What went Wrong ?, where do we go from here?

[smashed crabs]

Hi all

As you are all aware im a commercial fisherman , What i have to say is probably going to get me into some hot water with other Pro's but i do not care .

I will start with there are two kinds of Pro's ..........

When i got into fishing an early age had this vision that a Pro was but what i didn't know was there were two types and i took time to learn.

One type of Pro is ........
A person that got out there and did battle , caught some fish and made a good honest living , they worked hard and had pride , most of all these were the Pro's that had respect for everyone and everything and never went around as if they where king shit , these where the fisherman that fished on ice , they had small boats and supplied the local market with fresh product.They went about there business doing the best they could do with what they had and bigger and better was just a dirty word .These fisherman went out daily and came back to port or went out for as long as there ice could hold( around 7days)

The other .............
Then you have your Pro fisherman with bigger better faster boats with all the wizz bang gear and they fished on frezzer's , massive fish holding capacity , increased work times ,larger crews, go any where , abilty to handle rougher weather. Big dollar pays ect

So there are two types of Pro's as veiwed by me back when i started.

When i started it was on the smaller working for the Old timer fisherman , the little bloke , i would look at the others with their frezzers , their catches and how well they actually did in comparison to what we where doing , many a time i would always look at the big bucks and say to my skipper just look at them , we need to get a frezzer , we need what they have got or we will just fall behind .
To which my skipper at the time said if thats what you want then get the fk of my boat , i took this as an insult and got into a argument with him over it.
Can you imagine a young fella with bugger all knowledge trying to tell a seasoned salty what he should be doing, here is me saying you behind the time old fella and move over because we are the next generation , we are going to do it bigger and better than you ever will you old fart , all he could say was some of us fish for a living and others do it for other reasons.

Well i didn't have a clue what he was on about , i just thought he was a fool. I thought well i will spend me time on his boat but as soon as i get the chance to jump ship to a better one then i will .

This bloke really got on my nerve at times , i would catch a fish and before i could even get it of the hook he would say pop it back , bang another argument . I really did think he was a fool , a fish was either to small or two big or we got enough of that type throw it back or that fish is in egg ect ect.
On land this old Pro was a good bloke , just add water and he turned into the fish police.
After working for this bloke for sometime he asked me if i learnt anything,i told him no , he told me that i was a lots cause and went on to say then you are no better than them other Pro's that you so much admire and aspire to be and you will always be part of the problem so pack your bags.

So i did pack me bag , we jumped in the ute and half way home he pulled over the side of the road and he exsplained to me what i should have learnt and the difference between himself and other Pros , the pro's which i thought at the time was the ducks nuts.

He told me there are now two types of Pro's out there.He told me fisherman like him will always be a thing of the past the way it's heading, he told me if i fished just like him i will never make the big bucks , he told me yes his style was old and out of date , he told me as long as he could still stand on the back deck he would never be one of them, it's them others that will change the face of fishing for the worse, sooner or later it will be near impossible to just make a living because money has taken over greed is the driving force, these blokes do not selective fish , they will never put back , big boats cost lots to run , put simply they do not care , small operators like me can't compete against them , they hammer the close grounds where i fish and then keep going wider when it's all gone.

I saw the point this Pro made , i knew that we were being forced to go further to fill a box , we only had ice so we still could only do a set amount of days.I can say i did continue to work for this bloke for sometime , and i never did work for them other types of Pro's.

We had our own unwritten Code of Conduct , we had values and morals and common courtesy for others and the most important of we practised a very defined form of selective fishing.


What went Wrong?
I think it's pretty clear what went wrong , The ranks where split one lot of Pro's went one way and the other Pro's are all but gone. Gear and Technology came into play , bigger better , there is no Code of Conduct and if there is it's a complete joke , there are no morals , common courtesy has been chucked out the window and Selective fishing has been inforced by rules and regulations purely because of the path they went , it is commercial fisherman that shaped the way it is today. No one else is to blame.

So in regards to Saltwater fishing " where do we go from here?"

Kind Regards
SC

ps i have some very interesting information towards commercial activites in the salt that are an accident waiting to happen, i will add this as this thread kicks on.

[honda900]

SC,

Money is what happened.. The old bloke you were working for sounds like a true Pro fisherman, if only he could instill his vision into some of the bigger operators.

regards
HOnda.

[murf]

a bit of flack coming your way I would say

the amount of crap I copped from trying to reduce catches in a local fishing comp saw some heavy shit fly around and that was over a haircut or a bunch of flowers so look out :)

well done for voicing your opinion

cheers Murf

[Si]

good story smashed.

[snodger 08]

Sc, Mate I have put myself in a similar situation before and honestly realise how much guts it took to say what you have said. Good on you for doing it. Its not just the fishing industry that is like that. The construction industry needs a shake up as well. Got a few fat cats in my company crying GFC and at the same time reducing their staffs wages and conditions to maintain the profit they had before the GFC. Its nice of the workers to help them out with their profits like they have. Anyhow I am steeling your thread. Good luck mate.
Steve

[mylestom]

Very refreshing to read your post, it applies to a lot of things in life, not only Pro fishing and amateur fishing. Whats in it for them now, how much they can take, legal or otherwise with no thought to the future and their children or grandchildren.

Really enjoyed you post, a lot of people do appreciate the manner in which you put it across.

Good luck

Trev

[ashh]

very simply its just evolution, yeah sure there are the old ways but the new ways are more efficient.
I can relate somewhat in a different way.
When working with my late father as a younger fella, allmost eveything he did as a cabinet maker was with old manual tools, hand planers, hand sanders, hand saw, hammer and nails etc etc...
The only power tools in his kit was a battery drill and circular saw.
Look at it nowadays and there is a power tool for everything.
Evolution and efficiency is all it comes down to....
Watching my dad work really gave meaning to that phrase 'they dont build em like they used to'.....

[REEF KINGS]

Its funny people still go on about this like they do its quite simple, COMMERCIAL fishermen have quota to abide by and this isnt free, it comes at a cost like buying product in for a supermarket, so COMMERCIAL fishermen have to buy quota first before so called slaying fish, and in these circumstances can only take as much as the previous quota bought to fish, anyone who thinks COMMERCIAL fishermen are taking too much fish, look again we dont issue the quota that comes through, its what is available and bought to fish from each year!

[smashed crabs]

Its funny people still go on about this like they do its quite simple, COMMERCIAL fishermen have quota to abide by and this isnt free, it comes at a cost like buying product in for a supermarket, so COMMERCIAL fishermen have to buy quota first before so called slaying fish, and in these circumstances can only take as much as the previous quota bought to fish, anyone who thinks COMMERCIAL fishermen are taking too much fish, look again we dont issue the quota that comes through, its what is available and bought to fish from each year!

