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King threadfin

Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2019 6:26 am
by ronje
How many king threadfin (sometimes called 5 finger salmon) enthusiasts are there on FFF?

What's the king threadfin scene like in the NT? Lures of choice? Fishing depths? Resilience? Release problems?

Re: King threadfin

Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2019 11:21 am
by ronje
Thanks for the come-back, Flickn.

Maybe trolling or soft plastics? Plastic swimmers, vibes, prawns?

Many larger king around? (say 120cm or bigger).

wrt release you say "OK if you don't stuff around". Do you think that they more finnicky on release than say barra?

Any fishing at depth specifically for them (say 6 - 8 metres)? Don't seem to find king over 1 metre in the shallows here.

Reason I'm asking is that big king abound down here.

Visitors to area want to catch both barra and king over 1 metre with king over 120 cm preferred.

Usually fished for at depths of 6 - 8 metres.

There are release problems with big king which complicate the issue a bit.

Big king will pull a barra backwards (that's why they're so popular) and do it for longer. So taking on big king is a bit of a bucket list thing for people.

They are genuine speedsters and can slug it out probably better than big barra. Been a few people spooled on baitcasters here.

That's what we're finding here anyway.

The king threadfin fishery has been one of the surprises of the net free zone declaration here. Barra was the high profile species wanted by everybody but the big thready schools are now becoming a winter alternative.

Anybody finding schools of these big units in deeper water and targeting them?

Re: King threadfin

Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2019 1:21 pm
by thesurfingbarra
Ronje
This year so far the threadies have been in plague like schools In The Mary river and surrounding systems and all at a decent size. Some trips have seen that many you get sick of catching them.
I believe they fight just hard as Barra. Have caught them on all lure types from small prawn imatation plastics, vibes and trolling Barra classics and all sizes of the reidys b52 range. In all depths of water up to 8 metres.
Most commmon size have been between 80cm to 1m and bigger also. They seem to release pretty well if you don't muck around as flickem said. I tend to keep a couple as I like eating them rather than Barra.
A lot of people have sounder shots with 100's of threadies on as in the photo's attached from this year in the Mary river.

Re: King threadfin

Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2019 7:20 pm
by ronje
Thanks for that.

Yep, the screen photo tells us lots. Heaps of fish high in water column in 7ft water. Obviously on "flats" somewhere and mostly small fish. Probably blue threadfin (due to size) and well within casting range or trolled hard bodies. The lures I see in the photos are shallow hard bodies and that's obviously what caught those king. Fair enough. Lots of fun and I agree in respect of the eating quality if fresh. O/board leg interfere with side imaging on LHS of boat?

Can you tell me more about the 8 metre models, please? Do you look for them (big ones) in the deeper water? What do you guys target them with and how do you guys handle them?

If so, what do you go after them with and how do you cope with the release problems that you'll definitely encounter at those depths. (Lactic Acidosis).

We certainly have release problems here and that's what I'm looking for info on. Big king fishing is a new and expanding fishery down here and will become more popular. We want to head off problems before they become entrenched.

Hope you can help with info or maybe point me to a big king fisherman up there.

Re: King threadfin

Posted: Thu Jun 20, 2019 5:54 am
by ronje
Sorry fellas

Took me a little while to work out how to post photos.

These are the sorts of king I'm talking about. These guys are between 120 - 130cm. and catches above that size are common with 1 @ 170cm.

We've had poor rains over the last 3 years and I haven't caught a barra under 80cm in the last 12 months. So recruitment is poor. Bit like the NT with no wet this year.

Doesn't seemed to have impacted the king threadfin spawning though.

If you know of somebody in the NT who does target these big guys, i'd be happy to talk to them. Ditto for WA.

Re: King threadfin

Posted: Thu Jun 20, 2019 7:33 am
by thesurfingbarra
Ronje

I don't know if a lot of guys target them more of a bycatch. I have caught them on vibes in the deeper water thinking they may have been barra.
But not to the size you are looking at the 120 to 130 size. I have found though the bigger the fish the worse they release if that helps at all?
Most people I would say here get them trolling hardbodies higher up in the water column when they are targeting barra on the push in of the tides at the coastal creeks and rivers.
Maybe a few of the fly fisherman may target them on the flats up here?

