There is information you can buy in a tackle shop, and information you can only learn on Country. On the freshwater creeks near Coen, in central Cape York, a Kaanju traditional owner named Deion offered a masterclass in the second kind.
Guiding the host of the Wild Reaches series through the deep holes of a slow inland creek in the Archer River system, Deion chased sweetlip grunter and freshwater barramundi. But the real value of the day was his reading of the seasons, which tells him precisely when a fish is worth keeping.
Sweetlip, he said, are a genuinely underrated table fish, provided you catch them at the right time. "I don't normally taste these straight after the wet season," Deion explained, "because straight after the wet they spawn, and after they spawn they're really poor. You can taste the difference." The window he waits for arrives later: "Usually June, July onwards is when I normally taste these. They're good eating."
This time of year proves the point. Cleaning a fish on the bank, he showed off the thick pale fat running through the flesh. "That's why I come this time of the year, because they're fat," he said. "Look how fat that is. That's what you're looking for." The smaller, pan-sized fish were cooked straight on the coals, while the better ones were kept to carry back to the community's elders, a custom that anchors a day on the water here.
The creeks demand caution as much as skill. Crossing a shallow stretch, Deion noted that a large crocodile shared the water, and pointed out where smaller freshwater crocs had become prey themselves. In the fresh water above the salt, he said, anglers target barramundi, sweetlip and cherabin, while turtles are found in the still lagoons and billabongs.
Underpinning it all is an unbroken connection to place. Deion's family has never been moved off this country, and that continuity, he said, is exactly why the knowledge survives. "We've never moved from this place. That's why we still got the knowledge of the area," he said. On these creeks, that knowledge is still being handed down, one cook-up at a time.