REEF KING ,, who's fault is that ?

[sandbankmagnet]

Sigh........

What's the point of this one? Who are we supposed to love now? Who are we supposed to hate?

Hang on,, is it that some people are nice and some aren't?

It happens in every facet of life. There are $%@*'s and there are nice people in every industry.

[the gecko]

Good story. You could say that about almost any industry. I was thinking of the banks as I read it.........the search for more profits is driven by the shareholders, and any greedy extra charge is justified by saying 'the shareholders have a right to expect profit growth....'.

[PinHead]

I know I would hate to go back to doing things the primitive way we did them in the 70's. in my industry

[rcfisher]

Evolution all the way. I am sure the Pro fisherman a long time ago would of went out without outboard engines and ice. So who is correct?

[smashed crabs]

Evolution all the way. I am sure the Pro fisherman a long time ago would of went out without outboard engines and ice. So who is correct?

My wifes family back in the day caught fish of the Palm Islands and supplied fish to the local area and this was in the War days , my father in law can tell a few stories of how the fishing was then ( unreal ) and how they used wet wells to hold fish live untill they could get the product in , ice was very hard to come by .
Then you had your other local fisherman that used fish traps consisting mainly of rock , fishing was very good . The biggest technological advancement that these old timers saw was ice, Ice changed everthing even at a time when boats were slow , ice for them meant they could go that one step further.

Back then they exspressed general concern for what lay ahead and wondered if it was indeed a change for the better.

Take this forward to a different time and a different place.
Sometime in the 60's in Moreton Bay there was the birth of the big tawler.
Most of the trawlers back then where quite small and they where all ice boats then along came "Tondolayo or Tondy for short , Tondy was the flag ship the pride of the fleet , she was around the 37ft mark and the biggest trawler around.

Tondy could haul bigger nets , she had a holding capacity of 3tonne , she could work more nights and simply put do everthing and more than other trawlers could do , instantly Tondy was seen as a threat , the years that followed saw the birth of bigger better , Tondy became obsolete as did the other boats in which she super seeded, it's very much a dog eat dog world ' shape up or ship out '

Now i was around and working on one of the last trawlers that took up where Tondy fell behind , these were trawlers far superior , much bigger nets again , 6tonne ice box , whizz bang gps units and sounders that kinda looked no better than the screen on an artari game.

I can clearly remember the skipper getting quite pissed of at how he could no longer compete and how the grounds were ruined by trawlers with frezzers , they could travel anywhere jumping from one paddock to another leaving nothing behind , these trawler operators didn't care if they cleaned out all of the prawns from what was to us called local grounds ( please refer to bragging - giving away secrets and read my posts)

What a trawler does to the sea floor is no different to farming the land , a tractor prepares ground for planting , a trawler does the same , this is why we refer to trawl ground as a paddocks.

To have a paddock means the ground has to be prepared , this is done overtime by removing anything on the sea floor and then placing what ever was there outside the range of the paddock , usually sponges and soft corals ect .

Once this is done it makes a great home for prawns to take up root so to speak.
Then the paddocks are managed , if the prawns are small in one then move to the next and so on.

Anyway local ice box trawlers had their close grounds and would manage these grounds, they didn't every really go anywhere else they stuck to them and this was truley the only form of substainable trawler fishing ,if you got no prawn you would simply steam home , you didn't go anywhere else you just couldn't with ice.

So in that we can again see another case of one breed of fisherman bowing out to another for the worse .I have to say that that bloke did upgrade to a frezzer but went bust after 12months , the Trawler is still sitting in sitting on a rope , he just couldn't part with her , she has been sitting now for 15years..

I can remember on one of the trips i did with this skipper , we were trawling just north of the Palm Islands , last lift of the morning , spilled the bag on the sorting box and out popped hundreds of baby red emporer, Skip started yelling and screaming get them fkn fish into the box , get the deck hose , i can tell you all it was a mad rush , sadly at least 20% died , we must of spent hours with them fish to make sure they had every chance they could , funny thing is here is the prawn still sitting on the sorting lid going bad , pretty amazing stuff when a trawler fisherman can put his own fisherie to the side to save another fisherie.
Those prawns went bad but didn't go to waste they went for bait , anything that was dead and usuable was used a bait and not just chuck out.There was a by catch and it was used.

In another story
It was actually not to long after i finished working on this trawler that Pro's turned against Pro's in a big way and in more ways than one were their own worst enemy .

Trawler fisherman beleived they had the sole right for prawns but they where also keeping sand crabs and bait

Bait fisherman beleived they should be the only ones to have bait

Sand crabbers beleived they should be the only ones to have sand crabs

Line fisherman beleived they should be the only ones allowed to have fish

the list goes on , no one actually knows who started the fight over rights to this and that but was ensued was a big bitch fight , individual fisheries did get there own way but it had no benefit what so ever .

Trawlers could no longer keep bait or sand crab to sell , so what happend to by-catch ? easy it still gets caught it just goes over board dead .Many trawlers did operate at a more relaxed and comfortable manner with the sale of by catch, ice box trawlers were high on this list , having no frezzers they could make ends meet .

Line fisherman ended up getting rid of small players such as anyone who didn't meet a set effort criteria , line fishers knocked out the fisherman that actually did the least amount of fishing , trawler fisherman and others had the symbol atta to licence so they could give the prawns a break and go play around with a bit of line fishing .

Trawler fisherman ended up giving the bait fisherman a hammering over the rights to prawns .

Anyway there is a lot more to it than a few simple words , bottom line is they all shafted each other for this and that .

It is wrong that this happend and it still happens now within the four fisheries .
At the end of the day product is being put back into the water dead because of the way it everthing is stuctured and commercial fisherman should be ashamed of themselves , Pro's have shaped the way it is today and we all have to bare it at every level what ever our interests are towards fisherie resources.

I stepped out of fishing just over 5years ago for a little break only to come back and find not only was it bad when i left but even worse , im still sitting here wondering do i even make an attempt to get back into a life style that i loved so much.

I find out now that there are more endorsements symbols than there was when i left.Take net fisherman for instance , some turkey must of decided that they deserved the right for shark more than anyone else , so now netters must have the symbol needed to keep shark , okay thats great but now what happens to the shark that is caught as by catch ? , it's chucked away dead , what a waste.

If persons beleive that having a symbol manages fisheries resources then they are wrong .

Trawlers and netters still have by catch , the only difference now is that by catch is no longer kept if you don't have the symbol that was gained by the effort criteria, it goes over board dead which is a complete and utter waste of fisheries resourses. There is no decrease in effort and infact i would like to point out that effort was infact increased.

