As the poor wet season continues, leaving the river system bereft of food from the flood plains, the Territory's most popular fish is likely to seek out alternative homes. 

President of the Amateur Fishermen's Association NT, Warren de With is up for the challenge brought on by the lack of rainfall so far the wet season. 

"This wet season is the poorest we have had in a while," he said. 

"To me, I enjoy it. The tougher the conditions the better you have to be to find fish. 

"Anyone can go to a river with lots of food coming of the flood plains and catch barra after barra."

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The avid fisherman said people will have to significantly change their style if the season continues as it is. 

"It is like a drought in the river right now, we just can't see the impacts in the river like we can see on the land.

"What is happening is we are not going to get plentiful food from the flood plains and barra will not congregate at feeder creeks in large numbers as they would in good wet seasons. 

"The challenge is working out where the fish will be, and that is more than likely to be along coastal flats where there is an abundance of food."

While the fishing community is not too concerned just yet, if the Territory continues to see poor wet seasons alarm bells will start to sound. 

"This is something we have seen before, [low rainfall] knocks recruitment numbers down and we will notice a size gap in fish in years to come due to the lack of good wet seasons over the past couple of years," Mr de With said. 

"While we may see smaller numbers of fish in years to come we still have a good range from previous wet seasons."

Mr de With said he was concerned the community as a whole could be putting too much pressure on water resources - in the absence of plentiful rain to replenish the aquifers and flush out the rivers, the environment is likely to suffer. 

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"The aquifer can handle a few bad wet seasons but if we continue to extract water at a higher level than it can handle then we are going to see impacts on the river," Mr de With said. 

"We all have to share the management of water extraction so it doesn't severely impact environmental flows into the river and in turn break the food chain. 

"This is a whole community problem."

Rain totals are down by more than a third across the Katherine region, and much more in isolated areas. 

Katherine has been on water restrictions since August 2017 and remains on stage one restrictions today.

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