Will Gladstone become the east coast barra mecca ?

[BR65]

hear ya Pete, but I thought these were the smart fish, exposed to a thousand lures, awake to any offering we presented, cunning, wily, recalcitrant, just damned hard to catch - throw in a bit of current and some salt and hey presto

[BR65]

look at a dam fish, wind changes, barometer drops, shag farts and they shut down - but these bad boys are on a mission.

I'll be back in a minute, Im just off to the spa bath to sniff some salt - see what happens.....

[Peter4]

Run Debs, run! For God's sake if you know what's good for ya RUNNNNN...

[BR65]

OK, Im back, and all Ive got is swimmers ear and a nose bleed...

Certainly interesting times, who would have picked this thread 2 years ago?

[Awoonga]

hear ya Pete, but I thought these were the smart fish, exposed to a thousand lures, awake to any offering we presented, cunning, wily, recalcitrant, just damned hard to catch - throw in a bit of current and some salt and hey presto

So whats changed ? Thats a easy one to answer.These fish are hungry. What else could be the reason. You saw the screen shots that l put up the other day. Hundreds of fish. And every cast was a winner that day. They where at the mouth of the Boyne. The next day they had moved about two hundred meters further out. And yesterday l couldnt find them. l think that lot have moved further out into the harbour system.

[nagg]

Im scratching my head as to why all these smart hard to catch dam fish have suddenly become suicidal - pure numbers in a small loacality or is that salt water some sort of appetite enhancer - even though they have ridden the big slippery dip and entered a totally foreign world to the fish?
Have a look at their fresh water bretheren left behind, fish caught Vs man hours spent.....
Thinkin its the salt

Big fish with big appetites that all the sudden have to move around instead of sitting back and ordering takeaway. They also have a high concentration of their bretheren to compete with........
These fish are on a crash diet & fitness regime

Chris

[Snodger]

Big fish with big appetites that all the sudden have to move around instead of sitting back and ordering takeaway. They also have a high concentration of their bretheren to compete with........
These fish are on a crash diet & fitness regime

Chris

yep they are on the boyne biggest looser challenge and the menu is a lot leaner in the boyne.

[Vet]

The fish are still the same as they were in the dam. where they concentrate depends on current flow and in the dam this is often hard for people to predict so most people don't find where they are, but in the salt the current flow is determined by the tide and not so much the wind so it provides very obvious places for barra to be to rest and feed just out of a good current flow, so when the barra find these conditions they move in there, then 2000 of his mates think it's good so they hang out there too, suddenly creating a lot of competition for food and you turn smart dam barra into normal dumb salties. They still shut down with noise though. We caught 10 barra in the first hour on saturday morning before anyone arrived, the fish were actively feeding at 10 foot below the surface, then the first boat arrived to troll with outboard and the fishing slowed, then we caught another five fish and suddenly 10 boats were trolling over us and then a skeeter with 150 optimax joined in and the barra practically stopped. You then saw the barra hugging the bottom in 20plus feet of water. So we moved to a non pressured school and caught another 40 fish. cheers scott.

[Mick Baker]

Great to see these fish starting to disperse and thus increase their chances of surviving until next breeding season.Just another point to throw into the discussion - IS IT GENETICALLY DESIRABLE FOR THESE FISH TO BREED OR INTERBREED WITH WILD STOCK OR IS THERE A RISK OF INBREEDING AND GENETIC PROBLEMS? ie.how genetically diversified are the fish stocked into the impoundments where they can't breed.
It would certainly be great to see a sustainable large increase in the stocks.
It would also be great to have many of these fish tagged to discover how far they spread.I am sure there would be no shortage of volunteers to catch , tag and release them if fisheries supplied some tags or is it already too late and the fish have bolted.This is probably a first on this scale but maybe local clubs,stocking groups etc could have a supply of tags ready for any future occassions should they arise.
Cheers, Mick

[Pete62]

Hi Mick, some good points there. Kurt from the hatchery may be able to clarify this but pretty sure all brood stock are wild fish so shouldn't be an issue.

Pete