Continuous reports of huge barramundi being caught in the Top End of the Northern Territory this year have the commercial fishing sector worried.

While the commercial fishermen wait until Sunday (February 1) for the start of the salmon and barramundi season, the recreational fishing sector enjoyed its first wet season of being allowed to fish the Mary River system.

Last year's decision by the NT Government to abolish the closed season and allow year-round fishing on the Mary River for amateurs saw recreational fishers flock to fishing hot spots such as Shady Camp.

Facebook pages and fishing websites are full of stories about people catching metre barras.

Professional fisherman Peter Mundy said the amount of big breeders being caught was a joke.

"The biggest threat to the fishery is that the amateurs (fishermen) will not accept any conservation measures," he said.

"We voted 30 years ago to have a four-month closed season to leave breeding fish alone, but the amateurs won't do that.

Fishing heaven. It's been a good wet season for catching metre barras. ( Supplied )

"Even if they made it catch and release, it would be better then them bragging in the newspaper about these huge barramundi they're catching, which are usually filled with about 12 million eggs.

"You should leave breeding fish alone, it's as simple as that."

Craig Ingram, from the Amateur Fishermen's Association NT (AFANT), said the recreational fishing fraternity was "very committed to the sustainability of the resource".

He said fishermen were catching and releasing the bigger fish and AFANT was actually lobbying the Northern Territory Government to enforce a maximum size limit on barramundi (potentially of 90 centimetres).

"Recreational fishermen can only catch fish when they're feeding. The nets (of commercial fishermen) catch them when they're moving, when they're doing anything," he said.

"If you set a net across the mouth of one of those rivers, you don't catch 40 [fish], you catch every fish that's moving through there.

"That's what was going on and that's why there was a collapse in the fishery [and the closed season was brought in for the commercial sector 30 years ago]."

Mr Ingram said the opening of the Mary River system to amateur fishermen during the wet season "spread the effort" across all Top End fisheries.

"There's 140 tonnes of commercially caught fish which hasn't been removed from that system every year because of the removal of the commercial nets from that area, and now a small portion of that has been reallocated back to the recreational fishing sector."

Click on the audio link below to hear Rob Smith from ABC's Tales from the Tinny. He can't believe the amount of big barras being caught. "It's going off like a festering boil," he said.