Size classes in Awoonga being caught?????

[Gladbream1]

Just a question which applies across the board on the size classes witnessed at Awoonga so far this season. This information is useful and the best source of this information is from visitors and local regulars. I am looking more at the "rats" 45-80cm mark not the 90+ models. Seems to be fish quite well from reports of locals and charter operators. Again this information would be greatly appreciated.

cheers
kh

[vet]

G'day Kurt, In the 10 days around the september full moon, we caught around 200 barra, only 4 of these was under 80 cms, 3 were in the low 70's and one 60cm fish, the vast majority were in the 90's. Having said this though we don't target these smaller sized fish. Trev found a bay about a month ago where he caught 10 fish under 50cm in an afternoon session, so because of the size of the fish there we don't fish there, so it seems that a lot of little tackers are coming on. You also hear lost of tiny boofs in the shallows in some areas at night so the winter time stocking seems to be doing ok.

hope this helps, scott.

[phatty]

this time last year we seemed to get alot of fish from 65-80.

over the past 2 weeks we have been averaging around 80-95.

still get rats every now and again but as for smallest goes.. lately i havnt gone below 70.

gives you an idea of the progression of the place really..

matt.

[NAGG]

I wonder with the possible predation of the little tackers by the Big girls ...... you would imagine that they soon find places (nurseries) to hide that keep them out of harms way ( these places may be difficult / impossible for us to fish) ....... We found 2 places like this ...... + they also held boneys
........ This may have something to do with the low catch rates

Our experiences over the last 12 months

Last month our trip to Mondy & Awoonga saw only 2 sub 70s fish landed out of something like 36.
Back in March ( Awoonga) ..... we found some bank side structure that yielded maybe 10 including 7 or 8 in the sub 70s class in 1 session
At Teemburra ( Oct 2007) we caught several sub 50s ...... in a shallow tight boulder area where the little fellas would come out from the lillies & rocks .

Regards

Chris

[A_DIFF_PERSPECTIVE]

Kurt,
The 65-75cm is a distinct bracket, so too is 80-89cm. 92-97cm is another window. The odd 50-60 cm fish pops up, but as Scott Mc says, many anglers choose not to fish areas where smaller fish are more likely to hang out. The by catch of the sub 80's is pretty low in areas that we are fishing this year, but I'm sure we could find many if we started looking elsewhere. The 100-113cm fish, although a wide size scope still make up a strong percentage of the catch. In the last 5 or so weeks about 70% of our catch has been 80-89cm, 20% are 100-113cm with the remaining 10 % being fish mostly 65-75cm and the few fill ins in between from 55cm to 125cm. A retired woman caught a 125cm on a popper. We also have a few tagged fish as well, I have data here for you whenever you want it.
90% of the above data is all from measured fish, and recorded; very little estimated guess work.
Regards,
Johnny

[Gladbream1]

keep that info coming guys, big help to us guys down here..... hope the season keeps up and hopefully one day i will get out there and have a go myself.

cheers
kh

[A_DIFF_PERSPECTIVE]

Who is catching a mixed bag of fish? What sizes have you all been landing?
Any midgets??
JM

[Big_Ren]

Who is catching a mixed bag of fish? What sizes have you all been landing?
Any midgets??
JM

Sent you a PM Johnny.

Cheers
Paul

[A_DIFF_PERSPECTIVE]

Kurt,
Is it possible to delete a few PM's from your in/outbox? I believe it is full.
Regards,
Johnny.

Thanks Paul.
JM

[black_sheep]

Over the weekend, we were talking about barra sizes in Monduran. I was saying that I reckon it's easier to target metre+ fish now then sub 70's. The avergae size fish we are getting now is around 95cms. Although this year we would have averaged over a metre.

I did receive 2 tags back this week. The details are below.

Awoonga: Barra caught 2/10/2006 @ 1075mm. Recaptured 28/09/2008 @ 1100.

Monduran: Barra caught 29/11/2004 @ 560mm. Recaptured 22/09/2008 @ 1000.

Hope this helps mate.

[Gladbream1]

deleted them sorry about that jm

[mikooh]

Our trip last week the following barra landed (3 boats, not just me)
60cm
75cm
77cm
80cm
83cm
87cm
88cm
89cm
91cm
98cm
106cm
132cm

We also saw alot of 70-80cm fish following our lures right up to the boat (around 20-30 fish). so there must be plenty of them in there!!

Hope this is of some help.

Mick