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Few in the Seaway...nth wall always seems to hold them....need a boat though
Mick
ok guys
Sounds like you all have the basics right regarding tides, wind moons blar blar! There is one really big factor that you are all missing, baitfish?? Tailor are a schooling fish as you might already know and you will always get a few loners swimming around by themself but on the whole there needs to be good amounts of bait in the water to bring them into the surf gutters. Your can have the perfect conditons for Tailor but if the bait schools aren't hanging around chances are you will not find the tailor schools. If you remember back in the old school days when we all learnt about the FOOD CHAIN! Small fish get eaten by big fish, big fish get eaten by bigger fish, bigger fish get eaten by bigger fish again and so on and son on.
Few in the Seaway...nth wall always seems to hold them....need a boat though
Mick
Yeah, I know that about baitfish, its only logical
I'm keen to get some for me and the old bloke, anyone got a boat to take an old salt out?
Bondy
Get across to Sth Straddie (water taxi/ferry etc from Runaway Bay/Marina mirage etc) if you dont have a boat...fish the nth seaway wallOriginally Posted by bondy99
Tailor came through where i was fishing about a week ago bagged out in about 30-40 minutes only choppers just legal size.
in case anyones interested in where i was fishing was deep into one of the gold coast canals (where all the baitfish are)
find the bait and you find the fish.
Thanks bron
Have you guys noticed a decline in the tailor numbers over the last few years?
This time of year, Lake Macquarie (NSW) is usually full of them. But not so for the last few years. They have been few and far between.
Is it the same further north? Rumor has it the tailor are being netted and exported to .......asia. As a result, not as many for us amateurs.
Noosacat 3100
I stand to be corrected but I think it is illegal for commercial netters to target tailor.........funny thing ozlongboarder but up here, although the numbers have declined very, very considerably over the last 30 years, there seems to be bigger fish about than used to be the case; certainly they are thin on the ground though. Schools of choppers are nowhere near as common as they were 30 years ago. I remember thinking that the initiative some years ago that did something to restrict the take of tailor from Fraser (sorry, very vague on the details of this now) actually had a positive effect on tailor quality, if not quality, hereabouts at least.
Having said that, back then you could bet on the tailor coming in to the river on the full moon in June. Last 15 - 20 years or so, serendipity seems to play the major part on when they rock up; certainly they follow the baitfish (garfish, whitebait, frogmouths etc) so maybe something is happening to the baitfish ......ahem.......
Cheers.
Tailor are still being netted on the east coast of Australia despite many efforts to stop it. As for Fraser Island they only net hook point and the far northern tip around sandy cape. As for other surf beaches in SE Qld it is open slatter! If you think the netters are only netting Mullet you need to get your head out of the sand as these guys take what ever is on offer as "BY CATCH" There are alot of factors in the declining numbers of Tailor and other fish stocks but netting is the single biggest problem facing future generations. (And commericial fishing) as the old saying goes, "if it isn't broken, don't fix it!" Well sorry to say and I think alot of us weekend warriors will agree its not broken, its totally ####ed up??
I'm having a rough guess but I would bet new technology has enabled exports to Asia on smaller scales allowing hauls to become profitable again.
I have good info from a guy who works for AQUIS that we get all the crap and most of our good seafood gets exported to Asia.
The whole ''fresh produce for Aussie plates'' is a load of old bollocks...
We get the fish that John West rejects.
As far as netting SEQ and North NSW goes some local told me they hit the beaches just before a certain organised fishing competition takes place down south...
On the other hand I managed to hook one that slipped the nets this morning, poor fish was alone and confused and had taken to living it rough with Flatheads..
Tailor on Live Herring and Flathead on 4'' Soft Plastic.jpg
Frankgrimes,
Done that before, they operate different hours to me and I'm not into camping on that island overnight. With ones own vessel you came and go as one pleases.
Bondy
MudRiverDan,
Thanks, but I had already know that to be the case, it's the same as beef, we export our top A Grade meats to overseas and heavily subsidised and only have less than B grade meat return...I'm no rocket scientist but one can tell the difference. Seafood is no different unless its freshly caught and sold direct from a trawler and not from wholesaler / retailer where the item could have been much older, inferior with shelf life diminished
It's Joe Citizen i.e. the people that don't fish and upperty snobs would not know any different....ooohhh
Bondy
It seems that the 'hidden' population of tailor that Fisheries are relying on to recruit, are still hiding. Either that, or there never was a hidden population to rely on and the researchers who discounted hyperstability as being a factor got it wrong and stocks are just very low. Or another possibility is that the remaining population of tailor are predominantly migrating offshore to avoid fishing pressure - as is known to be the case to at least some degree.
