What went Wrong ?, where do we go from here?

[smashed crabs]

Hi all

As you are all aware im a commercial fisherman , What i have to say is probably going to get me into some hot water with other Pro's but i do not care .

I will start with there are two kinds of Pro's ..........

When i got into fishing an early age had this vision that a Pro was but what i didn't know was there were two types and i took time to learn.

One type of Pro is ........
A person that got out there and did battle , caught some fish and made a good honest living , they worked hard and had pride , most of all these were the Pro's that had respect for everyone and everything and never went around as if they where king shit , these where the fisherman that fished on ice , they had small boats and supplied the local market with fresh product.They went about there business doing the best they could do with what they had and bigger and better was just a dirty word .These fisherman went out daily and came back to port or went out for as long as there ice could hold( around 7days)

The other .............
Then you have your Pro fisherman with bigger better faster boats with all the wizz bang gear and they fished on frezzer's , massive fish holding capacity , increased work times ,larger crews, go any where , abilty to handle rougher weather. Big dollar pays ect

So there are two types of Pro's as veiwed by me back when i started.

When i started it was on the smaller working for the Old timer fisherman , the little bloke , i would look at the others with their frezzers , their catches and how well they actually did in comparison to what we where doing , many a time i would always look at the big bucks and say to my skipper just look at them , we need to get a frezzer , we need what they have got or we will just fall behind .
To which my skipper at the time said if thats what you want then get the fk of my boat , i took this as an insult and got into a argument with him over it.
Can you imagine a young fella with bugger all knowledge trying to tell a seasoned salty what he should be doing, here is me saying you behind the time old fella and move over because we are the next generation , we are going to do it bigger and better than you ever will you old fart , all he could say was some of us fish for a living and others do it for other reasons.

Well i didn't have a clue what he was on about , i just thought he was a fool. I thought well i will spend me time on his boat but as soon as i get the chance to jump ship to a better one then i will .

This bloke really got on my nerve at times , i would catch a fish and before i could even get it of the hook he would say pop it back , bang another argument . I really did think he was a fool , a fish was either to small or two big or we got enough of that type throw it back or that fish is in egg ect ect.
On land this old Pro was a good bloke , just add water and he turned into the fish police.
After working for this bloke for sometime he asked me if i learnt anything,i told him no , he told me that i was a lots cause and went on to say then you are no better than them other Pro's that you so much admire and aspire to be and you will always be part of the problem so pack your bags.

So i did pack me bag , we jumped in the ute and half way home he pulled over the side of the road and he exsplained to me what i should have learnt and the difference between himself and other Pros , the pro's which i thought at the time was the ducks nuts.

He told me there are now two types of Pro's out there.He told me fisherman like him will always be a thing of the past the way it's heading, he told me if i fished just like him i will never make the big bucks , he told me yes his style was old and out of date , he told me as long as he could still stand on the back deck he would never be one of them, it's them others that will change the face of fishing for the worse, sooner or later it will be near impossible to just make a living because money has taken over greed is the driving force, these blokes do not selective fish , they will never put back , big boats cost lots to run , put simply they do not care , small operators like me can't compete against them , they hammer the close grounds where i fish and then keep going wider when it's all gone.

I saw the point this Pro made , i knew that we were being forced to go further to fill a box , we only had ice so we still could only do a set amount of days.I can say i did continue to work for this bloke for sometime , and i never did work for them other types of Pro's.

We had our own unwritten Code of Conduct , we had values and morals and common courtesy for others and the most important of we practised a very defined form of selective fishing.


What went Wrong?
I think it's pretty clear what went wrong , The ranks where split one lot of Pro's went one way and the other Pro's are all but gone. Gear and Technology came into play , bigger better , there is no Code of Conduct and if there is it's a complete joke , there are no morals , common courtesy has been chucked out the window and Selective fishing has been inforced by rules and regulations purely because of the path they went , it is commercial fisherman that shaped the way it is today. No one else is to blame.

So in regards to Saltwater fishing " where do we go from here?"

Kind Regards
SC

ps i have some very interesting information towards commercial activites in the salt that are an accident waiting to happen, i will add this as this thread kicks on.