As an example ..........
Take the bait fisherman at the time he was up in arms bitching and carring on how they where so hard done by , trawlers supplied lots of bait , bait fisherman hated this because they beleived trawlers should only be allowed to supply prawns , bait netters saw an opportunity to get it all for them selves , in doing so they could drive the price up and have complete control over the market towards bait , bait netters did get there way but in doing so there was a short fall in the market , so bait fisherman stepped up to the short fall.

Okay so bait fisherman get their way and trawlers got the raw end of the stick so how did any of this help to reduce effort ? it didn't facts are Trawlers cant keep the bait anymore and chuck it over the side and bait fisherman stepped up effort to meet short fall ,more product is being caught, so all in all just another big fk up created by Pro's yet again.

Okay thats enough for now but to answer you question over who is correct , i think i will leave it up to you to form your own opinion.

I only started this thread to shed some light on what i saw going wrong and i havn't even got to the where do we go from here . This is a veiw that has never be told by another Pro , i quess in a way you could call it whistle blowing of sorts but i don't beleive this to be the case , i beleive that most commercial fisherman these days do not deserve the right to call themselves Pro's and they fly in the face of everything that was was good and set the the future in which we now all live by and continue to bitch and carry on at everyone but themselves just to suit themselves.

I can't say i know a Mackeral fisherman that wasn't happy with the bag limit for rec's. Or a reef fisherman that wasn't jumping for joy over bag limit reductions.

If anybody has made a true reduced effort it is recreational fisherman , anyone who thinks there is a reduction in effort by commercial fisherman are just kidding themselves.You can go through all the records you like to see there are no reductions to catches( i really hope someone tries to say otherwise)

We all heard this and that about buy outs on licences, reductions in fishing effort and we are so good pat us on the back , this is all utter crap and came in as a trade off , you got reduced bag limits and they gave you the crap that they took a few fisherman out of the picture, many of you felt good about this after all what could be better than buy outs of commercial licences, it would have been a great and fair trade as long as the commercial effort was reduced but put simply it wasn't and infact it increased effort in other fisheries and once again another fk up.

Talk is on the table right now over a couple of these fisheries and quess what is going to effect you guys, we got ourselves yet again another case of Pro verses Pro caused by Pro's .

Once again a fisherie wanting it all that involves a trade of with you guys and all the time they sit there and say fk recreational fisherman and we want we want , well im a Pro and i say fk the Pro's they have gone to far and have been given enough time and many chances to make a difference.

Kind Regards
SC

Ps , im still in one piece no major threats yet ;D

[smashed crabs]

they sit there and say fk recreational fisherman and we want we want



I will have to take this bit back , totally unfair and uncalled for on my behalf and a non just personal attack with no thought or concideration as to how my comment could be perceived , comment comes out as if to say i personaly know every Pro fisherman and that they all hate rec's

My apologies

SC

[murf]

only one word comes to mind POLITICS

it has nothing to do with reality just politics

as a fresh water Aquaculturalist I tried everything to get a licence to sell by-catch eels, there was no way I was getting one and had to destroy all eels harvested :-? the only reason I could come up with was that I could go and do something illegal and catch wild harvest eels

cheers Murf

[samson]

Okay i'll bite, if rec's are so hard done by how come they can catch at present probably more fish than you're average L1 operater without any RQ or SM and soon to be RRQ without any fee's or massive insurance costs shit L1 boys can't even take tuna, fisheries is making your average L1 pro a glorified rec with all the trimmings but with fee's attached, soon to be extinct the only way to stay in the fishery is to expand or die at present as most of the L1 boys have already just like what happenned to the L3 fishery, but i can't figure out why guy's like yourself want to beat them down some more or were you picked on at school or something.

[brisbane_boy]

Whats the snapa and perly quota samson on an L1 for the average guy, just to compare it to rec's.

[smashed crabs]

Okay i'll bite, if rec's are so hard done by how come they can catch at present probably more fish than you're average L1 operater without any RQ or SM and soon to be RRQ without any fee's or massive insurance costs shit L1 boys can't even take tuna, fisheries is making your average L1 pro a glorified rec with all the trimmings but with fee's attached, soon to be extinct the only way to stay in the fishery is to expand or die at present as most of the L1 boys have already just like what happenned to the L3 fishery, but i can't figure out why guy's like yourself want to beat them down some more or were you picked on at school or something.

Samson

You hit the nail right on the head with that one ' exspand or die " , these were the nearly excact words our Queenland Line chairman said back in the day just before Quota came to play .

Line fisherman and anyone that held a line licence was told quotas are coming in .
Fisherman were told if they didn't meet the effort criteria that would not get quota attached to their licence and if they did it was either a dismal amount or non at all , an it was the line only fisherman that won in more ways than one .

Lets put this into perspective here and break it down a bit .........
Group A
At the time you had you small time operators , they were the ones that did a little of everthing , net , line and crab ect. most of these were very small happy go lucky hard working Pro's that went about their work on a very small scale , they just made enough cash to live off and were very happy with what they had , these where fisherman could be concidered to have the least amount of ambition, they just loved what they where doing , most of these fisherman could chop and change and move from one fisherie to another , fishing as you know can be very seasonal well they had the ability to do a bit of crabbing when the weather was crap and even maybe do some netting , weather comes good and they could do a run to the reef and put on some fish . Again small operators will the ability to not hound one specific fisherie and because they could go from one fisherie to the next they were leaving other fisheries alone , no real concentrated effort at all , this was the closest you could get to a better managed method of fishing, most of the fisherman that were in this group were the old Pro's , Local fisherman that only supplied to local markets.Some of these fisherman also had second jobs such as farming , cattle ect . What chance did they have there was no way in hell these fisherman were ever going to get a mass of quota , put simply they were just not serious enough to fish all the time , they had no want to do this , they where happy with what they had , simple non ambitous fisherman.

Group B
Straight out line fisherman , a line licence was all they had , you could go further with this and break it down in two types .
You had your small operators that only lined fished from small boats , they went out when the weather was good and they did what they could and were happy with what they caught ( refer to my post in bragging - giving away secrets )i was one of these.
Then you had your fisherman with thier 15tonne plus catches per year and it was these fisherman that were the only ones to make a gain from the quota system.

Group B
Dont really need this one but i will add it anyway .
These were some trawler fisherman that liked to give the paddocks a break and go do a bit of line fishing and usually over the moon when prawns are found to be soft or have gone to ground. These fisherman were concidered to be not so serious by other trawlers operators because they were not hard at it all the time.
These fisherman would catch prawns for the local market and only work with what they had , when prawns were lean or small or soft they could go line fishing,most of these were ice box trawlers , i could go on further with this but i wont.

