with the place," Hughes said.
Conditions have been kind after a big wet earlier in the year that flushed the system and moved bait around. Veteran competitor Alastair Shields reported "lots and lots of fish ... they're fat, healthy, silver fish," while cautioning that the flood had made the river "a bit treacherous with all the new snags and logs."
The story anglers keep coming back to, though, is what is happening once a barra is hooked. Sharks have been beating them to the boat.
"We've lost a lot of good fish to sharks, just can't get them in fast enough," said skipper Rohan Short.
There may be a reason the sharks are so active. Joni Pini-Fitzsimmons, a marine ecologist at Charles Darwin University, said this season's run-off could be drawing prey up the river.
"We got a lot of runoff, that could be improving bait and different prey of sharks, so we could be seeing a little bit of an uptick because of that," she said.
The animals, she added, are quick studies. "Sharks are smart. They can very quickly learn associations between boat noise, struggling fish, and an easy meal," Pini-Fitzsimmons said.
Crocodiles, of course, need no invitation on the Daly, and anglers here fish with one eye on the bank as a matter of routine. Adding sharks to the mix has only sharpened the sense that this competition is fished on the fish's terms, not the angler's.
None of it has dented the turnout. Four decades on from its first running, the Classic still delivers exactly what the Top End faithful come for: wild water, quality barramundi, and stories that get better with every retelling.