[honda900]

SC,

Money is what happened.. The old bloke you were working for sounds like a true Pro fisherman, if only he could instill his vision into some of the bigger operators.

regards
HOnda.

[murf]

a bit of flack coming your way I would say

the amount of crap I copped from trying to reduce catches in a local fishing comp saw some heavy shit fly around and that was over a haircut or a bunch of flowers so look out

well done for voicing your opinion

cheers Murf

[Si]

good story smashed.

[snodger 08]

Sc, Mate I have put myself in a similar situation before and honestly realise how much guts it took to say what you have said. Good on you for doing it. Its not just the fishing industry that is like that. The construction industry needs a shake up as well. Got a few fat cats in my company crying GFC and at the same time reducing their staffs wages and conditions to maintain the profit they had before the GFC. Its nice of the workers to help them out with their profits like they have. Anyhow I am steeling your thread. Good luck mate.
Steve

[mylestom]

Very refreshing to read your post, it applies to a lot of things in life, not only Pro fishing and amateur fishing. Whats in it for them now, how much they can take, legal or otherwise with no thought to the future and their children or grandchildren.

Really enjoyed you post, a lot of people do appreciate the manner in which you put it across.

Good luck

Trev

[ashh]

very simply its just evolution, yeah sure there are the old ways but the new ways are more efficient.
I can relate somewhat in a different way.
When working with my late father as a younger fella, allmost eveything he did as a cabinet maker was with old manual tools, hand planers, hand sanders, hand saw, hammer and nails etc etc...
The only power tools in his kit was a battery drill and circular saw.
Look at it nowadays and there is a power tool for everything.
Evolution and efficiency is all it comes down to....
Watching my dad work really gave meaning to that phrase 'they dont build em like they used to'.....

[REEF KINGS]

Its funny people still go on about this like they do its quite simple, COMMERCIAL fishermen have quota to abide by and this isnt free, it comes at a cost like buying product in for a supermarket, so COMMERCIAL fishermen have to buy quota first before so called slaying fish, and in these circumstances can only take as much as the previous quota bought to fish, anyone who thinks COMMERCIAL fishermen are taking too much fish, look again we dont issue the quota that comes through, its what is available and bought to fish from each year!

[smashed crabs]

Its funny people still go on about this like they do its quite simple, COMMERCIAL fishermen have quota to abide by and this isnt free, it comes at a cost like buying product in for a supermarket, so COMMERCIAL fishermen have to buy quota first before so called slaying fish, and in these circumstances can only take as much as the previous quota bought to fish, anyone who thinks COMMERCIAL fishermen are taking too much fish, look again we dont issue the quota that comes through, its what is available and bought to fish from each year!

REEF KING ,, who's fault is that ?

[sandbankmagnet]

Sigh........

What's the point of this one? Who are we supposed to love now? Who are we supposed to hate?

Hang on,, is it that some people are nice and some aren't?

It happens in every facet of life. There are $%@*'s and there are nice people in every industry.

[the gecko]

Good story. You could say that about almost any industry. I was thinking of the banks as I read it.........the search for more profits is driven by the shareholders, and any greedy extra charge is justified by saying 'the shareholders have a right to expect profit growth....'.

[PinHead]

I know I would hate to go back to doing things the primitive way we did them in the 70's. in my industry

[rcfisher]

Evolution all the way. I am sure the Pro fisherman a long time ago would of went out without outboard engines and ice. So who is correct?

[smashed crabs]

Evolution all the way. I am sure the Pro fisherman a long time ago would of went out without outboard engines and ice. So who is correct?

My wifes family back in the day caught fish of the Palm Islands and supplied fish to the local area and this was in the War days , my father in law can tell a few stories of how the fishing was then ( unreal ) and how they used wet wells to hold fish live untill they could get the product in , ice was very hard to come by .
Then you had your other local fisherman that used fish traps consisting mainly of rock , fishing was very good . The biggest technological advancement that these old timers saw was ice, Ice changed everthing even at a time when boats were slow , ice for them meant they could go that one step further.