Now these are some pretty simple words to write down and it can't all be said so im just using these groups because they faired the worse with some gaining the most from the introduction of quota , it will give you an idea who some of the stakeholder were at the time .

Okay the stage is set , time to roll in Quotas for the QLD line fisherie.....

QLD line chairman on the board of the QSIA gave us all the news , quotas are coming , if you have meet the effort criteria you will get quota on your licence .
If you have big catches then you will get big quota attached to your licence .
If you have just enough effort then you will get a little tiny set min amount of Quota .
If you can't meet the effort requirement then you will have nothing but there is still hope for you because you can buy quota of fisherman.

Well that was the start , GULP ! WHAT SHALL WE DO ???

What happend next was one of the biggest cock ups ever seen in QLD line fisherie

Group A ,knew that they where screwed and tried to fight it
Group B ,well over half of them were rubbing their fingers together, the other facing doom and tried hard to fight it .
Group C ,screwed and more or less gave up on the spot.

The money grubbers in Group B piled up and alot falsified log book entries , this was seen as one of the biggest money grabbing excercise in history of the line fisherie. After all who was going to go against them , they had the big catches , the big boats ect , no worries at all for them to walk it through even if there catches were investigated , I would like to say somthing about the line chairman here but i won't. but let me just say that just after the battle he left to go play with cows on a gigillion dollar block. Wink wink bloody wink .
Any way back to the grubs , not only could they still keep catching what they were catching they had extra quota to play with which they sold or leased out to the fisherman that had bugger all.

Some of those in Group B had a choice to make... diddle the books or move on , those who didn't diddle the books where gone , those who did diddle book could only do it so much without making it obvious so the majority only ever got the min quota.

Group A ,was left with a licence as to what you would call a glorified REC , so now you know how this licence came to be.

Group B ,most of them made out like bandits

Group C ,gave up

Okay so now we have Quota which alot was ill gained , total allowable catched are set for each in the line industry in QLD .
First year of fishing under the new sytem and you wouldn't fkn beleive it Line fisherman didn't even come close to the total allowable catch , they were of the mark and well under by hundreds of tonnes, mmm somthing fishy going on here ay!?

Okay so it now appears that there was a few porky's told measured by hundreds of tonnes , how many blokes do you think bought some of that only to get shafted again and again ?

A mate of mine bought 100grands worth at $10per kg , he was one of the blokes that only got a min amount of quota on his licence , he put his house on a mortage to stay doing what he loved to do. I would have to say i warned him about buying quota and i told him why he shouldn't , he just said to me that Pro's wouldn't shafted Pro's and even though he would never ever catch that much fish he thought he was buying in as a good investment , after all he thought that this was the only answer to it all buy or die before the price rockets , even our own line chairman told him not buy any Quota ( my mate started of as a decky with him)

Then came even more bad news if you can't catch what you got in Quota then we just might have to take it of you , not good at all for my mate .
Because he didn't have a hope in hell of catching that much fish he had to lease out his most of his quota but there was a problem there because it was every where , a mad rush leed to fisherman trying to get their quota used , prices as low as $1per kg it had to be used or face losing it .
Sadly my mate stepped out and sold his quota for pittence of what he paid for it 25grand.

He is now done and dusted because of lies and manipulation set by commercial fisherman that single handily took out most of the best fisherman , fisherman that were penalized for the least amount of effort on fisheries resources , fisherman that were small time , fisherman that were seen as a joke by big players,fisherman that had more ability to manage what they were doing, fisherman that had morals and fisherman that beleived what they were doing was the closest form of substainable fishing practices when compared to big players and every other fisherman that could not lie on the books.
Yes there was genuine big catchers that didn't lie but you will find they where pretty rare.


Moving right along and we have our QSIA at the time ................
I was one of those that refused to pay the QSIA another dollar in compulsory membership fees after the part they played ,i was part of Group B standing with A and C, i couldn't lie on the books , i was small time , i had a love for the life of fishing and happy with what i had , do you know how many of us were threatend to pay up or face legal action ?.
QSIA lost many members from Trawler fisherman , crab , line and net turned their backs on them for ever after they played a part in killing off most of the best fisherman Industry ever had and they were the one's that did bugger all.

Politics come to play and it is shown to the public reduced numbers of players were reduced , they wiped out alot of fisherman so everthing is cool , here is my back now pat me , what a pile of horse crap .
What they failed to mention was who they took out of the game , what they failed to mention was the fisherman that were taken out where small time players that had min impact on resources and yet the whole time played it up to say effort has be reduced " horse shit".

The only true redutions in catch were layed on recreational fisherman to bare.

And it came about as a trade off ,ie Industry will sacrafice there own so in turn rec's can have bag limits (just so it looks good on paper to the public)and all the time there was no sacrafice to commercial catches, it was just taken from small operators and given to another , the only thing the fishing industry gave up was commercial fisherman, if anyone beleives fishing effort and catches were by knocking out Pro's don't kid your self , slide of hand here folks !!!

Samson the question you should of asked was What Went Wrong ?

Every answer you seek mate has a Question , the answers to everything are out there , the answers have already been played out in the past and in that lays whats ahead, you just have to look back a bit first, it doesn't take Einstein to figure that one out . You can cry all you want but in the end no one cares , i do feel for you brother but the stage has been set , more bad news to come im afraid.

As for you comment was i picked on at school , ha very funny , i left school at 13teen mate , i could hardly read or write and im still struggling , so i guess i really didn't get much of a chance to be picked on, i went fishing, farming, cattle and sheep and anything else i could do , but thanks for asking.

I guess the only people that i can say picked on me came much later in life , like commercial fisherman. I did get to the stage where i stepped out because of it.
I went of doing mineral sands exploration for 5years and i can say i copped a bit of shit from Geologist , yeah they picked on me big time ( bastards) but only because i showed them up all the time , here is this uneducated bumed out fisherman showing them how it is done , they didn't like this at all and hated me with a passion and more so when i was put in charge of exploration.
Can you imagine me of all people going on to find a world class mineral sands deposit an im conciderd by some with PHD'S to have one of the greatest minds in mineral sands exploration and mostly because i think outside the box , just imagine what i could have done if i had the chance to go to school then uni .I could have been one of them do gooders that do more harm than good , uno the one's that know everthing but lack life skills and common sense .

So yeah okay i was picked on but much later in life but you know what a least the Geo's picked on me face to face , not like commercial fisherman who did nasty crap behind my back and to others just for their own self worth.

Enough for now , im of fishing while there is still some left to catch .

