Mylestorm, You are on the money, let nature take its course and support the stockers and the people of the area thats this affects ie, the small tackel shops, accomodation, places thats make a dollar of use blokes making the trek up there to get the fish that they put there for ALL to enjoy.
Lets hope that the summer is hot humid and really wet.....
To myelstom,
before I make my comment I'd like to make it clear that I don't care where they stock barra, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned. The more dams that are stocked with barra will mean less pressure on Awoonga and I won't have to walk so far to get a car park and we won't need to upgrade the ramp. So when the cold is over stock away.
You claim to be an ex farmer and a realist, so I ask you would you stock sheep on the coast in high rainfall areas like cairns, knowing that they will get fly strike every summer and a lot will die or would you try to grow lettuce in the desert.
Another option for lenthalls is to promote it as a winter time barra fishery for people who like a feed of dam barra. When the next cold snap comes just drive out and collect the barra with your landing net and take them home for a feed, that would stop the fish deaths being a waste.
Barra are a great fish so stock them wherever you can.
Wouldn't they be a bit muddy in taste?Originally Posted by vet
Ed
What a laughable comment, you must be joking to use a comment like
(Would you stock sheep on the coast in high rainfall areas like cairns, knowing that they will get fly strike every summer and a lot will die or would you grow lettuce in the desert).
If that the best you can come up with then, I think you are grasping at straws to justify your comments.
.
Have a nice day.
From a ex farmer and realist, who does understand the environment and the rural plight of Australians at this dire (Drought) Time.
Trev
Have any of you considered how many fingerlings die due to predation during their first year? The only difference in this case is that the barra are a bit bigger. In the wild, large numbers of Barra die when nurseries dry up, ponds 'turn over', shags & pelicans etc. Lets not give any more ammo to those who would oppose stocking. When it gets cold, fish don't always know the quickest passage to warmer water and some make the wrong call and die. The same goes for a "turnover", some find oxygen, some don't. Lenthalls has provided some great sport over the last five years so let's not put this at risk.
Ray
i,m a late starter on this thread and have only read about 3 or so pages of comments(man there are heaps) as i can see it this is a freak of a winter everywhere and after last year you would have thought that it would be impossible to get the record lows we have been experiencing this year, it is sad to see fish kills anywhere let alone impoundments , i,ve seen huge numbers of cod and yellas die in western nsw rivers due to influxes , drought and chemical spills and a lot of these areas are stocked by local councils and fishing clubs and the like but to stop stocking them would be a no brainer.
awoonga(trevor) would you rather see only awoonga and monduran stocked only to then have a bitch fight that the massive amounts of anglers flocking to these dams are putting to much pressure on the fish , the bird life , the bank errosion , the ramps , the roads , the camping areas , the bread and milk supply ??
lets all get on in this wonderfull world of fishing that we have in qld and beyond i,m sure there are enough splinter groups and tree huggers that will use the likes of this event and others like it as ammo in up comming protests against the cruelty that is rec fishing. these stocking groups deserve more than side ways sledging , they do a brilliant job and my hat is off to them all.
cheers swano
p/s how good is it that there is dead tilapia amongst all this
Last edited by swano; 24-07-2007 at 07:43 AM.
Hi All,
Well have just finished reading as much of this as I could before I fell asleep, hindsight is a wonderful thing as they say. Awoonga how long have you been posting on websites regarding that Lenthalls should not have Barra in it due to being too shallow? or has it just been since the fish kill over the last week or two,if you have posted elsewhere in the past I would like to just have a read of the old posts( or are you a Monday Morning expert).You also say someone is trying to line their pockets with Barra gold who would this be the Wide Bay Water Board in camping fees when they begin to charge for camping(as I am sure they will at some point) for people to catch Barra and if this is true why not, they look after the dam and if they can make a quid why not. If you refer to the 3 guides who work the dam and they make money out of guiding for Barra why shouldn't they if they are doing it legally. Great debate though but I really can't see where you are coming from on this one particularly the pockets and Barra gold thing because don't all dams that stock barra hope to in your terms line their pockets with Barra gold, I know that all the camping grounds around these dams are extremely happy about Barra being stocked as it has increased their occupancy at certain times of the year that were traditionally between 30 & 45% up to 90 & 100 % occupancy. I'm sure the same will happen with Lenthalls once camping begins again and I am sure that once it reopens they will charge for camping and make a MOTZA and good on them.
And in closing if you don't wish to be involved in stocking Barra in Lenthalls simple don't tick the box on your SIPS I am sure once the stocking commitee realise that they are not receiving funding due to their decision to stock Barra then they will very quickly stock another fish that will win their funding from the SIPS back(Just a theory)
Regards,
The Bomber
Guys,
I agree that the loss of such fish is indeed unfortunate.
(thats putting it mildly)
Thing is I live in a country town that relies on farming.
The farmers have had real set backs with years of drought etc.
Because they lose a crop one year, they dont just say we should never plant seed in those paddocks.
Instead they get in and prepare for the next season.
There are goods years, and there are bad years.
The same with the dams,
there are many good years and the odd VERY cold ones.
