North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

AM wrote: I wont be told to use circle hooks so I can release easier, give me a break, even if these limits come in I am stilll going fishing not releasing.

i think the jist behind the circle hooks etc was to minimise damage to fish, in case you need to release it, ie undersize or unwanted species. it's not a perfect fix, but should help.

Hi Beast,
it is clear the intent is easy release and that this is the catalyst for the suggestion that circle hooks be mandatory. It is just that the imposition of such an onerous regulation is simply in the relms of fantasy. Can you imagine having you boat searched for the wrong type of hooks and how many excuses could be raise for having conventional hooks on board, trebles on lues big singles on trolling lures, flights of hooks in gar and mullet for trolling baits on mackeral etc etc. I have used circle hooks at times interstate on deep water fish when you are waiting for a line to fill right up as they dont seem to get off as much and do concede that that strangly once out of the water hook removal does seem much easier. However I dont think that they suit many types of fishing at all and are very expensive as well. I mosly use a gang of non stainless 5/0 oshaunassys for reef fishing @ 5 cents each and they seem to stay well connected which is the purpose of going fishing v releasing. I would probably shift to try another species in the case of snapper or jew and or go home if I get to the combined bag limit, as even at twenty fish each 40 or 60 fish take some time to sort out and look after correctly. The prospect of the fishing community at large embracing these changes and proposing alternatives as we are doing is a concept very difficult and alien to probably the majority, IMO suggesting things like circle hooks being mandatory will just scare em off and make the majority more likely to fall into the dont change it catorgory. Yes things are going down hill and I am all for concidering bag limit changes and the area closures make a lot of sense and are at least possible to police (even with a fly over).
What is also clear looking at the legeslation is that procecution of the bag limits is almost impossible for the poor blighters in fisheries. As one example look at say, a place like say Dundee where a fair wack of the fish are coming out of. If the fishos do have the front (and they should) to go into a camp or holiday home situation and discover more than the bag limit of non skinned fish for the given number of individuals, the following, according to the current legislation is permitted. If the fish consist of a catch from a combined group of fishers that are not present, but if they were, would render the catch in question, legal and not in exess of current limits, then current legislation allows for an undetermined but "short" period of time for that group to be assembled or contacted. Think of the easiest way to police the limits being on the road out with all the fish in one vehicle or on the boat and only two occupants in the car, no phone so it takes an hour to get to phone range to verifiy that two or three or four others were also fishing for that limit. If people were setting out to do the wrong thing then would be very easy to have this prospect pre arranged for like minded criminals. It all makes fore it being to hard to police so unfortunatly not much is done.
As another example in Queensland at the now defunct toyota fishing comp the fisheries (who were there all week) failed to stop the illicit hauls of fresh reef fish on ice going down the beach (there was no other way out), in ice boxes on utes with one or two passengers who would have been many many times over the limits, it is just to hard to prossecute. Instead they dutifuly checked all the boats as they come to shore every day with a mountain of fish but with a cast of thousands aboard to fit into the bag limit slot, watch them load them in boxes ad do it again tommorrow (weather permitting, hardley ever).
I guess the message is that whatever controls are introduced spare a thought for those that are employed to police them and the likelyhood of a succesfull procecution complicated legislation makes for a reluctance in to cases being tried. The more I think about it the more seasonal area closures policed from the air, and a reduced possetion limit to say 20 makes life easier for the fishos and harder to get off on if caught in the wrong.
Like I said finding the best solution is quite complex, lets hope the solution itself isnt.

Guys

There is mo mention of circle hooks in the AFANT paper.
Yesterday someobe asked for advice on barotrauma and I posted some info from NT Fisheries. In that I quoted from a flyer they put out some time ago that suggested among other things " Consider using large non-offset circle hooks to help prevent the capture of smaller fish and decrease the incidence of gut-hooking." As far as I am aware there isn't any move bu anyone to make circle hooks compulsory although it may have been suggested by one of you guys on FFF.

Regards

Chris

No doubt it was a FFF suggestion Chris, my concern is as I assume your to be that such a thing has the potential to lose support rather than gain it evn though wouldnt get a run in the next 100 years. The point of tailoring changes to somthing they can police is definitly worth a mention though.