Kind Regards
SC

Ps please dont feel hard done by Samson clearly it wasn't your fault

[smashed crabs]

only one word comes to mind POLITICS

it has nothing to do with reality just politics

as a fresh water Aquaculturalist I tried everything to get a licence to sell by-catch eels, there was no way I was getting one and had to destroy all eels harvested :-? the only reason I could come up with was that I could go and do something illegal and catch wild harvest eels

cheers Murf

Good one Murf , reality is warped to the point where no one knows what to beleive any more , then you get feed with words liken to a Placebo, here swallow this you will feel better and uno what people do feel better and beleive bullshit .Amazing stuff hey !

Politics i wish i had time for this one but i would be dead by the time i finished.One thing we can always be sure of is they know how to stuff thing up big time .Thats a given !!


Cheers
SC

[T-REX]

Smashed Crabs,
This is happening in all industries and the answer to your question " where do we go from here?" You take a look in the mirror and look for the dumbest species on the planet that thinks it can eat dollar bills and doesn't care what it does to the enviroment or food chain as long as it can keep making even more money and boast what huge profits it has made. I AM NOT A GREENIE just a bloke that can see what sort of world the future MIGHT hold for our throw away society. Our kids won't thank us and will probably follow our footsteps. I try to show my daughter where we are going but it falls on deaf ears.
Oh well.
Catch and release what you can, take only what you need and enjoy life as you are only here for the blink of an eye in the scheme of things.
Cheers its RUM O'clock.

[samson]

For a bloke that left school early you seem to be very literate, but you seem to be seeing things a bit one eyed maybe a bit bitter for one reason or a another i can see from your response that you've been through this process just like i have but there is the other side of the coin i know guy's along with myself that went the opposite way and didn't fill out logbooks correctly and payed for it in the end by not having enough history.
But just because some money grubbers lied on logs doesn't mean catches have increased it just means fisheries and qsia made a cock up of the hole process thus taking their time with the rockey reef and reducing tac's by a massive amount along with licences so latent effort can't be increased.
But hey i've got my quota i've got my boat and business and crew and the only thing that can stop me is fisheries or garret at present, righto i'm off to lap up some of the last of my quota off fraser for a few days and try to avoid getting killed in the process just to make this business viable thats if fisheries or garret doesn't come up with some other way to screw me while i'm away.
Cheers samson

[tunaticer]

Unfortunately this scene is predominant in all avenues of life and fishing.
I regularly fish from my kayak at well known grounds and I keep to myself by not encroaching on others nearby. I respect their rights and chances of catching a fish just like I do.
The past two years has seen the remarkable adoption of Bass-boat style comp fishermen with sometimes dozens of these 20 odd foot glass needles with 300 or so nedds on the back come thundering through the fishing grounds within at times 20 feet of a person fishing just to get to the other side. Money buys these big toys but it sure does not buy common sense, courtesy or respect for anybody else on the water that is not in their little competition.
A few months ago i spent 4 mornings in a row fishing the same patch of rubble grounds when these boats would roar through dangerously close to my yak and others just so they can fish a patch of rocky reef some 4km south of me. These 4 days were all "prefish" days and on the comp day I was at work and probably luckily so.

I wonder though, If I was there fishing from a boat similar to theirs, would there have been any courtesy or respect shown??

So my point is it is not necessarily the Pro-fisherman that is screwing us, it is also the large organised televised events that are damaging things as well.

[smashed crabs]

I would like to point out that everyone has a view towards what went wrong .

I will also add to this that just because i have made a few comments that i feel strongly about does no necessarily make me right in the eyes of others and versa.

My story is that of a journey , a reflection of a the past as seen by me and others but i will stress that all of us have arrived at the same point regardless of how we got here.

I was talking to my father in law tonight over a cup of tea , we talked for hours over fishing , boats , outboards and all sorts of thing fish and boat.(and i tried once again to get his grunter spots and he again told me to knick off)

One of the last things i asked him was ' who is smarter your generation or ours' to which he replied mine of course! I knew he would say that and then i said why?

He said you young people these days think you so much better , so much better to the point that everything is so complex you need a blimen degree to work out how to wipe your own blecky bum !

Such simple words said in the only way this old bloke could.
Notice the words 'blecky" and ' blimen" can someone please translate?

I don't have a fkn clue what the fk he was on about his lingo is just to old ;)

I would like to thank everyone so far thats had a crack at this thread and have taken the time to read my very looooonnnngggg posts , i doing my best to try and explain a veiw in not so many words and will move the thread away from one of pushing and shoving into one of destruction of grounds , one of these true storys can be read in ' Bragging - giving away secrets of how four boats wiped out a ground before the start of the third year.

My next true tale will be that of driftnetters so stayed tuned for that one .

Cheers
SC

[samson]

Brisbane boy the average at present is no quota but the average in a couple of months will be rec limit apart fom 70 guys retricted to small quota the other 1500 lost their licences and the other 200 get a rec limit and can't sell, but when you look at the old rec limit of 30 for snaps and unlimited for pearlies you can't tell me rec's did no damage at present snapper is selling on raptis floor for $5 kg and i wouldn't kill for less than $9 and thats out of season prices wait till it gets in season.
But when you average out the no take species for L1 commercials like billfish and tuna's and strict quota's on everything else most pro's just get a rec limit these days and combine that with rec's black market trade like with the mackeral this season it wouldn't matter if you got quota anyway the shops were flooded with rec fish and you couldn't sell your catch anyway.

[REEF KINGS]

What are you suggesting with the mackerel black market trade this year? and how do you know this if it were behind the doors they wouldnt say.

[Jarrah Jack]

Enlghtening reading there SG, you must like typeing.

I recently finished reading a book about the history of the fishing industry in Eden, NSW. Apparently the blue fin tuna school that used to run up the coast every season was huge and thought to be inexhaustable by the fishermen. The school was so large that it was measured in how many days it took to run past. Something like three to four days.

Now there ain't any left at all not one single fish. That whole fishery gone forever. So very sad. The school reached a tipping point where no regulation could bring it back. There was too much money to be made and too much invested and so they went ; the fishermen onto orange roughy end the like and the fish to history books.

Cheers

[smashed crabs]

Enlghtening reading there SG, you must like typeing.

I recently finished reading a book about the history of the fishing industry in Eden, NSW. Apparently the blue fin tuna school that used to run up the coast every season was huge and thought to be inexhaustable by the fishermen. The school was so large that it was measured in how many days it took to run past. Something like three to four days.

Now there ain't any left at all not one single fish. That whole fishery gone forever. So very sad. The school reached a tipping point where no regulation could bring it back. There was too much money to be made and too much invested and so they went ; the fishermen onto orange roughy end the like and the fish to history books.

