Bream fishing over the holidays

cobby
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Re: Bream fishing over the holidays

Post by cobby » Fri Oct 05, 2018 8:32 pm

re-tyred wrote:
FishnMiss wrote:I was down the silt jetty last week along the Mitchell LB. Great scenery, got bites but no catches :(
Comercial fishos were running hundreds of metres of nets into Eagle bay.
First day I saw one I called Fisheries but they didn't seem fussed at all. These blokes were out every day even in choppy conditions & they were running 2 or 3 nets in different spots.
I know they gotta make a living but from what I keep hearing & my own personal experience in this area over 12-15 years is fishing has got a lot harder in this area alone.

Good to hear you & your boys had a great time :thumbsup:[/quote
They have a licence to fish there. So no the fisheries wouldn't be interested. They don't fish everyday, just week days till midday friday.
The reason the bream fishery has gone down hill in the lake. (the rivers are pretty good) is that a very large portion of the fresh water that once came down the rivers is now used by the people who live in victoria. It is used both for domestic and farm use. Without fresh water entering the lakes from the rivers the only viable breeding grounds for bream are in the rivers. Only people allowed to fish the rivers are recreational fishers.
Removing the last few commercials fishers from the lake will make very little difference.
All the publicity about it has now done exactly what I predicted a couple of years ago. The Greens have entered the debate. Now, to their credit, they acknowledge that the issue is not the 10 commercial netters. However they are calling for a complete review of all users of the lakes and rivers with the end game being that everyone will be restricted from water users to recrreational fishers. Standby for a push to make it a marine park with no fishing... They particularly pointed out the idea that no commercial and an increase in rec fishers would be a bad thing.. The first thing they will push for once they have had a good look at it is the restriction or closing of the rivers during breeding season. Why? because from a fish conservation sense it makes good sense.
Yep. But people are to selfishly stupid to realise. Those same brain dead people will be the first to whinge and ***** they can't fish the system any longer.

frozenpod
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Re: Bream fishing over the holidays

Post by frozenpod » Sat Oct 06, 2018 12:26 am

FishnMiss wrote:I was down the silt jetty last week along the Mitchell LB. Great scenery, got bites but no catches :(
Comercial fishos were running hundreds of metres of nets into Eagle bay.
First day I saw one I called Fisheries but they didn't seem fussed at all. These blokes were out every day even in choppy conditions & they were running 2 or 3 nets in different spots.
Why would you call fisheries?

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re-tyred
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Re: Bream fishing over the holidays

Post by re-tyred » Sat Oct 06, 2018 6:27 am

For what it is worth I wrote this. It is my opinion formed by living working and fishing on the Gippsland Lakes for the last 57 years.
The issues with Black bream in the Gippsland Lakes.

The lack of quantities of Black Bream in the lakes is due to the environment of the Lake System.
The Lake system is basically clean and unpolluted, but it lacks the fresh water it once had. There are a number of major dams on the rivers
and hundreds of farm dams all over the catchment. A very large quantity of the fresh water that once entered the lakes is now used by people.
In addition the lakes and rivers have been altered by retaining walls along beach lines and canal systems to stabilise banks and make room for housing.
This has reduced the intertidal zones, these zones which used to be sand and mud banks or reeds and mangrove where the major producers of food such as sandworm and crabs. They also, along with the swamps that have been drained , provided filtering of run off water. The swamps in addition provided a tank system as they stored rain water that then drained slowly into the system. The end result is a salinity increase that brings it above the required amount for black bream. This has very little to do with the human made entrance. The retaining walls at the entrance where designed to RESTRICT the width of the entrance and cause it to scour a deeper hole. It does this but unfortunately once the water gets outside the retaining walls the speed of the flow reduces and the sand is dumped forming an ocean bar. It is this bar that is dredged. The amount of water flowing in and out is controlled by the width and depth between the retaining walls, not the depth of the ocean bar. In its natural state the entrance was open most of the time, it was generally wide and shallow often too shallow for ships to pass through and therefore listed as closed. An entrance 500mtrs wide and one meter deep is closed for ships, but still passes the same amount of water as one 100mtrs wide and five meters deep.

An analogy of the effects is this.
Imagine you had 10,000 hectares of lush grazing land with all the water you needed. On this you had 20,000 head of cattle. Each year you where able to take 2000 head to market and when you counted your remaining stock, you still had 20,000 because the cows and bulls did their thing and reproduced.
This is a sustainable system. Exactly how a sustainable fishing system works.
Now imagine for some reason 9,000 hectares had the water removed and was left to go to scrub. Pretty soon the number of cattle would drop away to 2000 head on the remaining 1000 hectares of lush ground and maybe a few in the scrub, and you could sustainable remove 200 head each year from the lush 1000hectares.
The number in the scrub would be dependent on each years rain fall and the amount of competition from other creatures that have moved in.
Many other feral and native species would move into the scrub.

Now compare this to the Gippsland lakes. The scrub is the lake system and the 1000 hectares of lush pasture is the rivers.
Recreational fisher can fish it all. The 10 commercials can only fish the lake. There are very few Black bream in the lake so they have turned their talent to other thinks. E.G. Prawn, European shore crab, carp, Taylor etc.
Removing the 10 commercial will cost the state many millions in compensation and achieve almost nothing for the black bream. It is quite likely that the European shore crab if left unfished will destroy the few remaining weed beds in the lake and turn it to a desert.


I would just like to say that it makes no difference to my life if there are no commercials in the Lake, but it will make no difference to the bream fishing either.
There's nothing . . . absolutely nothing . . . half so much worth doing as simply messing around in boats.
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (River Rat to Mole)

ango
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Re: Bream fishing over the holidays

Post by ango » Sat Oct 06, 2018 3:59 pm

For sure the banning of commercial netting will not solve all the issues at the Gippsland Lakes, and I see no reason why the netting of pest species such as carp and European shore crabs (they net crabs?) could not continue, but it would be a start.

Anyway, have a look at the VR Fish website (the peak body representing recreational fishers in Victoria www.vrfish.com.au), they have an article titled “Save Our Gippsland Lakes Fishery” which has a link to another article from FISHING MONTHLY MAGAZINES September 2018 edition which is titled “It’s time to create a Gippsland Lakes Recreational Fishing Reserve” it all makes very interesting reading.

It is good to see there are people who are prepared to take action to improve the prospects of recreational fishers in the Gippsland Lakes for the future enjoyment of all. I have marked the rally at Paynesville foreshore on November 4th from 11:30am to 2:30pm in my diary, I will be there.

Cheers
Ango

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