Netters @ Kings Beach Today 15-06-2013. ??

[mylestom]

To all, you would be a very game person to be anywhere near the netters we have on our beach, physical/verbal threats. Reporting to Police/Maritime/Fisheries over the years has had the littlest effect. It has reached the stage that locals are afraid (AFRAID) to be on the beach or anywhere near them. Sorry if this is not the picture you want to portray, can only speak from personal experience. Yes they net the Bream and Mulloway at our mouth, 4 tonne plus on one night of Mulloway. This is an estuary system that the Fishing licence paid to buy out the pro. There might be some great pro anglers, but the experience over many years on our system/beach does not show this. Yes we have given up, let them do what they want, it is our beach but the locals are not going there during netting times.

[rabbi]

Should have seen what they caught in their jewfish nets down here. No one can catch a decent jewie at the moment.
I guess thats why the powers to be are reducing our bag limits , because the jewie numbers are decreasing and in danger of overfishing.
Nothing like a few tonne of jew in one night hey boys!!!

[Noelm]

uho, here we go!

[rabbi]

uho, here we go!

Its ok mate. I've just taken a sedative and going to sit in the corner and mull things over for a bit.......... Nah, its not working

[bondy99]

I wont lose sleep over this, fare evaders are just as bad if not probably worse than pro netters.

Bondy

[Slider]

You can stillcatch a train despite the fare evaders can't you Bondy. And if you miss it you know there'll be another come along that you can get on. You might even be able to hook up while on the train and lure her home for a feed of muddy mullet. At least then you'd have something to brag about - just don't tell anyone what she goes on the scales.

Seriously, for a man who spends as much time as you do trying to find out where you can catch a tailor without ever finding any, your perspective here is nothing short of bizarre. I shouldn't really mock though - your posts provide me with an endless stream of free entertainment and I do appreciate that.

[Slider]

But I'll provide a personal experience of a similar nature - before I got my drivers licence, so early 80s, we could walk down the front of Teewah which had no permanent residents and about 15 holiday shacks and get as many bream and tarwhine as we wanted. There was no power to Teewah then so all any of us had were kero fridges and you'd recognise that keeping a lot of fish wasn't possible whether we wanted to or not. We ate fresh what we caught each day. Traffic along the beach was almost nil and rec fishing pressure close enough to nil.
We were fishing down the front this particular morning when the pros turned up and netted the gutter we were fishing. There were so many bream and tarwhine in the net that the pros recruited a couple of locals to hook up their vehicles to the pros' with cables to enable the net to be brought in. We were later told by the ferry operator that the haul was 20 tonne.
The rest of that trip we didn't catch a bream or tarwhine or anything else and the bream and tarwhine have never been the same since - far, far from it. My brother and I would spear in the rocky gutters before that haul and the schools would be large and the fish large. After the haul and up to the last time I snorkeled the gutters for balers and volutes about 2 years ago, the schools are minute in comparison and the fish all small in comparison.

You may be right that it wasn't the extraction of the fish by nets that caused such sudden and long term depletions, but the same coincidences seem to happen everywhere. Harvesting spawning fish - can't imagine that having any impact.

[Slider]

That post was sposed to be in wrong wrong wrong.

[lbger]

In Narooma (where i grew up) they had a salmon trap.. it was basically a way in which the salmon got herded into a particular area of the inlet through a "hole" in the breakwall from there the entire school was taken.. this was clockwork for a few years then one year they just never showed up.. and didn't ever ever again...

[Noelm]

where in Narooma was this hole in the wall trap?

[mattooty]

Interesting you say that LBG'er. Salmon netting was banned and within 18 months there were schools of salmon moving geographically further north than they had ever been recorded (north coast of NSW and beyond by up to 1000km into QLD). This bulge in the Australian Salmon then prompted Fisheries to re-instate netting of them at a % of the original quota so as to slow their movement north and to try and balance the fisheries in NTH NSW as they were quite literally displacing other species such as tailor and bonito.
It was also noted that most of these fish up to a certain region (I believe Coffs or Port Macquarie) were in peak health and great condition and their decreasing quality of condition (body mass, length to weight ratio, internal surveys of food stuffs) was directly proportional to the further north they went, leading to assumptions that the increased biomass of high-end predators were affecting bait fish levels in these areas.

Food for thought....

[Slider]

Just wondering Mattooty - was salmon netting banned or was it that the Russian export market closed - which I have in the back of my mind as the reason? Interesting that they came back in number so quickly though.

[mattooty]

It was banned by NSW Fisheries. I'm unsure as to the economics of what was still taken at the time as bycatch/prior to this time. I'll have a dig around and see what I can find....

[mattooty]

The State Government implemented a closure in August 2001 prohibiting the taking of Australian salmon by netting methods north of Barrenjoey Headland.
There was no research, no statistical analysis and no consultation with commercial or recreational fishers.
The reason given for the closure was to ‘allocate the resource between recreational and commercial fishers’.
This was revoked I think in 2011 or 2012 when population levels exploded and did not balance as would usually happen.

The Eden Cannery was shut down in 1999, which was one of the larger exporters to Eastern Europe. However their contracts had been severely sliced in the early 90's and the only reason that they had stayed open was because they picked up a small domestic market by flavoring their cans of salmon/tuna. Salmon wasn't their primary produce though, tuna always had preference.


The majority of netted salmon is used in a number of different ways, including; Commercial Trap Bait, Canned food products, Pet Food, Fertilizer and


Stock Status: Sustainable (High recruitment rate)
NSW Commercial catch rates have been increasing steadily since the early 1970's. Strangely, so has the NSW Biomass of Australian Salmon. This leads into a whole different can of worms regarding environmental factors or other external factors. Is there a population shift north from Vic/Tas?

There's a bit to mull over regarding the Aussie Salmon industry.

[bondy99]

You can stillcatch a train despite the fare evaders can't you Bondy. And if you miss it you know there'll be another come along that you can get on. You might even be able to hook up while on the train and lure her home for a feed of muddy mullet. At least then you'd have something to brag about - just don't tell anyone what she goes on the scales.

Seriously, for a man who spends as much time as you do trying to find out where you can catch a tailor without ever finding any, your perspective here is nothing short of bizarre. I shouldn't really mock though - your posts provide me with an endless stream of free entertainment and I do appreciate that.

Slider,I was an inspector mate, caught, fined and prosecuted a few fare evaders. hence the comment....nothing to do with mullet , tailor, crabs, squid etc, on trains mate. You must have some weird logic to to equate tailor and mullet in the equation of fare evaders?

Are you saying no one should ask questions or seek information? regarding fish, etc, etc.

I have many spots where I have caught tailor but dont make a habit of boasting about it or make it public.