Cheers

Jarrah Jack , no i hate typing mate, it take's me up to 5hrs to write a long post but it's a good chance to keep learning , i wouldn't attempt to write a long post if it was not somthing i don't have a passion for . In my brain i know what i want to say it just takes me a long time to write it ,lol

Blue fin tuna well there is another story i could write about , when i get time i will write about driftnetting , in more ways than one it's a similar senario than that of the tuna .

Isn't it funny how we know what is going to happen before it does ? and they say history never repeats , do you get that gut feeling that we seem to be just prolonging the agony, right now most of us know what went wrong , we only have to look back to see that .

Even funnier again it all still continues down the same path , it is nothing more than the same path just radically metamorphosed which always ends with the same conclusion.

cheers
SC

[Rumbles]

"take a look in the mirror"

in my humble opinion the most insightful comment thus far.

The pro V pro V rec debat will go on eternally until long after there is no fish left to catch. The exact same arguement has been going on for the 4 generations of my fishing family. When the last fish is caught it will have been the "others" that caught it.

We collectively have to be the solution as we collectively will be the losers.

Technology and Politics are the the problem. We all take up new technology rec or pro, cotton gill nets, monofilament gill nets, bigger boats longer ranges, eco sounders, sonar, sat SST maps,Gps, chemical lights, flourocarbon leaders, braided lines, soft plastics. It all allows us to catch fish that werent necessarily being caught before.

If GPS and sounders were illegal it would have far greater effect on fish stocks than any catch limit or green zone.

We collectively spend more fuel and travel further ( be it 1-10-100-1000 miles) to catch the same or fewer fish than we did 5 years ago just like every generation before us. As the cost of fish at market goes up accordingly it makes it easier to justify spending the money we do on our recreation.

We all argue that our current quota is our right when it is to be diminished. Research is as political as it is sciencntific, perhaps not so much in the measuring but definately in the presentation.

Not a popular opinion I am sure but an opinion non the less.

[smashed crabs]

"take a look in the mirror"

in my humble opinion the most insightful comment thus far.

The pro V pro V rec debat will go on eternally until long after there is no fish left to catch. The exact same arguement has been going on for the 4 generations of my fishing family. When the last fish is caught it will have been the "others" that caught it.

We collectively have to be the solution as we collectively will be the losers.

Technology and Politics are the the problem. We all take up new technology rec or pro, cotton gill nets, monofilament gill nets, bigger boats longer ranges, eco sounders, sonar, sat SST maps,Gps, chemical lights, flourocarbon leaders, braided lines, soft plastics. It all allows us to catch fish that werent necessarily being caught before.

If GPS and sounders were illegal it would have far greater effect on fish stocks than any catch limit or green zone.

We collectively spend more fuel and travel further ( be it 1-10-100-1000 miles) to catch the same or fewer fish than we did 5 years ago just like every generation before us. As the cost of fish at market goes up accordingly it makes it easier to justify spending the money we do on our recreation.

We all argue that our current quota is our right when it is to be diminished. Research is as political as it is sciencntific, perhaps not so much in the measuring but definately in the presentation.

Not a popular opinion I am sure but an opinion non the less.

I don't think anyone could argue with this one.

Imagine no gps's or sounders and then to top it of a ban on frezzers:o


We have all the wizz bang coming out the ying yang and yet a fish has always been a fish

cheers
SC

[trymyluck]

SC you sound very much like an old retired trawler skipper I met down at Iluka years ago. We got to talking about the fishing industry down there and what he said sounds very similar to what your saying. When he was fishing they would fish 2 maybe 3 days a week at most and do ok. Then people would see how they worked and lived and say what a great life and go out and buy into the industry and then they found that it wasn't so easy and had to fish 4 or 5 days a week just to get by. He also said that the worst thing was when radar and gps became available. A lot of areas that were too risky to trawl became accessible.

Mark

[smashed crabs]

Okay im back , i was going to write a long post on driftnetting but i have decided to make is short and breif because there is somthing else that has been playing on me mind .

Back many years ago there was this fisherman that moved up here from Redclif to net fish for shark. He had a simple dory with a small net reel , small ice box ect .

His first nights fishing was just of the sugar loader , he put out 20o yards of net and to his suprise caught more shark than he could handle . he thought this may have been a fluke so he tried again and again over a few months and just kept catching , for him there was no end to the shark he caught . So he bought a bigger boat with more net and a bigger ice box , he could net 3tonne of shark a week out of this place , 6months into it he gets his son to move up here and he brings a bigger boat again , 6months goes by and they are still killing the pig on shark , so he heads of looking for a bigger boat again but with a frezzer , the plan was to run 3 driftnet boats , then having a 12tonne frezzer and two 8tonne brine tanks they would be able to catch like mad then sit and fillet and fresh ( more money in fillet for shark)

So he had a 45ft , 37ft and a 32ft shark net boats , roughly two seasons from the time he had all three boats working there was no shark left , so the switch was made to queenfish over the moon , i got to go for a run on one of his boats when he switched to queenfish , can you imagine three boats running 3km of net between them and filling up on queenfish every moon , i have never seen so many fish in a net , i give up on counting the tonnes .

Anyway from start to finish the ground was stuffed , no shark no queenfish , in the end of all this the skipper who started the ball rolling realised that he should of just stayed with the one boat , because all he did was convert cashed made into another boat , although he caught tonnes and tonnes he was still no richer and no better off and worst of all he killed the ground in less than 3years.

Sometimes it's all got to make you wonder when you see boats offloading big catches as to wether they are making a killing or just paying of a boat and only making a wage or less.

I know for me when i was deep water line fishing i was doing better with my small boat and small ice box than the other guys at the time doing deep water line.

My boat at the time only cost me 12grand , by the time i paid for fuel and ice i was doing good , i didn't have to worry about being to serious i was making a nice comfortable living and making less effort .

One of the other lads out there spent 80grand alone just for the twin engins on his boat , sure he could put on 2tonne plus a trip compared to my 500kg but i was still clearing more money after fuel and ice taken out ect .

I have mentioned before in another thread how i could catch around 6tonne of reds fish a year from a small boat and the other bloke were getting around 15tonne from boats much much bigger .I know with two of these lads that after all there effort and big catches they were actually making much less money than me and doing more harm than good to pay for there weapons .

They had their huge overheads to pay for , so they need big catches , i just cant see any justification what so ever in this action. The only persons in this senario to benefit from this are buyers and not the fisherman and without out a doubt these actions has contributed to very real loses in fisheries resources .

Really what's the point of catcing buckets loads of fish if at the end of the day you can only clear a wage or less? ,
What's the point if all the fish they catch are going straight back into high overheads?