My opinion is that there is a combination of factors - stocks are very low and a predominantly offshore migration of the remaining fish is occurring - and there never was a hidden population and hyperstability is alive and well.
On baitfish presence - on the Noosa North Shore we have had lots of baitfish shoal up in the surf zone in the last couple of years and the tailor have not been present, which would never have occurred even 5 years ago, let alone previous to that. Tailor on a northern spawning migration do not necessarily require baitfish presence to spawn in surf gutters. Their instinct is to spawn first of all and feeding is a secondary priority - like pretty well all species. This is why it can be difficult to get spawning tailor, or tailor preparing to spawn, to take baits or lures.
Before these last swells, there was a lot of bait in the surf in front of Teewah and the odd school of small dart were feeding on them, but there were not any tailor amongst the bait - once again.
The point is, that people have been claiming that bad tides, or too much swell, or poor gutter formations, or not enough exposed rocks, or whatever, have caused their poor results over the last few years, when the reality is that the tailor are not really available any more like they were.
I could write another 15000 words on this topic but I'll save it for the doc I'm currently preparing into the ins and outs of netting and the 'non-consumptive effects' that it causes to species pops. These non-consumptive effects, or non-lethal effects, or trait mediated responses, are anticipated to cause as many, or more fish mortalities in overfished species as does the actual killing of fish in nets, by recs or through natural predation by larger species. This is particularly the case in migratory pelagic species that have a smaller size - at - age through phenotypic plasticity/genetic or evolutionary change - as is the case with tailor - though the actual reasons for the smaller size - at - age in tailor is unknown, but the result is the same irrespective of which and the cause is always overfishing.
Simple solution.
Legislate that beach haulers have to replace what they take. If their license says they can take 10 tons they have to put back an equivalent amount of juveniles to produce 10 tons of mature fish .
This guarantees they have an industry and creates new employment opportunities for aqua culture to replace the harvest. Everybody wins.
There is potential for that to work Rob, but - aquaculture raised larvae/fish do not have innate antipredator responses that wild raised larvae/fish are born with. This means that as few as 1 hundredth the number of larvae will survive in the wild to legal size in aquaculture raised fish compared to wild raised fish (Atlantic salmon). Therefore the pros would have to contribute as many as 100 times the number of juveniles to achieve 10 tonnes of harvestable product than would wild spawning fish. However, there is also potential for aquaculture raised juveniles to be 'trained' with antipredator responses prior to release to the fishery - which has been demonstrated in several species but particularly Atlantic salmon.
And - if the netters are still taking fish from the beach after contributing the juveniles, then area avoidance of netted regions will still take place, migrations and spawning are still altered, smaller size - at - age still occurs and the non-consumptive effect is that it wouldn't be worth the cost and effort and especially after low survival rates of aquaculture raised juveniles is considered. Not to mention the fact that, from a recreational fishing perspective, fish are still avoiding the nets in the surf and we are no better off at all.
There is only one method of attack that will work, and that is to create no netting areas that take into account the migratory and spawning habits of species and have appropriate bag and size limits for recs based on accurate biomass estimates - and not budgeting on 'hidden' populations which seems very unprecautionary. For tailor, the size limit must be increased to 40cm as recommended to FQ in the only recent available research on tailor conducted in 2004, so that more 1 and 2 year old fish are given the opportunity to spawn prior to capture. And when 80% of legally sized fish are estimated to be captured annually (2004 research), then this apsect would appear to be rather important - even for hidden fish.
Well, there is another way - marine parks where no fishing occurs which would work, but based on the available evidence of fish returning to rec only areas after nets have been banned, most likely unnecessary and not in the interests of our economic health.
However, there are potentially difficulties with reviving tailor stocks. If an evolutionary change has occurred in tailor to cause smaller size - at - age which is distinctly possible or even probable, then it can take as many as 20 or more generations for these evolutionary changes to be reversed under NO fishing pressure and recovery can be extremely slow or non-existent. As stated in the 2004 research - "if the population's ability to reproduce is not better protected, a single year of low recruitment, could necessitate dramatic management measures. If a recruitment downturn were to happen in the tailor fishery, under current management and fishing pressure, there is a strong chance that the fishery would need a complete closure for several years to recover, and even then recovery would be uncertain".
That statement horrifies me, when in the same paper, such a heavy reliance is being placed on a hidden population to recruit.
Quick note: an evolutionary change to a 30% reduction in size - at - age has been demonstrated to occur inside 4 generations.
How about the baits schools?
No doubt they are being netted, this would greatly reduce the size and the reproduction of the fish.
Cheers
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