Re: King threadfin

Posted: Thu Jun 20, 2019 6:10 pm
by ronje
That's good info. Thank you. You are spot on with bigger king being harder to release successfully.

I only ever caught a couple of small king down the Daly or the Roper looking for barra. Never fished down there in the deeper water with vibes etc so I think I missed an opportunity there.

Fair bit of run in Fitzroy at mid-tide so we need heavier vibes to get down to 20ft bottom. Throw upstream and hop back with the tide.

As emergency measure, I put 2 x 20g threadybusters on together to give 40g and immediately caught several fish. 125 & 122cm. Obviously reaching the bottom OK.

Eventually, I picked up one that was bigger and lost both threadybusters. Ouch.

Is the comment about the LHS of the side-scan right? Transducer on the RHS and o/board leg in way towards the left?

Re: King threadfin

Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2019 10:10 am
by NinjaFish
The king threadfin fishery has been one of the surprises of the net free zone declaration here. Barra was the high profile species wanted by everybody but the big thready schools are now becoming a winter alternative.
[/quote]

Interesting you say this Ron as the same is happening up here. Speaking to a pro Barra fisherman of 40 years the other day, he said this would happen with the net closure areas and average to large Barra would get harder to catch for the tourist or sports fisher due to the nets not removing or culling a consistent sized fish (80-90cm+) on a regular basis. His opinion was that if these sized fish are not taken out yearly they will grow (obviously) but, like all fish they are carnivorous and what will happen? They will devour the 25cm+ young and... as they start to reach the 120cm+ range they become more ravenous and are able to devour their own up to 40cm or more. So.. again in his opinion, there is a problem. There will be small Barra at the top of the rivers and huge Barra down at the mouth of the rivers. Sounds good but still a problem. The netters also took out the Salmon that are now allowed to grow and are also carnivorous. They will feed on the baby Barra making their way upstream inside the river mouths reducing the quantities of upstream stocks. Obvious? Yes, but again in his opinion, what happens when there are now masses of Threadfin trying to find a feed inside the mouths of these rivers? The breeding cycle for Barra gets a huge interruption and there has to be a flow on effect. Ultimately Threadies are a faster growing fish that mature at a much earlier stage than Barra making them a more effective breeder even though they don’t live as long. They also school better together than Barra (not as social) making them more effective in reducing other species such as Barra. His opinion is then... the sharks will learn this also!

Ultimately there will be fewer legal+ sized fish caught in these areas and very few trophy fish but wait for it... if you do hook a big Barra, the chances are that it will be in the 130cm+ range but few and far between.

I am all for no netting areas so we can at least catch some fish now but I’m left scratching my head when he said the fishing industry was also helping the tour guides and anglers and actually doing the entire industry a service!

I hope I explained this as well as he did to me when he walked off saying ‘I told them this would happen’.

Re: King threadfin

Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2019 12:26 pm
by ronje
Interesting Ninja. I'll look at what the pro said in more detail in a day or two.

The king's natural priority food is prawns. Hence the evolution of whiskers to get the prawns out of the mud. They follow the prawns up the river to the town reach (50kms) at spawning (spring). They'll take mullet or other small live fish but its by-catch for them.

Why no smaller barra here at moment? They're here alright but I'm not seeing them. Others have though. 40cm - 50 cm ones (Nov/Dec 17 models). But the numbers aren't there.

Prime reason (I think) has been 3 consecutive bad years for recruiting. Plenty of spawning but no Jan/Feb rains to allow little fellas access to the floodplain refuges. They have to take their chances in the main river where everything wants to eat 'em (and does).

In the NT the barra spawning takes place on the flats at the mouths of the rivers. Same here but we have a 3 month full closure over the spawning period just to leave them alone to spawn and ultimately to get up onto the floodplain safety.

I see the lines of boats trolling and casting at the mouths of NT rivers in the spawning season chasing those big breeding barra and shake my head wondering why they're doing it. But, each to his own I guess.

There was no upper limit on king threadies here so the netters took everything over 60cm. Every thready. Blues and king. They die easily, so the number discarded and floating down the river was an eye-opener. If a netter missed the tide, the king also baked in the sun on the mud until the tide came back in again to allow access.

