Surprise surprise

[Wilson]

Looks like a local to me. The pec fin and big head give it away. Epic catch lads!

[Douglas]

I guess you can't beat those pec fins and big heads. Non-yellow fin colour, dark fish and big fat stomach a Fraser characteristic? No doubt in my mind that its an escaped impoundment fish and the largest mass escape of big fish was from Awoonga and it happened 3 times since 2011. There's my reasoning Chewy.

Didn't have much barra success in the Bundy area at all up to 1995. Not many did. Elliott used to cop a bit of a hammering too. Went out to Monduran a couple of times but it was before it exploded. Lots of lure-taking catfish was all. And then suddenly, big barra appeared and the catfish started to disappear. Then I moved back to Rocky.

Sad memory for me at Monduran. Went searching for a friend out mine who disappeared there. He was undergoing training in a Beaver float plane practising landings and take-off. He used to own Lady Musgrave cruises and flying a Beaver to Lady Musgrave was a part of the operation that he wanted to become proficient at. Aircraft hit wind-shear near an inlet, flipped and sank. That was the first time I'd seen such a clear image of an object on the bottom in 60ft of water (the plane) from any sounder. Coppers got a special one up for the search. Was in the days before structure scan etc. Pretty smart bit of stuff. Might have been military. vale Graham Stielow.

Burnett used to have lots of big barra before the 70s but they disappeared. I'm sure there would have been some left despite the heavy netting. But there's not much room from the mouth to the 1st barrage (25km) for big barra to hide in to avoid the nets. Nor is there much in the way of an estuary or inflow creeks. If ever there was an example of poor fisheries policy, the Burnett stands out.

A lot different to estuary creeks and mangroves of Mary/Sandy Straits region.

Have you had a look at how many barra/threadfin are taken every year by netters out of Mary/Burrum/Fraser area?

[ActiveAngler]

Yep. Plenty. Will be a lot less this year as two of the prominent net guys have moved to Weipa.

[Ducksta]

So - how long til an escaped dam fish picks up some golden colouration? Or they just never get it?
I thought that colouration was basically linked to seasonal migrations (ie. lose gold when they get trapped up the fresh for ages - get it back when they get back out in the salt)
But that's only based on what I've heard about NT fish. ie. dry season billabongs, wet season back down to salt, lifecycles.
Or is that depending on what strain of fish they are? (Is it 14 distinct variations/populations from memory?)

[al49]

Awoonga escapees from 2013 six months after getting out and I think I can see yellow starting in the fins go figure lol

[Wilson]

No offence intended to you Douglas but it's just my opinion. The transparent pec fin and large head and fighting style is what I look at for a true salty here.

[Douglas]

So - how long til an escaped dam fish picks up some golden colouration? Or they just never get it?
I thought that colouration was basically linked to seasonal migrations (ie. lose gold when they get trapped up the fresh for ages - get it back when they get back out in the salt)
But that's only based on what I've heard about NT fish. ie. dry season billabongs, wet season back down to salt, lifecycles.
Or is that depending on what strain of fish they are? (Is it 14 distinct variations/populations from memory?)

6 strains in Qld as I understand things. And about 8-10 in WA and NT. Most southerly strain in Qld is supposed to be the Fitzroy.

However, barra lived and bred naturally as far south as Mary River so I'm a bit surprised when the scientists seem to ignore any possible Burnett or Mary strain.

I think you really mean loses its golden colouration Ducksta.( You may be suffering from retina retention caused by being blinded by reflections from that peacock bass)

All over the Fitzroy flood plain are numerous freshwater lagoons (some pretty big). The more permanent lagoons have barramundi which populated them during previous flood. Mainly little fellas but some really big ones go in at times. I've found a 1.5 metre one dead in the grass one time.

Some of these lagoons are large and 1 has a depth of 11.5 metres. I put the boat in it just before xmas to go barra fishing and sounded the whole lagoon.

The bigger the lagoon, the more the differences in colouration between fish.

These bigger lagoons have breeding populations of bony bream so plenty of food. Growth rates of up to 1mm a day have been measured.

Of more recent times there have been plenty of tilapia. The smaller barra also figure as food for the bigger barra.

Those smaller barra tend to hide in weedbanks (or on edges of them) for safety. Hence their darker colouration. Some are almost black. Impossible to see even in the clearer lagoon waters.

Some of these smaller barra choose not to hide in weeds and take their chances in the open waters. They don't go as dark.

Its not a hard and fast rule about the colour of freshwater barra. A lot of the bigger barra in the open lagoon waters are quite silver and some still have their yellow fins but they tend to fade with time. After 3-4 years in a lagoon you can still see yellow fin colouring on the bigger ones though.

