North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

Hello all

Netters causing some big problems in Fitzroy and Gladstone areas.

In Fitzroy (downstream) netters are continuing to do enormous damage to barra stocks.

Local seafood retailer has refused to accept any more barramundi from netters. He has a self-imposed limit of 5 tonnes and reached that in 4 days.

Hasn't stopped the pros though. They're continuing netting activities and looking for markets in Brisbane and Sydney. Sending tonnes down there.

Ditto in Gladstone. The Boyne river is chockers with dead barra from the Awoonga dam spillway overflow (it went to 8.5 metres over). Gladstone netters are "killing the pig" with shipments away as well.

Last time (2 years ago) they cut their own throats. The glut of barra in southern markets dropped the price that netters got to $5kg making it uneconomic to catch them. Odds are that it will happen again.

Be good if the Qld govt would take a page out of the NT book and stop the netting (or put quotas in place at least).

Good to see the local ratailer making a stand but that won''t stop the netters!!

I was assisting in the flood clean-up at the Baffle Creek 70km north of Bundaberg last week. The netters were in there as soon as the roads opended. lucky I don't live in Queensland.

Yea mate went for a run yesterday and the nets were staggered As usual..

Surely with the unnatural glut of overflow barra the netters aren't doing too much harm ? They might actually doing more good than harm. The natural balance of fish in the system must be pretty out of wack.

the number of barra in the majority of easily accessible qld rivers has been almost zero for ages seano a major restocking like the dams going over a few times in recent years would have been a good thing for the natural balance

For enough.

Wouldn't they be big fat swampies if they've come over the wall? Not sure I'd be happy paying for a fillet of that at the local seafood shop............



Melv

No not at all IIMB.

There seems to be a fallacy that all Qld barra are products of the dam stocking.

They're not.

The Fitzroy has the largest natural stock of barra in Qld having the largest catchment area in Aus after the Murray-Darling. In fact its bigger than the Roper, Alligator, Mary and Adelaide systems combined. And much larger than the Victoria River and WA's Fitzroy.

The Flinders River system in the Gulf is the same.

Other systems to the south like Gladstone, Bundaberg and Maryborough benefit from that as the Fitzroy strain of barra seems to migrate south.

After a big flood, the Awoonga Dam (Gladstone) and Monduran Dam (Bundaberg) systems have impoundment barra which go over the dam walls. After becoming salt acclimatised they add to the natural stocks.

Until they do that, Melv is partly right. The pricedrops OK but for glut reasons and not "swampies" reasons. The average purchaser in Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne has no idea.

The fingerlings to stock Awoonga and Monduran come from the Gladstone Area Water Board's hatchery in Gladstone.

Just cos you can't catch barra over there Jim doesn't mean there isn't any

not what I meant ronje, I was just noting that the fish going over are a plus to already diminished stocks in the boyne kolan pioneer prossy rivers etc
sure there's natural populations or there'd be no stocking program in the first place

Sorry. Misunderstood.

You're right.

Would rather see the large fish go over the dam walls and add to the resident population of breeders.

That means the netters have less time to get them before they reach 120cm when they're safe.

seano wrote:Just cos you can't catch barra over there Jim doesn't mean there isn't any

there's barra over the seano, but compared to here where you can get em in a cast net sometimes and there's the harbour on our doorsteps to the average mug punter catching a barra outside of the dams is going to remain an elusive dream especially while as ronje stated the netters there seem to have a rape and pillage mindset and successive govt's have done little to enable the rehabilitation of the barra fisheries
a bloke caught a barra off the Forgan Bridge in Mackay while I was there, nothing flash maybe 70cm but it made the front page of the paper at the time, the next night coming home after work there was probably 30 people lined up having a crack

The netters sure give it a flogging.

Saw 6 nets in the 2 creeks we went to the other day at the river mouth. Reports indicate a further 8-10 in the 70km stretch from the city to Port Alma.

Still plenty of barra around but could be lots and lots more if netting stopped.

I've got over 2000 here in last 10 years with 16 over the metre (all wild caught). Another 600 in the NT but yet to hit the metre mark there. Good chance this year though.

Taggers catch and release heaps per year with 1 tagger getting over 1500 in a year recently.

People who chase dam barra are usually from south as locals would rather catch wild barra. Peak southern "terrorist "migration is the same as the NT. April to September which isn't long enough to run a successful guiding buisness for more than a couple of boats. In this area anyway.

Then to cap it off, we have a closed east coast season from 1 Nov to 1 Feb. The closure doesn't apply to stocked impoundments.

I've probably caught 20 from Qld dams. All under a metre.