I agree AM and you can see that we have highlighted the enforcement issue in the paper.

Rgds

There are other contributing factors to overfishing also. The limited coastline access concentrates virtually all recreational fishos to a radius of 200 ks from Darwin. Outside of that charter operators and pros virtually have the area to themselves and we all know policing of fishing regulations in remote areas is virtually non existent.
Perhaps having a seasonal spawning closure for the most affected species and opening up more of the coast line so as to spread the pressure out may help.
But the policing would have to improve significantly

Circle hooks well I agree with AM if anyone would be silly enough to legislate the compulsory use of circle hooks they would need their head examined. I have both type of hooks in my tackle box but voluntarily use mainly circle hooks mainly in shallower water and bring em up easy to minimize damage to the fish SHOULD I want to release it.

We also need to be careful not to "make a rod for our own back". The govt is obviously using us as a sounding board which is good practice but we need to be careful not to be overly eager to limit our (recreational) fishing oportunities.
We also need to pressure the govt to limit both the number of pros and charters. Of course with the govt getting licensing fees from pros (and I dont suppose the license would be cheap) the govt is also partly responsible for the "plundering" of the pros..they after all need to make enough money to pay for their licence and pay all their outgoing ciosts before they can achieve a profit.

My own feeling is a combination of changes such as area closures, recreational fishing limits, pro operator reduction, charter operator reduction and importantly OPEN up the huge NT coastline with access and even "bush" ramps. This of course is fraught with problems with sea/land title laws
In the end I feel that the govt does not want to see a reduction of charter operators or pros as this will impact on their finances...

just my twopence worth but i have a commercial licence here in blighty and do monofilament longlining for bass. i dont use
anything other than circle hooks as they really do cut down gut hooking by 95% . the penalties here for landing an undersize bass
are 2000 pounds each fish .and the fisheries officers are savage, which really pisses me off as a french beam trawler could be fishing
a few hundred yards away, flattening the sea bed and slaughtering tons of biomass with each traw,l but they are unwilling or unable
to stop it. we get stopped and boarded regularly and are thoroughly checked out each time which i have no problem with.
as soon as you enter the harbour area with an under size fish ,it is assumed you intend to land it and are summonsed,
English fisheries have been ruined by our politicians allowing foreign boats to work close to our shores. and its our fault for allowing
them the power to do that. fisherman in England whether commercial or anglers should have shouted with a united voice
many years ago . its far too late now .

instead of lowering recreation limit why not make the pros and commercial fisherman go further out make a minimum limit of 200km of darwin
they are still going to get there massive numbers of fish and that would take the pressure of local waterway
imagine if shady camp and chambers bay area wasnt netted you only have to see a full net on a good tide to uderstand how many fish they can pull in a tide
most pro have the boats and gear to travel further out than they do they just dont need to yet so make there grounds further out this will increase fish populations 10 fold in my opinion and decreasing recreational limits will achieve nothing and i cant understand why and how people think the fish that recreational fisherman catch has even a slight impact on fish number opposed to the commercial fisherman

Thanks for the comment Dan, always interesting to hear from other places. Good to hear about UK sea bass, my father used to catch them with a rod from the shore at Selsey Bill, he said they were a great sportfish but one or two fish was a good day. That was back in the 1940s.

I can imagine your frustration working next to trawlers with their enormous bycatch.

DOUG wrote:instead of lowering recreation limit why not make the pros and commercial fisherman go further out make a minimum limit of 200km of darwin
they are still going to get there massive numbers of fish and that would take the pressure of local waterway
imagine if shady camp and chambers bay area wasnt netted you only have to see a full net on a good tide to uderstand how many fish they can pull in a tide
most pro have the boats and gear to travel further out than they do they just dont need to yet so make there grounds further out this will increase fish populations 10 fold in my opinion and decreasing recreational limits will achieve nothing and i cant understand why and how people think the fish that recreational fisherman catch has even a slight impact on fish number opposed to the commercial fisherman

I dont know if you have read back through this blog but I put a couple of maths equations up about the Jewfish that show that the amature anglers have almost as big a effect on that population of fish as do charter vessels and as do the pro boats close to Darwin.

