This afternoon at the Nightcliff ramp as some mates and I were retrieving our boat, I ran into this guy retrieving his boat. I asked him how his day was and he showed me his huge esky, one of those 300 litre orange ones, chocka block to the brim full of jew fish, with another 4 jewies stuffed under the seats of the boat, there were also a heap of other fish in the esky. He went on to explain that he and his mate had got all of these fish spearfishing in the harbour, on all of the wrecks.
He started to list the bottlewasher, the mandorah queen, the Song Saigon and a couple of others.
Now I'm not saying that there were more than 5 jewies each in there (his legal limit), and good luck to him if he is able to catch that many, but I've got to wonder if he was going to eat all of them, and why do you need to spear fish that many.
There wasn't a rod in the boat, and some of these jewies were a good size, 1metre plus.
I guess my questions are:
1. Is it common practice for people to spearfish on the wrecks in the harbour, as in 3 years I've never seen anybody other than recreational divers sight seeing?

2. Until I saw it today I must admit I hadn't given much thought to how much fish is in 5 jewies, but is that not too many as a bag limit?

3. What are all the sharks and crocs in darwin doing when this guy and his mate are down there spearfishing big jewies, and fighting them to the boat, because every time I go to those wrecks, I'm swatting the sharks out of the way trying to get to the good fish underneath???

If the guy in my story above is a FFF member I welcome his reply, as there may be a perfectly reasonable explanation what he does with all that fish, maybe feeds the multitudes, or keeps a small country somewhere in dried fish???

In conclusion my post may sound like sour grapes, ie this guy brought home a boat load and we didn't, but as I'm sure scotty will post later, it was one of the best days I have had fishing in darwin, with over 80 fish boated between the 4 of us, from out at fenton and the north gutter, but only 6 kept. I am certainly not a pinko enviro, however I will be honest and say I was shocked at how many fish this guy had, and it got me thinking, so I thought I would ask what other FFF members thought.

cheers
steve

I agree steve it sounds like a bit of overkill, and its not that uncommon!! In 10 years of fishing in darwin ive learnt that if your not gonna eat it soon, put it back and catch it when you are ready. Not like its hard up here

just had the same argument at a bbq on the weekend after my trip over to bathurst. people could not believe that we threw back 15-20 goldies. we kept for over 75cm and even that seemed like a bit too much. stories flooded in from some of the old timers how "we used to get em that big in the harbour, go out and fish for 1hr and come home with an esky full, no worries" yeah dipshyt thats why we have to go all the way to bathurst now for good size goldies if your not gunna eat it fresh, let it go. if we all did it we could go back to gettin a easy feed from the harbour again.

as for jewies the sooner they reduce the bag limit the better, probably just result in leaving more for the pros rape but

As far as I'm concerned the quicker they reduce the Jewfish bag limit the better. Maximum 2 per person and 5 per boat is probably still too much in my book but should be ample to keep everyone happy and is half the current limit. Special rules would probably have to apply for charter boats carrying lots of punters, maybe a total posession limit of 1 jewfish per person onboard? I have seen the numbers of Jewies decrease at various spots over the years and anyone who thinks the pro's are all to blame needs to have a closer look at the impact the increased number of rec fishers is having (especially with the current sounder & GPS technology) and think how many fish they would account for every week with the current limit. Just my thoughts..........

Cheers,
Travis

travis i know of one main charter that has a possesion limit of 1 jew already.
as a southerner i noticed that the possesion limit is 5 jew 5 barra etc total of 30 fish but as a nt resident you can go out each day and catch and keep 5,at your permanent place of residence so when they are on the chew there is nothing stopping people stocking up when there biting.

Yep the sooner they drop the bag limit "AND ENFORCE IT" the better we will all be. The general posesion limit does include your managed species. But I am not sure that the new proposel for bag limits does so you would be able to have 5 macs, 5 jewies, 5 Golden snapper, 5 Barra and 30 other non managed species thats 50 fish. ( I need to check on that though)


2 macs, 2 jewies, 4 Golden snapper and 3 Barra would be a better limit IMHO

But as I mentioned at the start... you can have all the limits in the world but if no one is there to enforce it it's all a waste of time.

cheers

2rods

2 rods the 30 limit does include the managed species,only exception is marine bream [ which i think is pikey's ].
for people staying on holidays say for a month i reckon it is fair but for people living close to the water is a different matter??? cheers

I stand corrected.... I am sure that it was debated at a meeting only a few months ago ??: ??: Might have been the way that the discusion paper on new bag limits was worded???

I will need to go back and have a look at the file with the discusion paperwork in it.

Cheers

2rods

Hey fellas,
one thing that sounds a bit suss is he was spearfishing on wrecks. It is illegal to use a scuba for spear fishing so unless he was free diving, which I doubt, he was breaking the law.

I remember more than 5 years ago, boats were checked thoroughly at harbour ramps for bag limits, it was great! got all the goss from them,Also remember boats with no rods at trailer boat club,and nightcliff ramps bragging about eskies full of fish caught spearfishing.slippy ramps were gurneyed,must have been more politicians fishing back then! vote for greeny yuppies, you get yuppy greenies!

good point slayer, bl..dy dangerous too. tried it once and never again. too much can go wrong. so unless these boys were world champ free divers they were doin the wrong thing. did you notice any scuba gear in the boats steve?? pretty hard stuff to hide

I admit I was wondering the same thing about the scuba gear and free diving to the depths they would have needed to be going, but there was certainly no scuba gear around, as I used to do a bit of diving and am familiar with how much gear they would need. They were both wearing full length wet suits with hoods though, which is what made me believe them that they had got the fish diving.
It was only a very small boat, a 375 dory, and most of the room inside was taken up with the esky, and the fish. These guys may have made a trip up to the car with some gear already, as the tide was out, and the boat was well and truly beached on the sand at nightcliffe?

I can hit the top of the bottle washer freediving. Thats around 8 metres?
Bit out of shape at the moment. Used to have no worries diving and stalking at 10.
Rick Trippe the estate agent regularly spears jewies at the bottlewasher and he's an old bloke. Depends on the wreck your diving on, Dieman is only 2-3m on a neap tide.

A decent spearo worth his weight in Shark poo, can freedive to 18 m, stalk fish, fight the fish and return to the surface successfully. For us cross bread drunks it's 10-14 on a good day.

In the extreme, some dudes go to 35+ and think nothing of it. Some of the best wrecks lay at the 18 metre range. So if the viz is good on the day your probably stalking at 15-16, and firing down into the target.

There's only a small group of extreme spearo's in darwin. There are good because they are still alive. Shallow water blackout is a serious hazard.

Wreck free diving in Darwin is not common at all. You really are taking some risks with sharks and even crocs in some locations. I'll keep inside the boat in the barra fishing area's but I'm happy to wrestle with the sharks in open water. I'll probably withdraw that when a decent tiger shark comes in to have a perv at my meaty beer gut. Mind you, it's the hammer heads and bronze whalers that are the persistant buggers.

Spearfishing is not fun, it's terrifying. But you dont have to buy squid and it can satisfy your personal thrill issues.

excuse me trying to spearfish here!