Ahoy

[Dunkxx]

Gday fishos,
Name is Dunkxx and i luv fishin. Ive only been fishing for about 6 months now wetting lines along the Ross River using pillies or prawns.

I am now starting to get into lure fishin with my new baitcaster combo with both hardbody and soft platics to target estuarine species.

My Goal this summer is to catch, photo and release a respectable Barra and/or Flathead on said lures.

I am open to hear everyones 2 cents and discuss tackle and setups for lure fishing.

My work also involves fishing as i am involved in a project to remove fish barriers in various creeks and rivers in NQ.

I Look forward to meeting as many people as possible

Cheers all,
Dunkxx

[Ryan.S]

Welcome mate, look forward to hearing your input.

[Benno1]

Gday and Welcome Dunkxx

Mrs Benno1

[Tassie JR]

Welcome to ausfish mate im sure u will learn heaps here.

cheers tassie JR

[ronnien]

dunkxx

welcome mate, & what are these fish barriers you are talking about?

ron.

[Dunkxx]

Fish barriers are things that prevent fish moving up or downstream. The barriers pose a significant problem to fish that move between freshwater and saltwater to breed or seasonally migrate for feeding ect.

A fish barrier can be either;

1. Structural
   • Dams
   • Wiers
   • road culverts (as shown in pics below)
   • drop offs ect
2. Biological
   
   • weed chokes
   • Exotics (Tilapia is the main one)
3. Chemical
   
   • low DO (dissolved oxygen)
   • other water qaulity parameters

Here is a local example.
The pics below are of a fish ladder beside a garden variety open channel that runs under a road culvert. The water in the main channel flows too fast thourgh the culvert and there is a concrete drop off of about 1 metre just befor the water goes under.


This presents problems for fish movement firstly becasue there is a like a brick wall preventing the from getting upstream and secondly the high flow velocity under the culvert is simply too fast for fish to swim up. However they can swim fast for short distances which is part of the solution.

The shown fish ladder has about 1:10 gradient so that solves the structural problem and the baffles slows the water velocity down enough to allow fish to swim through the notches and rest in the eddies created. After the fish swim rest and repeat, they eventually reach the top and continue their journey.

The project i am involved in has plans to fix around 33 high priority fish barriers in the Nth Q region. The link below is project website and the fish assage study and the freshwater fish species guide also available to download. There are also other great references and pretty pics.

http://bdtnrm.org.au/surface_water_a...ssessment.html

any feedback is welcome ron
cheers
dunks

[Dory4.1]

Welcome, looking forward to some NQ reports.

Rgs
Michael