Nor was there any respite during the thready spawning period. No spawning closures in this part of the world anyway. ALL of the big females were scooped up by the nets and into the freezers. Tons and tons of 'em each year.

Jeez, there was some king thready waste.

I was thinking that might be the reason that there seems to be so few big threadies in the NT. The larger stocks have been knocked around so much by netting that as a species, they were on their way out. The big breeding females were being taken out so stock numbers and sizes would have dropped. I don't know if that's the case or not but it seems like standout to me.

There's no reason the NT shouldn't have big king threadies.

As a fighting fish a 130cm king threadfin would pull a 130cm barra backwards. I've caught both so I know that's the case. No question. People are coming here for threadfin fishing only now. Stuff the barra apparently.

It sounds a bit strange, but I'm upgrading my barra gear (which has been quite adequate for Qld and NT barra) to chase a few big king threadies.

Thready fishing might just be the go-to thing to breath some life into the guiding businesses in the NT. Sure has here (all 5 of them).

Re: King threadfin

Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2019 4:00 pm
by NinjaFish
Quote
‘I was thinking that might be the reason that there seems to be so few big threadies in the NT. The larger stocks have been knocked around so much by netting that as a species, they were on their way out. The big breeding females were being taken out so stock numbers and sizes would have dropped. I don't know if that's the case or not but it seems like standout to me.’

‘There's no reason the NT shouldn't have big king threadies.’


I tend to agree this could be the case and with so many around now its probably true. If so we should have them out at the Mary next year or after around the 130cm.

Biggest I’ve caught in the NT was 110 with a live Mullet of around 7-8 inches, years ago.

Re: King threadfin

Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2019 7:14 am
by ronje
Had a better look at the musings of that netter you were talking to.

There's a lot that I don't agree with in there.

Little barra making their way up stream and being eaten

Barra spawn at the mouths of rivers when the salinity and temp is right in early Dec and afterwards. They start the spawning process ( there's more than one spawning event if the temp/salinity levels stay stable) at low tide on the biggest tide around then usually full moon at night.

That way, the i/c bigger tide will take the fertilised eggs into the mangroves and the creeks near the mouth. These guys are only a mm or so as embroyos. They grow and THEN need water flow to get up into the sanctuary of floodplain billabongs.

During that spawning period, the spawners hang around the mouths doing more business on the bigger night tides. They spawn several times during that period. We counted 7 different spawnings (Dec to Feb) in one spawning season a couple of years ago here. There was no followup rain so recruitment into the floodplain sanctuaries was poor.

Enter the "wet" and its resulting increased flow. The freshwater flowing downstream allows these little guys to head up and those that have been up for 2 years or so to return. Its the returning guys that become fodder near the mouth. However, these guys are 50cm or so in size by then but some still get eaten.

Absence of a real wet means no "recruitment" up onto the floodplain sanctuaries so there'll be fewer to come back down in 2 years time. It also means there'll be fewer little guys (5 - 10mm) going up. Double whammy.

Threadies are a faster growing fish that mature at a much earlier stage than Barra

These king threadies change sex at about a metre and become sexually mature at about 120cm. Takes them longer to reach that stage than it takes barra. A lot of these big threadies are 10 years + in age.

To me, that's what makes the species vulnerable to netting pressures and decline in sustainability.

Seems that the netter has a theory and is trying to manipulate facts to fit the theory. I guess that he's at least thinking about it.

Threadfin king stocks in the NT have been in steady decline since 2004 when it peaked at 400 tonnes(one good year was had in 2012). Downhill all the way. Similar for WA which peaked at 80 tonnes in 2012 and Qld (don't know the peak tonnage in 2012 for Qld but it'll probably be similar to NT).

I stumbled over these big king sitting in squadrons on the bottom in 6m of water in the middle of nowhere a few years ago. Thousands of them. They sat there until the tide bottomed then vanished. Guessed that they followed the tide up the river.

Didn't know what they were as sounders weren't as good to show the forked tails. I dragged a 5m deep diver through them and got a couple of king threadfin to 97cm. To get them meant trolling at 5m and I hate trolling. So tried gulp and soft vibes. The soft vibes were more successful.