This surely shows that we can make an affect for the better by lowering limits. Adding fish specific size limits is proven to have effect and a closed season on jew should be garanteed to have an effect as it would prevent every body including pros and charters to fish them in sporning mode which is when they are vulnerable. If we make a start then we can keep pushing the commercial guys to make change and push change for charters even harder.

The other thing is that netters dont really affect the reef species ( other than Jew) and the coastal liners mainly target Jew and Goldies so the rest of the reef species are predominantly amature and charter so we can make a big difference there.

In regards to the circle hooks I suggested it as a lot of people are pushing to ban live baiting completly on some rivers such as the daly to fall inline with places like the Mary River system and Kakadu. As a compromise to this instead of a potential complete ban you could use circle hooks and stop the others from going the whole hog and pushing harder for a ban completely. It is only a idea that I have toyed with mainly for the Daly and NOT Territory wide, that is smashed by Cherabine choking grey nomads day in and day out. I too want to have the choice to livebait but dont mind making a small change to suit. It also wouldnt be hard to police as if you were caught with a J hook on your line while on the river fishin not using artificial lures you are obviously baiting and should be dealt with accordingly if the law was brought in.

Dropping the barra limit is probably going to be hard to swallow as the netters have a major effect. Dropping the jew limit is the same as the pros do damage but a seasonal closure would affect pro/amature/charters all the same. You simple cant fish in a set sporning area while in that mode.

Goldies bag could stay the same but put a size limit. This would affect amature/pro/charter all the same. Possible put a lower charter bag as I have prior mentioned.

The other thing about the pro Jew catch remaining stable and the charter vessil falling. Majority of the charter day ground is Within 40nm of Darwin or a two hour steam. This area is becomming badly depleated of Jew thus reflecting the lower catch due to the mounting pressure of amature/pro/charter. There would be lucky if there is one patch of ground that isnt Gps marked in that area by a lot of boats. The fish simple have no where to hide.

The pros can go far and wide, have better tecnology than the past with faster vessils, better sonar, Gps to go with the fact that they can work the areas where the fish are most likely going to be at any one time and the habits of the fish are more widely recognised even by the pros.

Sooner rather than later it is a fair bet that the pros will stop catching as well and that has already started with the extra effort that is needed to catch the same numbers. I would bet the size is a lot smaller as well which is the first sign!

fishfanatic wrote:There are other contributing factors to overfishing also. The limited coastline access concentrates virtually all recreational fishos to a radius of 200 ks from Darwin. Outside of that charter operators and pros virtually have the area to themselves and we all know policing of fishing regulations in remote areas is virtually non existent.
Perhaps having a seasonal spawning closure for the most affected species and opening up more of the coast line so as to spread the pressure out may help.
But the policing would have to improve significantly

Circle hooks well I agree with AM if anyone would be silly enough to legislate the compulsory use of circle hooks they would need their head examined. I have both type of hooks in my tackle box but voluntarily use mainly circle hooks mainly in shallower water and bring em up easy to minimize damage to the fish SHOULD I want to release it.

We also need to be careful not to "make a rod for our own back". The govt is obviously using us as a sounding board which is good practice but we need to be careful not to be overly eager to limit our (recreational) fishing oportunities.
We also need to pressure the govt to limit both the number of pros and charters. Of course with the govt getting licensing fees from pros (and I dont suppose the license would be cheap) the govt is also partly responsible for the "plundering" of the pros..they after all need to make enough money to pay for their licence and pay all their outgoing ciosts before they can achieve a profit.

My own feeling is a combination of changes such as area closures, recreational fishing limits, pro operator reduction, charter operator reduction and importantly OPEN up the huge NT coastline with access and even "bush" ramps. This of course is fraught with problems with sea/land title laws
In the end I feel that the govt does not want to see a reduction of charter operators or pros as this will impact on their finances...

