Huge barra

[Richard]

We got this fella in Aplins Weir, Townsville.

1305mm, 34.5kg

It's the largest I've seen (or held)


cheers
Richard

[Barry Ehsman]

Congrat's Richard, Definatly the biggest i have seen well done

Cheers Baz

[Richard]

I must admit though, wasn't caught on a line, was caught with the help of a bit of electricity..

very fat fish though and the scales were enormous..

[Barry Ehsman]

I must admit though, wasn't caught on a line, was caught with the help of a bit of electricity..

very fat fish though and the scales were enormous..

At least you are honest mate..

Cheers Baz

[Steve B]

Nice fish Richard, good to see some biggies around like that. Thought the boat looked like an electro-fish outfit!

Still looks like good fun!

Cheers Steve

[rooboy98]

What an awesome fish!

Was it tagged? How many others did you get?

Cheers,
Roo.

[Richard]

Yeah it is still good fun when you get an impressive fish like this.

Roo - this big guy didn't have a tag in it but it does now. we tag all the barra we turned up in the couple of days we were there. Not sure how many we got in total but it would have been up around the 40-50 mark I'd say (maybe less, it's all a blur), with at least 8-10 of those being over a metre and a couple over the 120cm mark. I'll have to have a look at the data and get some real numbers for you

cheers

richard

[pilgrim]

Been down there heaps of times, not a scale. Going there tomorrow though. Nice fish congratulations.

[dodgyboy90]

great fishing....
hi i am new to this... i used to go fishing a fair bit but never for barra... and i have just been invited and i was wondering what rod and reel setup would be good for a begginer on a low budget... and anything else you might suggest to me for the trip cheers

dodgyboy

[darylive]

dodgy do a search on barra gear here mate and you will find heaps of infomation.

[Shawn 66]

Pardon my ignorance,could you please explain the statement, re: the use of electricity.

[Richard]

Hey FT,

The fish was caught using an electrofishing boat. We have an onboard generator running through a control unit to induce a current into the water. The boat is the cathode and we have two arms which reach about 2-3m out in the front of the boat which act as the annodes. This gives us a range of up to 4-5m around the front of the boat that we can stun fish, depending on the conductivity of the water (only works in freshwater). We generally run at voltages up to 1000V DC and up to 8 amps. Considering the amperes required to kill a person is only in the range of milli-amps, needless to say it is a very dangerous piece of equipment if not handled correctly. This is one of the reasons why the use of electrofishing equipment is so restricted.

It's a very good way of sampling what fish species are in a waterway because it stuns everything from a couple of millimetres long up to fish like this monster. You don't have to rely on what you can hook or catch in a net. We were sampling Aplins weir for a few of reasons,(1) to see how the stocked barra were growing, (2) to see what the populations of tilapia are doing in the weir water pool, and (3) we needed some big fish so JCU could implant some radio tags into their gut cavities to monitor movement of these big fish within the Ross River.

All pretty interesting stuff most of the time, it's a tough job


Richard

[STUIE63]

They would have been doing a survey and electro fish to knock the fish out they then do the survey and the fish wake up and swim away merrily
Stuie

[Shawn 66]

Hey FT,

The fish was caught using an electrofishing boat. We have an onboard generator running through a control unit to induce a current into the water. The boat is the cathode and we have two arms which reach about 2-3m out in the front of the boat which act as the annodes. This gives us a range of up to 4-5m around the front of the boat that we can stun fish, depending on the conductivity of the water (only works in freshwater). We generally run at voltages up to 1000V DC and up to 8 amps. Considering the amperes required to kill a person is only in the range of milli-amps, needless to say it is a very dangerous piece of equipment if not handled correctly. This is one of the reasons why the use of electrofishing equipment is so restricted.

It's a very good way of sampling what fish species are in a waterway because it stuns everything from a couple of millimetres long up to fish like this monster. You don't have to rely on what you can hook or catch in a net. We were sampling Aplins weir for a few of reasons,(1) to see how the stocked barra were growing, (2) to see what the populations of tilapia are doing in the weir water pool, and (3) we needed some big fish so JCU could implant some radio tags into their gut cavities to monitor movement of these big fish within the Ross River.

All pretty interesting stuff most of the time, it's a tough job


Richard

Thanks Richard,
What were your findings re;TILAPIA
Shawn

[Richard]

We were actually targetting tilapia in the Gleesons Weir pool upstream where they are replacing the wall. we found quite large numbers up there along with other nasties such as red devils and some other exotic species which looked to have been dumped from people's fish tanks, some species which also appear to be breeding quite happily in there which is concerning.

Tilapia are very hard to electrofish because of the way they react to the electric field. They usually just give a couple of flicks then go downwards instead of floating to the surface (like barra tend to do) and they don't seem to be affected by the field as much as other species. We could try different settings which might make it easier to catch the tilapia (like switching to AC current) but this is generally harmful to natives (breaks backbones, causes permanent lock jaw, etc) so it's something we wouldn't do unless we really had to.

So although we saw heaps of nests and plenty of fish, getting actual numbers was quite hard.

I'll try and dig up a photo of the electrofishing boat for you..


Richard