Keep an eye out in 6m of water in the open at estuaries. They'll be on the bottom strewn around like straws in a fiddlesticks game. They're big threadfin. Put down a 20 - 35g soft vibe and hang on.

They seem to favour 6m of water. I'm guessing that its a pressure related thing and 6m of pressure (24 psi) is what they're more comfortable with.

A notable thing is that they seem to hang around in schools of similar sized fish.

If the first one you get is 100cm, then the rest will also be around 100cm. Similarly with 120, 130 and 140cm fish.

Re: King threadfin

Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2019 10:50 am
by NinjaFish
‘Seems that the netter has a theory and is trying to manipulate facts to fit the theory. I guess that he's at least thinking about it.’

I agree with your statement and that is why I was left scratching my head and I suspect the thought of all those fish that he can’t have anymore...

I was always led to believe that the Threadfin were breeders from about 70cm in the NT but there seems to be some differences in maturity from one side of the country to the other according to these links.

http://www.fish.wa.gov.au/Documents/rec ... eadfin.pdf

Interesting point At the bottom of page 7-8 from a study in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/__data/assets/ ... 1-7-12.pdf

.

Re: King threadfin

Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2019 2:24 pm
by ronje
Barra and threadfin are different especially in gulf waters. Don't know why. Might be simply isolation. Maybe other factors.

These reports are written by scientists who think their readers are going to be other scientists (or should be). They chop and change scientific industry jargon and phrases and I spend a lot of time trying to interpret what they're getting at.


Funny isn't it that the two organisations that don't have a lot of barra or threadfin in their patches ( WA and GBRMPA) have the best and most colourful reports. Real works of art. I guess you can't have lots of pesky fish getting in the way of some wonderful report writing.

Barra fishery in the NT has gone downhill since 2004 as well (with a couple of sharp bump-ups in 2010/11/12 before continuing the decline). Last figures from NT Fisheries are for 2016 and that figure of 280 tonnes is the lowest since record keeping started in 1983.

Interestingly, king threadfin catch figures have stabilised at about 250 tonnes in 2013/14/15 and 16. With barra stocks dropping off so much since 2013, the netters seemed to have moved into more threadfin. Add the 3 years yet to be collated and there'll be 7 years of increased catches in threadfin. Won't be long before there are few breeders around.

On the subject of scientists' writings, send me yr e-mail a/d and I'll show you something.
Mine is [email protected]

Re: King threadfin

Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2019 7:40 am
by stroma
Large reductions in commercial catch of Barra and Threadfin in the NT will largely be the result of multiple licence buy-backs
over recent years. Therefore total annual tonnage doesn’t really tell you of how the fishery is performing. You need to look at the Catch Per Unit Effort (CPUE) from the reports to see if stocks are in fact declining or remaining sustainable. I have not done this but I suggest you need to look at that aspect if you want to use declining commercial catch as evidence for your theory.

Re: King threadfin

Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2019 8:46 am
by ronje
Thanks stroma.

Hard to find much current data from NT fisheries on anything.

I think that the CPUE is simply an indicator (better than nothing but an indicator only never-the-less). How much effort per tonne (catch..fishing days..number or licences). eg 1000 kg (1 tonne) between say 5 licences with each working 20 days give a CPUE figure but says nothing about sizes being caught. There's got to be a reason why few big ones can be found but I can't think of one. If anybody can come up with a better reason, it'd be good to hear it.

The TK fishery in the NT is about the same size as Qld and big threadfin exist here.

The reason for raising the matter of big king in the NT was as a possible extra string in the bow for the fishing-tourism industry. Uncertainty about future access to barramundi stocks still exists despite licence buybacks and promotions like the MDF.

In this part of Qld we surprisingly found that there was significant alternative interest in fishing for big king. Luckily we found out before our threadfin stocks were knocked around beyond recovery levels. We knew there were big king still around in our river but didn't understand the potential of that. Now we do.

Our big king are worth more than simply being larger fillets being shipped off to southern fish markets.

As it's turned out, we're now managing our river resources for the benefit of the whole community. More local bang-for-the-buck instead of a few who paid the govt licence fees to privately make money out of our local resource.

The hardest part in the exercise was re-calibrating the commercial fishing industry AND the govt into understanding the concept of local resource management.

That's all this discussion has been about. Looking ahead not backwards.