Makes a lot of sence there FF

cuddlescooper wrote:

DOUG wrote:instead of lowering recreation limit why not make the pros and commercial fisherman go further out make a minimum limit of 200km of darwin
they are still going to get there massive numbers of fish and that would take the pressure of local waterway
imagine if shady camp and chambers bay area wasnt netted you only have to see a full net on a good tide to uderstand how many fish they can pull in a tide
most pro have the boats and gear to travel further out than they do they just dont need to yet so make there grounds further out this will increase fish populations 10 fold in my opinion and decreasing recreational limits will achieve nothing and i cant understand why and how people think the fish that recreational fisherman catch has even a slight impact on fish number opposed to the commercial fisherman

I dont know if you have read back through this blog but I put a couple of maths equations up about the Jewfish that show that the amature anglers have almost as big a effect on that population of fish as do charter vessels and as do the pro boats close to Darwin.

This surely shows that we can make an affect for the better by lowering limits. Adding fish specific size limits is proven to have effect and a closed season on jew should be garanteed to have an effect as it would prevent every body including pros and charters to fish them in sporning mode which is when they are vulnerable. If we make a start then we can keep pushing the commercial guys to make change and push change for charters even harder.

The other thing is that netters dont really affect the reef species ( other than Jew) and the coastal liners mainly target Jew and Goldies so the rest of the reef species are predominantly amature and charter so we can make a big difference there.

In regards to the circle hooks I suggested it as a lot of people are pushing to ban live baiting completly on some rivers such as the daly to fall inline with places like the Mary River system and Kakadu. As a compromise to this instead of a potential complete ban you could use circle hooks and stop the others from going the whole hog and pushing harder for a ban completely. It is only a idea that I have toyed with mainly for the Daly and NOT Territory wide, that is smashed by Cherabine choking grey nomads day in and day out. I too want to have the choice to livebait but dont mind making a small change to suit. It also wouldnt be hard to police as if you were caught with a J hook on your line while on the river fishin not using artificial lures you are obviously baiting and should be dealt with accordingly if the law was brought in.

Dropping the barra limit is probably going to be hard to swallow as the netters have a major effect. Dropping the jew limit is the same as the pros do damage but a seasonal closure would affect pro/amature/charters all the same. You simple cant fish in a set sporning area while in that mode.

Goldies bag could stay the same but put a size limit. This would affect amature/pro/charter all the same. Possible put a lower charter bag as I have prior mentioned.

The other thing about the pro Jew catch remaining stable and the charter vessil falling. Majority of the charter day ground is Within 40nm of Darwin or a two hour steam. This area is becomming badly depleated of Jew thus reflecting the lower catch due to the mounting pressure of amature/pro/charter. There would be lucky if there is one patch of ground that isnt Gps marked in that area by a lot of boats. The fish simple have no where to hide.

The pros can go far and wide, have better tecnology than the past with faster vessils, better sonar, Gps to go with the fact that they can work the areas where the fish are most likely going to be at any one time and the habits of the fish are more widely recognised even by the pros.

Sooner rather than later it is a fair bet that the pros will stop catching as well and that has already started with the extra effort that is needed to catch the same numbers. I would bet the size is a lot smaller as well which is the first sign!

Dougs proposal is not without merit. It would be in conjunction with the proposals on amatures for jew snapper. The other effect it would have would be to inflate the price of fish moderatly though only locally ( could collapse interstate and export markets), which is a step in the right direction for the aquaculture viability. The charter boats,well that remains almost an impossibility.

yeah i seen ya maths not sure where you got your figures from?? just a guesstimate unlees you have spoke to every recreational fisherman and commercial fisherman hahahahha and i have never seen an accurate survey in my life!!!!!
if the commercial fisherman werent alowwed to fish with in the 200km limit then there is the problem solved add that to your equation and see what figures you come up with makes more sense to hit the bigger guys first doesnt it ???
i think the closures are fair enough on spawning ground by all means but lowering the limit.. no way

Lower limits don't stop people fishing. Seasonal closures do. I have already heard a number of times of people upgrading their catch, ie catch your first two 100cm Jewies, put em on ice. Keep fishing and releasing all the smaller ones. Catch a 120cm, throw one of the 100cm's over the side and keep the 120 etc.

That sort of behaviour is going on, and its a bad attitude in my books. So having a limit of even one jewie per person won't protect the stocks from overfishing, barotrauma and just been wasted. Especially when we have amateurs causing damage whilst catching a small bag limit, next to pro boat who has just hauled number 83 over the side.

Cuddles

You can't honestly expect us to take you "maths equations" as anything other than an uneducated guess can you????