Back then they exspressed general concern for what lay ahead and wondered if it was indeed a change for the better.

Take this forward to a different time and a different place.
Sometime in the 60's in Moreton Bay there was the birth of the big tawler.
Most of the trawlers back then where quite small and they where all ice boats then along came "Tondolayo or Tondy for short , Tondy was the flag ship the pride of the fleet , she was around the 37ft mark and the biggest trawler around.

Tondy could haul bigger nets , she had a holding capacity of 3tonne , she could work more nights and simply put do everthing and more than other trawlers could do , instantly Tondy was seen as a threat , the years that followed saw the birth of bigger better , Tondy became obsolete as did the other boats in which she super seeded, it's very much a dog eat dog world ' shape up or ship out '

Now i was around and working on one of the last trawlers that took up where Tondy fell behind , these were trawlers far superior , much bigger nets again , 6tonne ice box , whizz bang gps units and sounders that kinda looked no better than the screen on an artari game.

I can clearly remember the skipper getting quite pissed of at how he could no longer compete and how the grounds were ruined by trawlers with frezzers , they could travel anywhere jumping from one paddock to another leaving nothing behind , these trawler operators didn't care if they cleaned out all of the prawns from what was to us called local grounds ( please refer to bragging - giving away secrets and read my posts)

What a trawler does to the sea floor is no different to farming the land , a tractor prepares ground for planting , a trawler does the same , this is why we refer to trawl ground as a paddocks.

To have a paddock means the ground has to be prepared , this is done overtime by removing anything on the sea floor and then placing what ever was there outside the range of the paddock , usually sponges and soft corals ect .

Once this is done it makes a great home for prawns to take up root so to speak.
Then the paddocks are managed , if the prawns are small in one then move to the next and so on.

Anyway local ice box trawlers had their close grounds and would manage these grounds, they didn't every really go anywhere else they stuck to them and this was truley the only form of substainable trawler fishing ,if you got no prawn you would simply steam home , you didn't go anywhere else you just couldn't with ice.

So in that we can again see another case of one breed of fisherman bowing out to another for the worse .I have to say that that bloke did upgrade to a frezzer but went bust after 12months , the Trawler is still sitting in sitting on a rope , he just couldn't part with her , she has been sitting now for 15years..

I can remember on one of the trips i did with this skipper , we were trawling just north of the Palm Islands , last lift of the morning , spilled the bag on the sorting box and out popped hundreds of baby red emporer, Skip started yelling and screaming get them fkn fish into the box , get the deck hose , i can tell you all it was a mad rush , sadly at least 20% died , we must of spent hours with them fish to make sure they had every chance they could , funny thing is here is the prawn still sitting on the sorting lid going bad , pretty amazing stuff when a trawler fisherman can put his own fisherie to the side to save another fisherie.
Those prawns went bad but didn't go to waste they went for bait , anything that was dead and usuable was used a bait and not just chuck out.There was a by catch and it was used.

In another story
It was actually not to long after i finished working on this trawler that Pro's turned against Pro's in a big way and in more ways than one were their own worst enemy .

Trawler fisherman beleived they had the sole right for prawns but they where also keeping sand crabs and bait

Bait fisherman beleived they should be the only ones to have bait

Sand crabbers beleived they should be the only ones to have sand crabs

Line fisherman beleived they should be the only ones allowed to have fish

the list goes on , no one actually knows who started the fight over rights to this and that but was ensued was a big bitch fight , individual fisheries did get there own way but it had no benefit what so ever .

Trawlers could no longer keep bait or sand crab to sell , so what happend to by-catch ? easy it still gets caught it just goes over board dead .Many trawlers did operate at a more relaxed and comfortable manner with the sale of by catch, ice box trawlers were high on this list , having no frezzers they could make ends meet .

Line fisherman ended up getting rid of small players such as anyone who didn't meet a set effort criteria , line fishers knocked out the fisherman that actually did the least amount of fishing , trawler fisherman and others had the symbol atta to licence so they could give the prawns a break and go play around with a bit of line fishing .

