GIVING THE GIPPSLAND LAKES BACK TO RECREATIONAL ANGLERS

[re-tyred]

Commercial Lake fishers only fish the lakes not the rivers. The black bream live in the rivers these days not in the lake.

i dont live there, you do. so you know the place a lot better.
But it doesnt help when the netters string nets across the river mouth when the spawning fish are around and taking the breeding stock. i know they have to also live, but saying they dont take from the river is Not true when they do sh*t like that.

im all for reducing the bag, introducing a ban on taking spawning fish (closed season) and also a size limit on the big fish like the duskies.(not sure if this i proven yet on the bream)

No they don't, they have never netted the mouth as that is a channel and not allowed. A few years ago they were pushed to 500mtrs from the river mouths to once again try and calm the anti commercials.

[re-tyred]

I've got only question about the water flow into gippsland lakes and black bream,how many rivers or creeks flow into lake tyers to maintain a healthy bream /population
Just a thought

Lake Tyers is really just one river that flows directly to the ocean, there is not enough flow to stop the sand blocking the entrance for most of the time. What many do not realise is that water flows through the sand so when the level reachs the same as the ocean then some salt water flows through the sand into the lake to replace evaporated water. The river that is Lakes Tyers just like the other small ones to the east is mostly surounded by bush and has very few farm dams and no major dams. Marlo and Mallacoota suffers similair problems to the Gippsland lakes because of develoments of farms and dams. The catch rates of these two places is falling even though many years ago commercials were taken out.

Both Marlo and Mallacoota closed this last years or so due to lack of water flows. Marlo and Mallacoota were once shipping ports.

This same problem exists all the way up the east coast.

[purple5ive]

Commercial Lake fishers only fish the lakes not the rivers. The black bream live in the rivers these days not in the lake.

i dont live there, you do. so you know the place a lot better.
But it doesnt help when the netters string nets across the river mouth when the spawning fish are around and taking the breeding stock. i know they have to also live, but saying they dont take from the river is Not true when they do sh*t like that.

im all for reducing the bag, introducing a ban on taking spawning fish (closed season) and also a size limit on the big fish like the duskies.(not sure if this i proven yet on the bream)

No they don't, they have never netted the mouth as that is a channel and not allowed. A few years ago they were pushed to 500mtrs from the river mouths to once again try and calm the anti commercials.

Not what i seen in the pics mate. but i cannot guarantee the authenticity of those photos..

[re-tyred]

I don't know what photos you are talking about. I spend many hours/days up the lake as we surveyed the entire system over three years and I have never had to dodge a net across a river mouth. If I did it would have been reported immediately.

[purple5ive]

i will see if i can find it again.

[Windknot]

Our estuaries are facing all sorts of problems these days. Climate change and increasing temperatures, increased fishing pressure, the encroachment of urban areas, reduced flows of freshwater coming down due to dams, etc, pollution runoff from urban areas and farmland, flood damage and a loss of habitat in severe weather events and the list goes on and on. Still, the removal of commercial netters can only be seen as a benefit to recreational fishers, as it must increase the populations of fish available to some extent.

The Gippsland Lakes, as opposed to the rivers, may not hold large populations of bream, but bream will certainly be there. They travel from river system to river system and they move in and out of the ocean. If the Gippsland Lakes are anything like Port Phillip Bay, which is really just an overgrown estuary with a deep permanent opening to the sea, there will be good populations of bream there in specific locations. There is no commercial netting in Port Phillip Bay now, but when there was the netters took full advantage of bream moving around in the bay and they took large numbers.

I can remember a few years back when Lakers Cutting was really firing. Lakers Cutting is near Queenscliff and it opens into Swan Bay, which in turn is opens to Port Phillip Bay near the entrance. Once the netters heard of the bream captures by recreational fishermen, they set to and netted nearly the whole school. These were nearly all good 40cm fish. This particular fishery never really recovered, as it takes decades to replace them. It didn't help either that recreational fishers were taking full bag limits of 40cm bream day after day.

Because of all of these negative aspects, we really do need and new mindset to manage our populations of bream. Getting rid of commercial netters is a start, but it's only the beginning. If we want a reasonable chance to catch bream in the future we need to act now. Bream can't be seen as a freezer filler anymore. They're no longer a 'bread and butter' fish. They need to be treated as what they are, a valuable but diminishing resource, that need a pro-active approach to insure out kids will still be able to catch them in the decades to come.

[frozenpod]

i will see if i can find it again.

Would they be the photos posted on facebook by the anti netting group?

[purple5ive]

i will see if i can find it again.

Would they be the photos posted on facebook by the anti netting group?

yes was facebook, but cant remember which page it was on.

[frozenpod]

They were photos crab pots that were falsely claimed to be netters.

Most of the claims by that facebook page are false.

[re-tyred]

Those crab pots catching European shore crabs. I suspected that is what they would be.