Freshwater crocodiles are harmless to humans in normal circumstances. Sharing a gorge pool with a dozen of them while you fish is still an experience worth describing.
The Distinction That Matters
Freshwater crocodiles (Crocodylus johnstoni) are a different animal from their saltwater cousins in every relevant way. They are smaller — typically 1.5 to 2.5 metres as adults — non-aggressive toward humans under normal circumstances, and have a narrow, fish-adapted jaw rather than the broad bone-crushing jaw of the saltwater species. Documented attacks on humans are almost entirely defensive — people who stepped on them or cornered them.
In the Kimberley gorges, freshwater crocs are abundant. In some pools they are present at densities that seem implausible — eight, ten, twelve animals visible on the banks and in the shallows of a pool the size of two tennis courts. You get used to it. The fish do not seem bothered by them, which tells you something about their actual predatory threat in the gorge environment.
The Fishing
The gorge pools of the Kimberley hold barramundi, saratoga, and various bream species. The saratoga — a large predatory fish with an upturned jaw for surface feeding — are the most spectacular quarry in a freshwater context. They take surface lures aggressively, jump repeatedly when hooked, and grow to 80cm or more in productive gorge systems.
The particular pool I want to describe is accessible by a 90-minute walk from the Gibb River Road that deters the majority of casual visitors. Arriving to find a pool occupied by twelve freshwater crocodiles and no other humans, in country this remote, in water this clear — this is a category of outdoor experience that deserves its own language.
We caught four saratoga, three bream, and something very large that broke us on a submerged log before we could identify it. We shared the pool with the crocodiles for four hours without incident. Browse our fishing range.
