Planes used for Mackeral Fishing

[devocean]

Overheard a couple of old pro mackeral fishermen today talking about how they slayed the macks last week using a plane to find them. It almost sounded as if they were rounding em up. Is this legal and has anyone else ever heard this being done before

[mal-laurie]

i would say a spotter plane was used the same way the whale watchers use them to find the whales.

cheers mal

[Sportfish_5]

Where they talking about aeroplanes or trolling planes ?

[krtazy]

i would say spotter planes same as the whales

[Wild_Side]

yeh I've heard of it being done. Dun'o if its legal. :P
Prix >:(, its no wonder the big numbers of doggies and spotties
have gone. :-[

[ba229]

Nah what you do is troll a 5km longline with hooks all along it out the back of your plane. ;)

[chemmy]

they do it in south australia when they round up tuna and put them in fish pens then sell them on the fish markets in japan.

it was on the dicovery chanel a few months back.

[steve_n]

Sounds like they had spoons behind a planing board chasing doggies. Git along little doggies. Yip Yah!!!

[raefpud]

Youd be surprised how many big fishing companies do it - its not uncommon to be using planes or helicopers. There is even a satellite imaging system being used - poor fish dont stand a chance.

[Daintreeboy]

If the guys are regulated by a quota it doesn't worry me how they achieve it. Either by struggling all year to reach it or use a plane to get there in half the time is fine with me as it's the quota that determines how much they take par year anyway.
Cheers, Mark.

[fly_1]

The planes are used for spotting only !!! Planes are also used for the prawn season in north queensland. (banana prawn season )

[mangajack]

Planes have been used for at least the last 25 yrs or so that i know of. Pro beach netters use local light aircraft to spot schools travelling up or down the coast and will eagerly pay the pilot 50 bucks for ringing them on the mobile if they spot a school coming thier way.
Its been common practice for banana prawns in the gulf to fly about for a mudboil for many yrs.
Plus during october and november until the new zoning came in it was occuring spotting the coral spawn drifting to shore. Pelagics run thick along the spawn feeding on the huge amount of baitfish near the floating mess.

Spotting from planes has been around for a real long time........Ive even charted a small aircraft for the morning and sussed out new locations and marked with gps the places i want to look at with the boat in the weeks to come. There are an awful lot of things to see from a few hundred metres in the air you will never notice from the boat.

Jack

[dfox]

All spotties can only be caught by line fishing under the new regs, and a maximum of 150 fish are allowed on each commercial fishing boat at a time, most schools of spotties average out around 2kg each so these fellas that cleaned up probably had around 300kgs of fish. Thats a big difference to the quantities that were previously caught by netting. Line fishing is usually done by a two man crew. Under this estermation we can asume they recieved around $6 a kilo, $1800 devided by 2 = $900. If they chartered a plane to locate them, add that cost to the normal operating costs and taxes, these fellas deserve what they made. Remember this is only if they caught the full 150 fish.
Devo i wouldnt be to worried mate, chances are the local fish and chip shop has cooked the lot by now and the majority of the school is still swimming...

[ba229]

Well said Foxy. About time we had a bit of rational in the over bloated reco "blame all but me" cause.

Just some guys out there making a living if you ask me, and they use the tools of the trade that help them best.

[basserman]

fox was thinking the same thing
would sure cost a bit however what some of these felles will do is use the spotter to find the schools but more to the point find the larger fish school
huge diffrence if they catch their quota of fish of 1.5kg fish to their quota of say a school of lage 2-3kg school fish ;)

[devocean]

Nah I know the local mac fishermen , good blokes, most of it goes down south. They have to work for em now which makes me a bit happier. Couldnt stand it when the use to net the buggers.

[Burley_Boy]

If you're a pro fisherman then you can't have the "lets give the fish a chance" argument. They're pros and need to catch their quota asap to make their vocation viable. If the quota is wrong then that is a fish management issue. I've got no probs with a pro using whatever means possible to catch their quota as quickly as possible, whether the fisheries are managed well or sustainably is another matter that I know bugger all about.