The rats are worth talking about

On BFS gear, a 40cm barra feels like a freight train. So why didn't I post it?

Yesterday I went culvert fishing. Just the family, a BFS setup, and a stretch of water that most people drive straight past without a second look. I caught rats. A lot of them. And honestly? It was one of the best sessions I have had in a long time.

Here is what I did not do. Post about it.

Not because I was ashamed of the fish. Quite the opposite. I was still buzzing from it hours later, replaying the tug of war in my head. The way a 40 centimetre barra absolutely destroys a tiny lure on light line is something else. On BFS gear, that fish feels like a freight train. The rod loads up, the drag sings, and for a few seconds you would swear you were connected to something twice its size. That is the only way I can describe it. The fun is almost unreasonable.

But I did not share it. Because I knew what the response would be.

“Only a few rats, hey.”

Ask most Territorians how their session went and the answer tells you a lot about what fishing culture values. “Only a few rats,” they will say, even after 8 hours on the water in perfect conditions doing exactly what they love. Or, “just a few 70s.” The fish were not big enough to justify the story.

We have built an entire hierarchy around centimetres. Rats. 70s. 80s. The magic metre. Anything below the magical mark is practically invisible in the retelling. There is literally a club you can join when you crack a metery, the One Metre Barra Club, and the conversations at fishing clubs can spend entire evenings fixating on that single benchmark.

I am not knocking the metery. Catching a metre-plus barra is extraordinary and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But somewhere along the way, the metery became the only story worth telling. And I think that is where we have lost something.

Here is a detail I find genuinely fascinating. Barramundi start life as male. When they grow to around 80 centimetres, they transition to female and begin spawning. The magic metre everyone is chasing is a mature, breeding female who has been contributing to the fishery for years.

Which means the fish we casually dismiss as “just a rat”, that feisty, scrappy young male who just bent my rod and made my morning, is doing exactly what the species needs. He is not a consolation prize. He is the future of the fishery.

Social media has a lot to answer for when it comes to the size conversation. I say that as someone who loves social media, uses it constantly, and genuinely believes it has done remarkable things for connecting fishing communities, especially women finding their feet in the sport.

But scroll through any fishing account and the message is pretty consistent. Trophy fish. Brag mats. Arm’s length hero shots. The metery with the grin.

What you almost never see is someone posting a BFS session at a culvert where every fish was under 40cm and they came home absolutely stoked. That stuff does not get posted, or when it does, it comes with an apology. “Sorry, only rats today.” As if the session needs to earn its share.

The thing is, social media shows highlights by nature. No one posts the blanks or the slow days or the sessions where the fish were small but the joy was enormous. We are being fed a steady diet of trophy catches, and it quietly reshapes what we think fishing is supposed to look like, and what we think we are allowed to celebrate.

That is a problem. In Territory fishing, we have allowed a tape measure to set the standard for success. If you have been told, explicitly or not, that your experience does not count unless you are holding something worth measuring, it can take the shine right off. This focus on size quietly suggests to beginners, kids, and women returning to the water that they do not quite measure up yet. That is a quiet way to push people out.

The experience has always been the thing. The moment the line goes tight. The read you make on the water. The cast that lands exactly where you wanted it. The fish that makes you question every gear choice you have ever made in a very exciting 90 seconds. None of that has a minimum size requirement.

That culvert session yesterday was genuinely one for the books. BFS gear, tiny lures, a bunch of scrappy young barra doing what barra do. I came home tired and happy and full of it. And this morning I sat down and asked myself why I almost did not post it.

So here it is. The rats are worth talking about. The experience is the measure. And maybe the most honest thing any of us can do is post the session that does not look impressive, and mean it.

The fish do not know they are small.