Those fisherman would be better of with smaller boats catcing a little to make a lot than go bigger to catch a lot and make little , fish stocks suffer heavily from this pointless action.

Talk about stupidity

Cheers
SC

[Chris Ryan]

My personal view is money from quota and tax concessions made it the perfect "investment engine" so many non fisherman did, and still do, make plenty of money without treading one foot every on the boat.

Quota is given and effort must reach quota to keep it. Since when has it ever been a good idea to force people to extract from the wild/natural environment. We don't breed these fish like cattle or sheep, yet almost every state and nationally treat fisheries as part of Primary Industries. So we get farming ideas and management methods used for what is a natural developing resource.

If we went back to you can own a license if you work on the boat(s) but change the system so quota meant "maximum allowable catch" not forced effort to match the catch to keep the licenses, you would see some operators reduce effort to ensure their livlihoods. I do also think fair price for fair catch is needed at the boat, not $5kg for snapper on the Raptis floor but $30kg at the retail level.

As for rec's the $5kg for snapper is a dream come true for them - most spend $50-60kg to catch the fish so it is a false economy in there somewhere. Those that you know of that black market should be named and shamed because even though they are benefiting, in the long run they lose as all recs and commercial operators suffer.

We wouldn't be in the position we are in with the pressures on all of the sectors if the money, the quota, the fair market rates were all created/used/managed in a fair and equitable way. As it is, we are all gunna cop it very soon so is it at all possible for all players to work together to change the Government management models, to change the relationship between us all and to all agree that without common sense we are stuffed.

Chris

[smashed crabs]

We are all gunna cop it very soon so is it at all possible for all players to work together to change the Government management models, to change the relationship between us all and to all agree that without common sense we are stuffed.

Chris

Thanks Chris , i wish it was possible mate , one thing is for sure and that is we all share the same biology but not the same ideology.

Cheers
SC

[smashed crabs]

Moving right along now , i think i have added enough from past exsperiance.

Lets now look at today with a few things going on around us............

Firstly we go to South Australia , i have been luck enough to spend a bit of time down that way. Have any of you been to Ceduna ? nice place great fishing , i was suprised to see no net fisherman down that way , except for deep sea trawl nets there are no gill netters .

I saw a lot of little pro boats fishing on ice using lines , pretty amazing stuff to see these lads of load their catches , whitting , monster flat head and snapper ect and all caught on line and sands crabs are everywhere in season .

These small time fisherman can go out and come back with 100kg of fish in half a day , what surprised me the most is the whitting and flat head this mob were catching on line , unreal fishing . Could you imagine if they could net whitting down there , the catches would be huge .

So anyway for them they have this great line fisherie where state like QLD net them these guys line fish em , not bad ay . Nice fresh line caught fish , fresh daily and these little operators make a nice quid for little effort , they cant flood the market so prices are great to the fisherman and the consumer pays a little more but you just cant beat fresh fish caught daily and im sure most will agree if you are going to buy fish fresh is best even if we pay a little more for it .

Then they have them super trawler out there in the bight scooping up 20tonne catches in a trip , nanies , monster flathead and other fish i wouldnt have a clue what they are , these trawlers are realitivly new to Ceduna , the fish these trawlers are catching is a new fisherie some what to the Bight and the fisheries is set to explode , more bigger better boats , Raptis are set to gain the monopoly down there and i they have more boats getting built , not good i reckon.


Moving back into QLD , we have female muddies on the cards and the wanting to gain netting access to parts of the Hinchinbrook Channel

I would like to invite people to make comment towards the QLD stuff , no point talking about the SA stuff because that fisherie is already set for doom by the trawlers

Do persons think we should be able to keep female mudcrabs .

Do persons think netting should be allowed back in the Hinchinbrook Channel .

Please do you best to explain you veiw

Cheers
SC

[Lovey80]

I have an opinion on a couple of those things. I think the very large female muddies should be made legal. If all the large males are gone what good are the females for breeding?

A big no on the netting in hinchinbrook

I find it utterly amzing that these morons could allow a policy that saw Comercial Fishermen to throw dead fish back over the side just because it's not on thier licence.

I understand it is there to stop people targeting species and calling it bycatch but there is a better solution. It is a waste of a resourse and there is absolutely no excuse for these idiots that have brought in these rules to even have a job.

Here's a simple solution: Allow the commercials to weigh in 'bycatch' if they get it but tax it at 50 or 60% this way there is no great incentive for someone to target the species if its not on thier licence but if they do catch some it doesn't get wasted. It will also help keep consumer prices down instead of it being thrown over the side. Then have those exact same dollars put into a fund to help with stocking saltwater or artificial reefs (habitat creation) and other worthy sustainability projects. Win win for everyone.

Cheers

Chris

[nigelr]

Might depend on how 'by-catch' is defined, Chris.

[smashed crabs]

I have an opinion on a couple of those things. I think the very large female muddies should be made legal. If all the large males are gone what good are the females for breeding?

A big no on the netting in hinchinbrook

I find it utterly amzing that these morons could allow a policy that saw Comercial Fishermen to throw dead fish back over the side just because it's not on thier licence.

I understand it is there to stop people targeting species and calling it bycatch but there is a better solution. It is a waste of a resourse and there is absolutely no excuse for these idiots that have brought in these rules to even have a job.

Here's a simple solution: Allow the commercials to weigh in 'bycatch' if they get it but tax it at 50 or 60% this way there is no great incentive for someone to target the species if its not on thier licence but if they do catch some it doesn't get wasted. It will also help keep consumer prices down instead of it being thrown over the side. Then have those exact same dollars put into a fund to help with stocking saltwater or artificial reefs (habitat creation) and other worthy sustainability projects. Win win for everyone.

Cheers

Chris

Chris , The business of chucking over usable dead product is certainly very silly , this one action alone has lead to increased effort , they can no longer keep it's over the side it goes dead , no longer being able to keep it lead to a short fall so this was then picked up by others , so effort increased just because one party wanted to have sole rights of that particular fisheries , bait ,shark, sandcrabs . now im using these types as an main example because the death rate of each is very high when caught by trawl and net , so there is alot of these going overboard right now dead .

Now to the mudcrab , persons really need to have a good hard think about this one , i will admitt at first i was in support of the idea of the taking of large female muddies untill i found out the trade of was allowing netting in the channel .

Now this is the talk amongst a few commercials that this is the case and i wouldn't be at all suprised concidering i do know the bloke that's pushing for netting , who just happened to be the then crab chairman for QSIA .

We all have to concider what would happen if the taking of female muddies comes through .

