PHP Warning: Use of undefined constant VBA_SCRIPT - assumed 'VBA_SCRIPT' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in ..../includes/functions_navigation.php(802) : eval()'d code on line 1 A Good Tailor Season.... - Page 4
The Point you make is a very good one and is the same that Earn Grant posed to me as well. And for quite a while I wasn't sure how they could maintain catches through a season. The answer is in the fact that the mullet must leave the estuaries to spawn. They are going to keep coming out of the mouth irrespective of what is being netted on the beaches. It is their instinct to do so and it can't be altered. What can be altered is the direction they go once they come out of the river and in recent times that has often been due east rather than where the netters are 400 metres north.
There is usually a gap of a week or 2 between successful shots at the mouth of the Noosa, and during this period the netters tend to head further north and into Rainbow Bay where the distance from the last netting and a change in coastal direction means that the area abandonment won't be as dramatic. The area abandonment after each successful shot lasts 11/2 - 2 weeks and some fish start to come back. Particularly if they have a driving instinct to spawn in the surf gutters. So in effect, what the pros do is work the river mouth for mullet as they come out and the top end for mullet they missed and other species on a 2 week turnaround. When the K8 season ends on August 31, the N1 Licenses chase the spawning tailor and usually large greenbacks at this time of year. There are far less N1 licenses working the beach and the area abandonment is reduced as a result. The geography of the coastline plays an important role with the 2 week turnaround with tailor being the target and always arriving from the south.
All this being said, the netters have found it harder to find schools of all target species as the area abandonment that they cause becomes worse each year as the fish become more responsive to the nets.
On Teewah Beach at the moment, there has been no netting for about 3 weeks and only 2 shots then. The fish certainly took off in areas where the netting took place but have started to come back with catches of dart, bream, whiting, flathead and a few tailor. There are very few mullet visible anywhere still. Many of the bream and whiting are mature females heavy with roe and emphasises the problem of netting the gutters at this time of year.
I hope this answers your question Liltuffy and please express any futher thoughts you may have.
Slider - congratulations on your articles - a very interesting read and thought provoking. I have a couple of questions -
Last year we had a great season on mackerel here at Mooloolaba - both Spanish and Spots - this year its been hopless - yet we have tons of bait (as someone said, find me a close reef or rock that doesnt have bait on it) The Maroochy river was full of herring a couple of weeks ago and we have no end of slimies and yakkas every time we go out - but no Mackerel.................so did last season do the damage and this year the fish realised it wasnt a great place to be (Mooloolaba). Consider that just about every weekend last season the tinny brigade and everyone else were hitting the macks in the bay, at Coolum at Currimundi and anywher in between.
Would this have been a big enough event to distress the fish enough so that they learned their lesson for this year and bypassed us alltogether?
Also - I hardly ever see Tailor in the fish shops..............wher does it go if its netted ???? PET FOOD?
Thankyou Phill. I don't believe that the mackerel that you had at Mooloolaba abandoned due to last years angling stress. They were very stressed at the mouth of the Noosa for 21/2 months in 2003 and stayed on the chew. Was in excess of 120 boats chasing the spots on Easter weekend and getting them. Some by just using the gaff. They turned up the following year and last year but not in the same nos. And this year was very good close to Teewah. If I recall Mooloolaba also had a good spotty season in 2003. I think they are still recovering from reduced nos from ring netting and just can't be everywhere at once, so it may vary which locations they decide to feed on bait. Even the number of tailor fishermen at Fraser all catching fish in season doesn't seem to stop the tailor from spawning at the top end in between nettings. Only commercial netting seems to cause the area abandonment.
I don't believe that many of the tailor caught along this beach are intended for human consumption and the same applies for mullet. And I'm sure that I wouldn't want to eat the bream etc that I've seen sitting in their utes exposed to the sun for hours.
