Qld Rec fisher changes in the air

[Volvo]

10 Coral Trout !!, How many Bag Limits ago was that lol??.
As for Fltties , you can have my share far as im concerned , waste of a good Fish. Mostly head n bones.
Swap ya a good Silver Bream over a Flattie.

[disorderly]

don’t think I’ve ever had more than 2 on board my boat my entire life. Had to google the bag before posting the above. I rarely fish coral reef.

yeah no worries.....Its easy to forget that you more southern guys have a more diverse range of fish.. .Up here, Trout, Reds and Spanish are the main target species..

and because its such a long trip to the reef and back many people will try and get close to their bag of Trout ( mostly between 40-60cm)...even with the pro catchs for local and export it seems that coral trout numbers are actually thriving...lets just hope that cutting the TAC on other species doesnt put too much pressure on trout and stuff up a fishery thats currently actually sustainable....a couple of interesting facts that works in favor of trout numbers is the live trout dories focus on very shallow waters on the reefs maybe less then 15-20m because they dont want any damage from barotauma..they also are targeting smaller fish 40-50 cm plate sized as larger fish are generally worth less per kg..

I was talking to a local pro guy the other day that has a mothership and dories.....he said, though it does vary quite a bit, the average price for domestically sold fish is about $25 a kg to him while for export average price is about $45 a kg and about 20% of the total catch goes to export..most is caught north of Mackay....I was lucky enough to get a tour of an export facility in Cairns one time and could barely beleive the amount of tanks and wall to wall live fish they had in there...

He also does try and value add by sourcing restaurants and resorts to supply as much as he can direct to them at higher prices...

[Lovey80]

When diving coral reefs all over the place, coral trout (grouper as it's called in the northern hemisphere) is definitely the most prolific species. The larger they get in an area, the more sparse they are as they seem to be a bit territorial. Where there's no big fish in an area there seems to be a lot of smaller bracket fish hanging around.