A couple of point to concider here .................>

The taking of female muddies in NT works because low population , Coastal population of QLD is very high .

Already we have an illegal trade of female muddies heading south , if female muddies are allowed to be kept this trade could boom as it will be no longer illegal to have female muddies , current penalties will drop conciderably therefore making it less of a risk to get caught with excess quantities.

Female muddies are worth more than male muddies , thefore reducing the price of an A-grade buck to that of a B-grade .

There are also some dirty tricks can be played, such as removing muddies a mil or 2 under size to an area they call their own , yes they have their own ares and common ares and think they own every spot , here we have bloke in the channel that argue and fight over areas they think belongs to them , some have punch ups , some have run each other over in boats, some do night raids on eachothers gear , most dont even use the regulation of 50 pots to a licence they use more .

I only have to look at the way these blokes carry on here to know that a muddie will get harder to catch by the time they are finished with the channel , they fight like cats and dogs now over bucks .

I did a count one day on one of them , he had one licence and on the first day we counted 70pots in the first system , 50 in the next and 60 the next , this bloke thinks he owns the joint , got onto fisheries about this and there was bugger all they said they could do as it was impossible for them to make a count , easy for me because i know every crab pot hidy hole in the entire channel .

Anyway he wasn't over his 50pots limit soon afterwoods , someone went and gathered up all his gear one night and turned his wire mesh pots into pancakes, if i ever find out who the person was i will shout them a carton .

Okay there are many more varibles to factor in over the taking of female muddies and if past bunged up ways are anything to go by then i reckon muddies are set to recieve the flogging of a life time , also the barra in the channel if the taking of female muddies get the green light .

Anywho im of up town to buy meself a carton

Hooroo

SC
I

[theoldlegend]

When I'm fishing at Iluka on the wall, it's good to watch the trawlers go out around 4pm and they return around 7am or so the next morning.

I often wonder if they actually make a return, given what they have to do.

There's a couple of very big trawlers in the Iluka fleet (much larger than the others) and I guess they would spend a motza on fuel etc just to get a return, so their catch will have to be much bigger than the smaller ones.

What they catch is I don't know.

One morning my mate and I were at the Co-op wharf when the trawlers were unloading and this boat had lots (and I mean lots) of trays of very small whiting about winter whiting size and they all went into the Co-op.

We wouldn't have been allowed to keep them.

Where do they end up?

I've seen trawlers fishing in very close to the beach at night. Is there a limit as to where they can go before dropping the nets? I don't know.

As has been said in this post, "Where do we go from here"

I'm afraid I can't answer that. Sorry.


TOL

[murf]

When I'm fishing at Iluka on the wall, it's good to watch the trawlers go out around 4pm and they return around 7am or so the next morning.

I often wonder if they actually make a return, given what they have to do.

There's a couple of very big trawlers in the Iluka fleet (much larger than the others) and I guess they would spend a motza on fuel etc just to get a return, so their catch will have to be much bigger than the smaller ones.

What they catch is I don't know.

One morning my mate and I were at the Co-op wharf when the trawlers were unloading and this boat had lots (and I mean lots) of trays of very small whiting about winter whiting size and they all went into the Co-op.

We wouldn't have been allowed to keep them.

Where do they end up?

I've seen trawlers fishing in very close to the beach at night. Is there a limit as to where they can go before dropping the nets? I don't know.

As has been said in this post, "Where do we go from here"

I'm afraid I can't answer that. Sorry.


TOL

those whiting would be red spot whiting and that is as big as they grow, you get them for dinner at most of the local clubs and they are a gun bait for Fraser :-X did I say great bait sorry no leave them alone haha they are used as a food for the dolphins etc at the aquariums

cheers Murf

[Lovey80]

Nigler, if what I understand SC is saying is that species that are not on the commercial licence can not be weighed in, so they are then discarded. These are what I was referring to as bycatch. I am saying let them weigh in anything they want as 'bycatch' but if it's not on the licence then just tax the shit out of it and put those dollars back into sustainability programs. Hell I would rather they be eaten and the tax dollars go to more fisheries officers in every region than having them wasted. There would still be no real incentive for the fisho's to target these fish as the costs involved would not warrant them leaving port for the small return because of the tax. A bit like the Resources Tax.

SC,
Why are female muddies worth more than males? Isn't it all by weight? Don't the pro's still have to go by legal sizing? If so and the carapace width of a legal female muddie was say 19cm (what ever size they deem them useless for breeding) then how can taking them really hurt? If they are no longer considered contributors to the population then why not have them contribute to the catch?

[nigelr]

Thanks Chris. I was meaning more if the by-catch was juvenile/undersize.
Re the muddies, as I'm in Nthn. NSW my comment is probably irrelevent but personally I think you would be crazy to allow the taking of females. Too much risk of disaster IMHO.
Cheers.

[Hunt-N-Gather]

Great read all.
Getting back to the topic, I think part of the problem is when fishing becomes a business rather than a life style.
He's an old story that's done the rounds most have probably read it before but others my not.

A few years ago, a very rich businessman decides to take a vacation to a small tropical island in the South Pacific. He has worked hard all his life and has decided that now is the time to enjoy the fruits of his labor. He is excited about visiting the island because he’s heard that there is incredible fishing there. He loved fishing as a young boy, but hasn’t gone in years because he has been so busy working to save for his retirement.
So on the first day, he has his breakfast and heads to the beach. It’s around 9:30 am. There he spots a fisherman coming in with a large bucket full of fish!
“How long did you fish for?” he asks. The fisherman looks at the businessman with a wide grin across his face and explains that the fishes for about three hours every day. The businessman then asks him why he returned so quickly.
“Don’t worry”, says the fisherman, “There’s still plenty of fish out there.”
Dumbfounded, the businessman asks the fisherman why he didn’t continue catching more fish. The fisherman patiently explains that what he caught is all he needs.“I’ll spend the rest of the day playing with my family, talking with my friends and maybe drinking a little wine. After that I’ll relax on the beach.”
Now the rich businessman figures he needs to teach this peasant fisherman a thing or two. So he explains to him that he should stay out all day and catch more fish. Then he could save up the extra money he makes and buy and even bigger boats to catch even more fish. The he could keep reinvesting his profits in even more boats and hire many other fisherman to work for him. If he works really hard, in 20 or 30 years he’ll be a very rich man indeed.
The businessman feels pleased that he’s helped teach this simple fellow how to become rich. Then the fisherman looks at the businessman with a puzzled look on his face and asks what he’ll do after he becomes very rich.
The businessman responds quickly.“You can spend time with your family, talk with your friends, and maybe drink a little wine. Or you could just relax on the beach.”

Good fishing to all
Keith;)