Just as the farmer replants for the hopefully good year,
the stocking group works to replentish the dams with approved fish,
FOR OUR ENJOYMENT.
May they continue the great work.
To follow your farming analogy,
Why plant crop X that clearly won't yield as good return as crop Y. You take the risk that you might get a bumper crop, but the reality is the more conservative approach would have prevented the higher probability of failure in crop Y in the first place.
Farmers don't keep sowing crops that fail, they try alternatives or they go bust. However, if conditions do come good again, then previous trends may make a replant viable. Yes, I also qualify from a farming family and can tell you the farmers that are conservative, survive.
I am not saying never stock Lenthals with barra, I am saying lets wait and see before more waste is experienced.
Not enough time in the day, to many spots to fish!
I am another one who has watched this debate from the sidelines and now thanks to an early day at work i have the time to have my say.
For the life of me i cannot see why stocking groups should let one freak winter change the way they manage and stock barra into dams at the southern end of the fish's natural range.
I ,like the rest of us hope to see full dams again sometime soon .The banks i pulled many fish from awoonga while at 100% i would love to fish again but if the worse happens and Awoonga dries up ,the biomass collapses,O2 levels plumet and we have a massive fish kill during a super hot summer that would heat the water past where barra survive.......do we then not have another go at creating the 2nd best barra impoundment in oz (After all these years Faust is still my fav.) once we get water again?.......of course we do, because it works.
I can't see how that situation would vary from the one we are in at the moment in this cold winter with the barra dieing as they are.
I guess i see things a little differently than some.
If we don't want to harm these fish,don't breed em,don't stock em ,don't fish for em.........once you start catching barra you WILL kill some of them ,heart attack,lactic acid build up, etc etc......they die due to many things ,sometimes nature.I once killed a barra in monduran that charged head first into a tree and was instantly dead (Fitzy and myself were quite amazed!)....freak event ,get over it and get back to fishing ....I call the many big fish i have seen hung from the jaw for a pic and then "set free" to die on the bottom a greater waste than this fish kill.(different issue for another time)
I say keep putting them in all dams they are approved for .....Lenthalls barra work and have created an awesome fishery and to think we would stop this because a few are scared of some fish dieing due to circumstanses we cannot controll is in my opinion a short sighted ,knee jerk reaction that would serve no good in the long term.
However if this same event where to happen more often ,say 1 in 5 years where we had a barra die off due to weather, then i could see genuine reason to re-examine the barra stocking in southern dams......but at this stage this is a one -off freakish winter with low water and record low temps at the same time......we can go another 10 years before this might happen again.....more than enough time to establish a sport fishing impoundment.
Get em in there!!!!While i'm at it.......a coupla million barra,jacks and big eyes for Wivenhoe too
See you on Faust this September!!! yeehaa can't wait!
Birdy
Last edited by Birdy; 24-07-2007 at 05:33 PM.
Well said Birdy
Regards,
The Bomber
Hi All,
Just finished reading an article in the Courier Mail that ashh kindly posted in this section re thousands of Barra dying from the unusual cold snap at Moondarra dam which for those that don't know is approx 900 k's west of Townsville this will be another stocking group that will need to evaluate or even stop stocking Barramundi. Obviously the dam is too shallow, to sustain barra when these cold snaps come along, maybe they can have a look at bass or some other such sporting fish
Regards,
The Bomber
Has allways been my understanding that a certain number of big fish need to be taken out of an impoundment so that smaller, younger fish can prosper. Nature has taken measures to allow it to happen. I would think that hundreds die in queensland dams every year from poor handling and catch & release methods and not only barra. Maybe the people best qualified to decide where and where not fish species should be stocked are the ones that made the decisions in the first place and the when and when not be left to the stocking groups. Every person will never agree with every decision made so those that don't agree with a particular stocking groups actions need not knock the idea's and find somewhere else to fish and get behind it. It would be a rediculous idea to have an awoonga or 2 and not the variety we have, after all variety is the spice of life. Have not fished lenthalls and not likely to with current restrictions, but good on them for having a go, infact good on all stocking groups, they do a wonderful job, the big fish will be back in no time. Maybe we should get on with our lives, enjoy our fishing while we can ( plenty can't and we can't fish when we're dead ) and be grateful for the wonderful job these groups do.
Last edited by catch_n_cod; 25-07-2007 at 12:59 AM.
My thoughts exactly the powers that be have obviously given their ok to stock fish in designated areas with all the natural occurences taken into account. If thay were to stop stocking barra in areas such as lenthalls just because of 1 freakishly cold winter there would be no barra there at all because if a cold snap can happen once it can happen again.
I regards to the larger fish I'm not entirely sure (I don't do much impoundment fishing) but I don't think there is a maximum size limit on impoundment barra because of the fact that they can't breed and after all that is the reason why the max limit is there for other estuaries/river systems that open into saltwater, because we all know big barra are the breeders and if there is no salt available what is the purpose of having them there (other than fun) because a lot of big barra will decimate new fingerlings that are released into the dam
Did you ask Kopey????
Posting Permissions