Trawler fisherman ended up giving the bait fisherman a hammering over the rights to prawns .

Anyway there is a lot more to it than a few simple words , bottom line is they all shafted each other for this and that .

It is wrong that this happend and it still happens now within the four fisheries .
At the end of the day product is being put back into the water dead because of the way it everthing is stuctured and commercial fisherman should be ashamed of themselves , Pro's have shaped the way it is today and we all have to bare it at every level what ever our interests are towards fisherie resources.

I stepped out of fishing just over 5years ago for a little break only to come back and find not only was it bad when i left but even worse , im still sitting here wondering do i even make an attempt to get back into a life style that i loved so much.

I find out now that there are more endorsements symbols than there was when i left.Take net fisherman for instance , some turkey must of decided that they deserved the right for shark more than anyone else , so now netters must have the symbol needed to keep shark , okay thats great but now what happens to the shark that is caught as by catch ? , it's chucked away dead , what a waste.

If persons beleive that having a symbol manages fisheries resources then they are wrong .

Trawlers and netters still have by catch , the only difference now is that by catch is no longer kept if you don't have the symbol that was gained by the effort criteria, it goes over board dead which is a complete and utter waste of fisheries resourses. There is no decrease in effort and infact i would like to point out that effort was infact increased.

As an example ..........
Take the bait fisherman at the time he was up in arms bitching and carring on how they where so hard done by , trawlers supplied lots of bait , bait fisherman hated this because they beleived trawlers should only be allowed to supply prawns , bait netters saw an opportunity to get it all for them selves , in doing so they could drive the price up and have complete control over the market towards bait , bait netters did get there way but in doing so there was a short fall in the market , so bait fisherman stepped up to the short fall.

Okay so bait fisherman get their way and trawlers got the raw end of the stick so how did any of this help to reduce effort ? it didn't facts are Trawlers cant keep the bait anymore and chuck it over the side and bait fisherman stepped up effort to meet short fall ,more product is being caught, so all in all just another big fk up created by Pro's yet again.

Okay thats enough for now but to answer you question over who is correct , i think i will leave it up to you to form your own opinion.

I only started this thread to shed some light on what i saw going wrong and i havn't even got to the where do we go from here . This is a veiw that has never be told by another Pro , i quess in a way you could call it whistle blowing of sorts but i don't beleive this to be the case , i beleive that most commercial fisherman these days do not deserve the right to call themselves Pro's and they fly in the face of everything that was was good and set the the future in which we now all live by and continue to bitch and carry on at everyone but themselves just to suit themselves.

I can't say i know a Mackeral fisherman that wasn't happy with the bag limit for rec's. Or a reef fisherman that wasn't jumping for joy over bag limit reductions.

If anybody has made a true reduced effort it is recreational fisherman , anyone who thinks there is a reduction in effort by commercial fisherman are just kidding themselves.You can go through all the records you like to see there are no reductions to catches( i really hope someone tries to say otherwise)

We all heard this and that about buy outs on licences, reductions in fishing effort and we are so good pat us on the back , this is all utter crap and came in as a trade off , you got reduced bag limits and they gave you the crap that they took a few fisherman out of the picture, many of you felt good about this after all what could be better than buy outs of commercial licences, it would have been a great and fair trade as long as the commercial effort was reduced but put simply it wasn't and infact it increased effort in other fisheries and once again another fk up.

Talk is on the table right now over a couple of these fisheries and quess what is going to effect you guys, we got ourselves yet again another case of Pro verses Pro caused by Pro's .

Once again a fisherie wanting it all that involves a trade of with you guys and all the time they sit there and say fk recreational fisherman and we want we want , well im a Pro and i say fk the Pro's they have gone to far and have been given enough time and many chances to make a difference.

Kind Regards
SC

Ps , im still in one piece no major threats yet

[smashed crabs]

they sit there and say fk recreational fisherman and we want we want

I will have to take this bit back , totally unfair and uncalled for on my behalf and a non just personal attack with no thought or concideration as to how my comment could be perceived , comment comes out as if to say i personaly know every Pro fisherman and that they all hate rec's

My apologies

SC