Depending on the characteristics of the floodwaters which irregularly connect the lagoons with the Fitzroy, sometimes there's not a weed to be found and so ALL the barra tend to stay more silvery including the smaller ones with nowhere to hide. Awoonga is the 3rd largest impoundment in Qld so there's both plenty of open water and plenty of weedbanks and timber. So you'll get a pretty good cross-section of differing colourings.

In the NT the wet is a lot more regular than here so the floodplain lagoons (like those in Kakadu) get cleaned out more regularly. A true floodplain runoff cycle develops so things get pretty predictable.

Not so here in CQ. Sometimes it can be 5 years between floods here of sufficient size to connect the lagoons back up to the river and allow the barra back into river.

Meanwhile, the water level drops, the food supply dwindles, the barra get bigger and every barra caught is 90cm or better. Eventually the water loses its oxygen and the barra die just before the lagoon dries up.

Had that happen in one of the bigger lagoons here in 2005. Frogmore lagoon which had never dried in living memory. It did that year.

Couple of us tried to get some of these fish out manually and into the freshwater part of the river but it was an impossible task with the mud. They all died overnight and I counted 264 dead barra along with thousands of bigger bony bream (all the smaller ones had been eaten and the bigger ones were next on the menu), large catfish, big mullet.

Of those 264, there were 115 over a metre in length with 1 at 1.3 metres. He and I had tangled before twice over the preceding couple of years and he had me at 2 nil down so I was looking for him.

There were only 264 left out of the thousands. Law of natural selection I guess. The biggest and fittest survive (for a while longer).

There's a saying that you can't fatten a thoroughbred and I believe the same thing with barra. If its got a fatter than normal gut then that's the first sign that its an escapee. Combine that with the size and hence my comment about Awoonga as the most logical place. Maybe a Monduran escapee?


To give u some idea of numbers on barramundi that populate the larger lagoons, I fished one regularly knowing that the tagging club here had tagged 300 in that lagoon. It wasn't until I'd caught just over 600 that I hit the first tag.


AL, Awoonga's first lot of escapees were in 2011. There were 2 more overflows after that.

[Gippsy]

All great facts mate but if you fished the same lagoon with 300 tagged fish in it, And it took you 600 fish before you got a tagged one, How many Barra would have to be caught 400km south n the Mary river before someone catches a 1.3m fish with no papers. Barra have been in the Mary for a long time, way longer than it takes to grow to 1.3m. I'm calling it a wild fish, and a beauty at that, DNA prove that that one was from awoonga or monduran and I'll eat my hat. Till then bud it's a saltie caught next to a cracking threadfin,

[Douglas]

Barra have been in the Mary for a long time, way longer than it takes to grow to 1.3m.

How long do you think it takes for a barra to reach 1.3 metres?

I believe they don't survive long enough to get to 1.3m because of all the netting there these days but I mainly believe its an escapee because of its big gut and colour.

My father-in-law (born in 189 used to tell me about barra in the Mary River but his recollections were from the 1920s and 1930s. Bundaberg was the same in the same period. I've got photos of big barramundi caught in the Burnett from very early days. But you won't find them there now. Nor will you find many big locally grown ones in the Mary now either. 90% or more will be Awoonga and Monduran escapees (particularly Awoonga as its overflowed more times than Monduran since 2011).

Call it a saltie if that makes you happy but to me its a pretend one.

But getting a 1.3 metre barra in is a great effort by any measure. Hats off to Al.

[ActiveAngler]

I'd have to disagree with the nettingDouglas . The Mary is netted. But the whole straights is pretty well not needed for Barra and Threadies, at least not consistently. last year I spent around 150 days on the water here so I feel I actually have something for offer.

By most accounts Barra live for 20 years give or take and while age/length ratios will vary, 20 years isn't a long time in a system as big as here. You may have knowledge of Bundaberg and further north but have little to no knowledge of the fishery here. As I have stated before, it could just as easily be a Lenthalls escapee, or a local salty, as some of the fish that I saw diving in the early 90's would have been easily as big as this.

The big thing for the burrum is that it is not netted consistently for Barra and threadfin. Like everyone else here, you are doing nothing more than guessing. Come have a look at the fishery here some time, use some of the 130+ threadfin caught in big numbers by line fishers as a gauge, as they are normally wiped out as quick if not quicker than the Barra in a heavily netted system. If I makes you sleep better at night to say that's it's an Awoonga fish then that's nice. But honestly, by the law of averages it's probably not. It's a long way to come, through hostile territory, netting in all the systems between here and there. It's an opinion. Nothing more.