North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

Are Darwin golden snapper and jewfish stocks down?

NT Fisheries says they are ... http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2012/1 ... tnews.html

when you keep goldies the size as the ones in the paper you can see why. poor buggers dont have a chanceto breed

Better off keeping all of them that you pull to the surface rather than throwing them back dead !! I know I have been keeping a lot more smaller fish once I heard how barratrauma or what ever it is effects them !
Rather keep a few small ones and get my bag than feed the sharks !

Yes they areunder threat but not from me

Get ready for more bag limits
They will get what they want.
It will be far cheaper to buy from the shop (imported sh@t) than go catch it
Try and find out the percentage of N.T,'s professional catch that goes to the N.T.'s market (if you can)
I know for a fact that none off the boat my young bloke works goes here
Then tell me where the blame lays.
I can tell you,with a government that does not have the balls to cull licenses until there is only enough to supply what Australia needs
Point the finger at it's citizens to cover up what it knows that needs to be done
We shouldn't have to feed the world at our expense,they are the ones that stuffed their fish stocks not us
It will never happen

nomad wrote:Yes they areunder threat but not from me

Im hearing ya

shaggs wrote:Get ready for more bag limits
They will get what they want.
It will be far cheaper to buy from the shop (imported sh@t) than go catch it
Try and find out the percentage of N.T,'s professional catch that goes to the N.T.'s market (if you can)
I know for a fact that none off the boat my young bloke works goes here
Then tell me where the blame lays.
I can tell you,with a government that does not have the balls to cull licenses until there is only enough to supply what Australia needs
Point the finger at it's citizens to cover up what it knows that needs to be done
We shouldn't have to feed the world at our expense,they are the ones that stuffed their fish stocks not us
It will never happen

It already is cheaper to buy than to catch for me. But the price of fish needs to go up a lot so that it is worth farming not wild catching for sale.

Some spots maybe but all of our marks out at places such as charles point we have had our best year to date on. We have 10 years of fishing diaries to back it up. Maybe the fish are onto us and are hiding? We dont keep jewies where possible under 1m and goldies well they need to be at least 1.5kg for us to consider keeping. We like to be conservationists.

Already cheaper for me to buy than catch. If I include the price of the boat, fuel, grog, bait etc, I catch jewfish for about $8,000 a kilo.
"catch rates falling"? - mine never rose.

cunno wrote:Already cheaper for me to buy than catch. If I include the price of the boat, fuel, grog, bait etc, I catch jewfish for about $8,000 a kilo.
"catch rates falling"? - mine never rose.

Yes
$8000 kg I wish , thats a good deal
Yes

JewieQueen wrote:Some spots maybe but all of our marks out at places such as charles point we have had our best year to date on. We have 10 years of fishing diaries to back it up. Maybe the fish are onto us and are hiding? We dont keep jewies where possible under 1m and goldies well they need to be at least 1.5kg for us to consider keeping. We like to be conservationists.

Your 10 years worth of diaries would be a better idea of what is going on than whatever sort of survey fisheries would have done in my opinion

Ya gotta get up early to beat Matt to the NT News
Well at $8,000 a kilo for jewfish there would be an army of profishermen...

But seriously there are some things that we as fishermen and women can do. When fishing try to fish in water under 10 metres, I have actually adopted this as a routine. It gives the fish a chance of survival when released. On average I tend to release many more than I keep (except Powertail ) I do of course realise the 10m rule is not always possible but where it is I do it!
The other thing and this is for the Govt to sort out is the rapidly diminishing coastline available to the recreational fisherman. This will absolutely decimate fish stocks in the open areas. Fishing pressure needs to be spread out to give all fish stocks a chance to breed.

cunno wrote:Already cheaper for me to buy than catch. If I include the price of the boat, fuel, grog, bait etc, I catch jewfish for about $8,000 a kilo.
"catch rates falling"? - mine never rose.

I used to be able to catch goldies from the nightcliff jetty and from behind the pool on live mullet, that doesn't happen anymore...
however you can still catch them that way at other spots in the harbour, but still definitely stocks are down.
Lorna shoal has been producing alot lately - that doesn't mean that is has 'recovered' just means a school has moved in and got caught maybe..?

Some things to keep in mind.

Elsewhere in the world localised black jewfish stocks have disappeared. Gone! Researchers say the various jewfish stocks on different reefs don't mingle much so if you knock them out, that's it.

Also, golden snapper grow very slowly and are therefore vulnerable.

Given that Darwin is about to grow from Inpex, with lots of male workers coming to town who will be fishing, fisheries will need to act soon if there is already a problem.

Wouldn't it be tragic to see things deteriorate to the point where flag and small trickies become the staple catch on local reefs

If tighter bag limits are to be proposed the public would like to see evidence as to why - perhaps charter boat logs could be compiled into a graph(s) and this made public?

well I like to see stocks, accross the top end, go to locals who try pretty hard to catch them and bless the dinner tables of Darwin suburbia.

i'm sure 90% of locals have a pretty good attitude towards taking a fair catch home. it's the d$%$heads that take too many when the fish jews are on the bite that is annoying. i'd imagine some of these fisho's wouldl share their catch with friends, but it bring me back to my same old mantra, if you wanna eat fish go and catch it yourself. this mantra has flaws of course, it may introduce a culture of keep what you can catch no matter what it is, which would also impact stocks.

i've never really agree;d to the amatures takign more than the commercial fleets do. i think the jury is still out on that one. just look at mackeral stocks around our coast line.