Meanwhile.......the Australian consumer walks into Woolies/Coles and happily forks out $8.95 a kilo for disgusting Vietnamese Catfish labled as Basa or Freshwater. The world had gone loopy, the pets are getting the better fish !!!!!
Interesting comments about the mackeral. Never fished for them myself, but have been following the reports on here for the last few years.
Going on the few reports Mono has put up (and others I have read), seems like it has been a pretty good season further south; inbetween periods of heavy seas. Season seemed to have started fairly late, but when able to get out, fairly good numbers seems to have been taken. Checked out the fishing monthly reports for last week and they are still catching mackeral as far south as Coffs Harbour, but was warning that the colder currents were on the way and they were expecting this week to be the last chance. So might still be a chance for you blokes further north over the next few weeks. Others might be able to report on the season around northern NSW. If there were good catches, maybe poor season around Mooloolaba was just because the currents took them further south this year.
Been thinking more on the info Lindsay provided on fish vocalisations.
Interesting situation I witnessed with salmon that seems to concur with Lindsay's comments (but not related to commercial netting) happened end July 2004.
I was driving back from Cresent Head along the beach between Hat Head and Smokey Cape around 11am and came across these enormous schools of salmon just wallowing around behind the outer break. I was fairly certain they were salmon coz I'd heard reports of them being around the previous few days down at Cresent and I'd caught 2 there a few nights before. Anyway, bright clear sunny day and crystal clear water. Travelled a bit further and found a school moving into a closed gutter within easy casting range. Fish all seemed to be facing south, moving closer in and toward the closed end of the gutter.
Didn't have any bait as I was on my way home but despite the clear conditions, I pulled up and sent out a spinner and had an immediate hookup. It threw the hooks after about 10 seconds, but I assumed the next cast would get another instant hit so wasn't too disappointed.
How wrong I was. I probably got in around another 20 casts right in amongst the school but not a touch. But what surprised me even more was that after dropping the first fish, the whole school, which seemed to be happily moving further into the gutter, turned and made its slow yet determined way out of the gutter and moved off south behind the outer break. I can only assume that first dropped fish put the whole school off and signalled it to move on.
I was completely gobsmacked; moreso because in the bright clear conditions, I clearly saw the whole school turn 180 degrees and head back toward the out after the first fish spat the hooks.
2 good tailor caught yesterday featured in the paper today here on the Sunny Coast - both slightly over 4kg caught off a jet ski in the surf at Mudjimba.
G'Day slider interesting theory i,d agree with in parts but also think fiishing
the northern NSW coast a fair bit for tailor ,i reckon their has been an
increase of salt salinatation as over the last couple of years when fishing
the cold wintery season .
The water seems to me to be a lot denser on ocassions with no bites
Also a contributing factor is wind chill with what level off dew point as
i have found when their is little or no dew in the air the bite is more
active than when their is a high percentage of dew in the air which
means humidity which creates salt and the wet season has been a bit sparse of late
Cheers Buckets
Wadda ya reckon with that theory, after some feed back.
Bevo, Mate, I got no idea. I can't think of anything that says what your saying is right or wrong. I'm familiar with the effect differing air pressures can have on particularly fresh water fishing and that rain can be of benefit in bringing some species on the chew. But mate on this one - I got no idea.
Phil, when Les gets back from Bowen, I'll come down and throw lures at them if you like. The tailor I mean.
I had a conversation with Michael Burke at DPI on Friday and he said he will post some info for us soon. Being a govt dept things have to go though appropriate channels before he can release info to the public.
cheers
rando
Dear all interested readers regarding the idea of stripping tailor on the beach....
This is a noble pursuit but one that may be less successful than anticipated. Fertilisation in fish eggs is a complex process and methods need to be carefully optimised to achieve any useful result.
Semen can flow freely from fish with abdominal pressure during an extended period around their spawning season. This free flowing semen generally contains viable sperm which are activated into motility when it contacts seawater. The sperm remain active for only several minutes before their energy reserves are depleted and their fertility becomes reduced.
