half hour after work

[wrasseman]

Knocked off early today so I jumped in a boat for a quick sesh in the last 30min of light. Not a bad little effort with three flatties in fairly quick time before I decided to chase some wrasse I could see around the shallow reef edges. There was one huge one down there that would have gone close to 5kg but unfortunately a smaller one beat him to my lure. Probably a good thing though as the smaller one still managed to reef me and it took the last of the daylight to wait him outand finally get him up after he swam free of the reef. even then though he still had sufficient strength to snap clean through a gamma single lure hook as I was about to land the little blighter.
Cheers
col.

[ActiveAngler]

Hi Col,

I have to say you are certainly persistent with that small metal lure of yours and it pays off for you also.

How about showing us some of this big bad ass fat salmon in your fish farm?

Cheers - Ben

[Daniel W]

Knocked off early today so I jumped in a boat for a quick sesh in the last 30min of light.
Cheers
col.

Man your keen going to that effort for just 30mins or so, but it looks like it payed off for you. Beats watching tv though.
Danny.

[wrasseman]

Ben, I'll see what I can do.

Man your keen going to that effort for just 30mins or so, but it looks like it payed off for you. Beats watching tv though.
Danny.

No effort, just go to the car grab the rod and jump back in a boat.

Col.

[adidaspeteman]

How about showing us some of this big bad ass fat salmon in your fish farm?

Yeah, would love to see 'em too?!

[wrasseman]

Pete & Ben, you asked for it.
just a couple of pics from a weight check this week. Not salmon though and still a way to grow.
Col.

[peter]

col,correct me if i am wrong but arent they trumpeter? are the juveniles caught in the wild or spawned on farm,what are the growth rates like,are they as fast as salmon?

[adidaspeteman]

Cheers Col, tell us more about the stripey test project.

[wrasseman]

Yes they are stripey trumpeter, hatchery stock from TAFI. ATM we are running a growth trial on these fish of which we have just a few thousand split between three pens (2x40m, 1x20m) each of a different age/size - this pen was the middle one in age/size.
Each pen is on a different diet either one of two custom made diets or a commercial "winter" kingfish diet and all are fed using AQ1 reverse demand feeders with a 3 step adaptive program.
The fish tend to feed hardest in the morning so this would be the time to fish for them, the earlier the better. They are very hardy fish and are pretty great to work with but as yet the growth rate is lower that that of salmon. It probably will remain so but they could still be commercially viable. Higher densities in the cages will probably help and there is a fair bit of scope for diet improvement.
Cheer Col.
PS. the fish in the first pic and being held are in an anaesthetic (aqui-s) bath, not dead.