Like semen, ripe or ovulated eggs tend to flow very freely from the female with slight abdominal pressure. Generally, the eggs will only be ripe for a short period after they have ovulated, and can quickly become overripe in the female if not spawned on cue due to excessive stress. Fish on spawning migration need not necessarily carry ovulated oocytes as this final maturation step may take place in a short period of time once the fish have reached their final destination.
Normally in artificial fertilisation procedures for marine fishes, the dry eggs are coated with semen before adding any seawater (dry fertilisation methods), so that sperm can quickly find the eggs' single entry point (micropyle) before becoming inactive. The eggs are also only fertilisable for a short period after contacting seawater. This very highly tuned sequence of events prevents more than one sperm fertilising and egg and is tightly controlled by the fishes schooling and pre-spawning courtship behaviour.
In the aquaculture production of fish, the eggs are generally washed after fertilisation to remove excessive semen, and incubated in very clean water to avoid bacterial/viral or fungal contamination. Fish embryos in the very early stages of development are susceptible to temperature and physical shocks which can disrupt their normal development to produce deformities.
If successful fertilisation was achieved, there is no guarantee that any would survive. We are not entirely sure where the majority of tailor eggs are spawned, and it could be in much deeper waters where predation pressures and larval feed types are quite different.
So in summary - artificial fertilisation requires basic but specilaised equipment and expertise and its success is heavily reliant on the maturation stage of both eggs and sperm, correct egg:sperm concentrations, dilution rates and hygiene.
Please feel free to contact the DPI&F if you require any further information at either the Southern Fisheries Centre (fisheries management) or the Bribie Island Aquaculture Research Centre (breeding methodolgy) on 13 25 23.
Happy fishing
Regards
Michael Burke
Senior Fisheries Technician, DPI&F
Hi Michael
Thanks for the information and welcome to ausfish.
If I were to try fertilising tailor eggs on the beach and added a few mls of tailor sperm to some eggs then after a time added seawater, and was successful in achieving fertilisation. Then retained a sample of the seawater and eggs, would you be interested in checking out the success or otherwise of such a sample .? And if so what should i do to deliver them in optimum condition.?
thanks
rando
Welcome to ausfish and thanks for the time and effort put into an informative first post.
I've noticed both NSW and QLD fisheries, who used to post press releases and topics of interest to fishers here, has stopped doing so. Guess it could be difficult putting up info as a DPI&F employee on an unofficial site; but hope you feel inclined to hang around even in a non official capacity.
Don't suppose you know of any other published sources of info on tailor migration and spawning for east coast aus. After Lindsay's previous interesting posts, I've spent 3-4hours on google searches looking for further web info and came up with not much.
Basically, of the dozens of hits 8 or so sites had some reasonable info (including DPI&F QLD), but didn't say much more than: we know they migrate up and down the coast and we are sure they spawn at Fraser Is. but were not quite sure of the rest of it. Some references to a tagging study done back in the 70's or 80's, and mention of further studies currently getting underway. Also a few references to papers that were published, but not on the web, and some references to unpublished papers.
Obviously web info would be great, but if there is good published info for purchase, I'd look at buying that later in the year when I get back to aus.
Thanks again for the info on the artificial fertilisation. Seems dozens of concerned fishos giving tailor a pull in a bucket under the cover of darkness, isn't an effective answer to increasing tailor stock.
Yes Mike, thanks for taking the time to inform us of those very interesting facts.
As Gorilla said it would be great if you can participate at times when your input could be of great value to so many of us on the site.
Welcome to Ausfish Mike and I hope we talk more in the future.
Published information usually takes a while to hit the press (years in fact) and by that time it is usually out of date. If you want information on tailor I would suggest contacting the Southern Fisheries Centre, Long Term Monitoring Team on 3817 9500
Unfortunately, I cannot monitor the email traffic on your site very regularly, but Rando has my number
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