A Good Tailor Season....

[Slider]

Rando, that's an unknown. My take - tailor will spawn as a school or in multiple schools at the same location when the conditions are suitable for maximum reproduction. If what you say is right, and I don't rule it out, it means that they would potentially be spawning at a time and place that is not conducive to maximum reproduction and therefore be detrimental to the overall success of that spawning. I don't personally believe that it would trigger a mass spawning. If there were say 100 anglers all releasing the eggs and milt over a short time span in the same location, then maybe, but I'd still be sceptical.

[Slider]

Now George. Everything was flowing so smoothly until we combined your posts with the results that Scott has been getting at the northern end. On the information available, my theories have just had a great big hole blown through them.
And I emphasise, on the information available!
We don't know the exact activities of the netters.
No such situation has occurred in my case study area of the Noosa North Shore.
I would suggest that there has been either a period of no result for the beach seine guys (2 weeks) to allow some fish to return for Lone Wolf and Chris to be able to catch what they have. Not uncommon and is included in my literature.
Or the fish that they have taken have originated from the passage and have not been exposed to distress vocalisations from netted fish on the surf side.
Sound in water does not bend - so if the nets are on the surf beach then the sound won't penetrate around the corner into the passage.
The fish they've been getting are at the outcurrent that exists at the Caloundra Bar I believe and it is possible that these fish have been in the passage for some time.
I've struck a similar situation at the Noosa River mouth with ' yellow' tailor that are that colour from the amount of time that they have spent in the river.
And the bonito could well have been coming from more offshore waters - you mention the word trawlers George.

Or there are a lot of deaf tailor around Bribie.
Sorry only kidding BUT - not as rediculous as it sounds. In an experiment in the US when scientists were assessing the effects of naval sonar on fish, they accidentally deafened a whole school of I think haddock from memory by having the volume too high. I am certain that I have caught deaf fish at Teewah. They would be rare in a natural situation, but I know from my research that they exist.

Look out Linds the sceptics will be jumping all over this one.

[rando]

Guys
Ive asked Michael Burke from the DPI & F to offer some expert advice on the subject of artificial reproduction for Tailor. He is gathering some information & will post in the next few days. Stay Tuned.
rando

[Slider]

Beauty, thanks Rando.

[tshort]

Large schools of very small tailor just off Kawana beaches 2 weeks ago.
Hope this isnt too verbose.

[Slider]

All adding to the information network elprez. They didn't come in here unfortunately.

Thanks mate and would love to hear any reports of fish or a lack of fish and also netting activity.

Linds

[manchild]

Thanks Linds i think you right if you check my reports i had no prob pullin the fish on the passage side .Caloundra bar is a different story ,thats why assumed straight away that Lonewolf fished there.You see there is a fairly rocky section in between the pin and the surfbeach with plenty of rocks underwater i think they wouldnt go there netting.Still the only explonation is netting as it went dead from 1 day to another overnight.saturday were about 20 schools workin the beach or close in including doggies tailor and bonitos ,with some longtails mixed in .So the very next mornin i turned up to repeat the beaut session ,i found plenty of bait so much so we castnetted some out off the surf -bout 200 hardiheads in 2 casts-anyway sunday mornin there were no schools as far the eye can see for hours .
cheers
George

[Slider]

That's a sure symptom George that the bait is still there. It's still here too with gannets bombing them but no terns. The bait isn't affected we can assume beacause it goes through the net and as such there hasn't been any previous trauma from this type of netting. Might be a different story if they started a pilchard fishery in SEQ.
No negative feedback yet guys - there must be someone?

I notice that we haven't received any confirmation from scott or Chris as to where their successful tailor spot is. Surely guys you don't mind telling everyone. Hope George and I haven't let the cat out of the bag. We are only guessing.

[manchild]

Well ill try again tomorrow ,gotta bloody up the new rod Ill ask Nigel in the morning he probably can shed some light on netting activity around bribie .
George

[Jackinthebox]

Regarding netting on the Southern Gold Coast beaches - yes, the mullet netters (multiple crews) are there on North Kirra beach every year around June/July'ish when i'm driving to the Tweed to chase Jewies.
Don't know if they target Tailor at all.

On a similar note, last year in the Tweed River, could hardly find any mullet in spots where huge schools normally school up like clockwork every year - any ideas on this ?

[Slider]

Jackinthebox. Whether they net the tailor or not doesn't actually matter. The fact that the same nets that catch the mullet catch tailor means that the distress vocalisations from mullet will alarm the tailor and cause an area abondonment by the tailor. Refer bait fish not being affected by mullet nets.
Mate, I am starting to wonder whether there isn't a problem with the mullet. There are no signs of mullet at the Noosa and last year was a particularly poor season across the board. Mullet stocks were at 40 % of virgin levels in 2002 so in 2006 I wonder where they are. Is a population crash imminent?

[Gorilla_in_Manila]

Lindsay,

Just want to say thanks for putting up all that info. Been interested in all of that for years and could never find a source of clear info on the migration of tailor. Read the first of your fish talk articles and then the migration one. Have saved them all and will print them out and go over them all in depth.

I was born and raised at Byron and together with my brother and old man have fished for tailor there most of our lives. All that you said is finally making some sense of what I've seen going on.

When I was fishing as a kid - say late 70's to mid 80's - there used to be a definite annual run of greenbacks approx june to august each year, then a chopper run or what we called christmas choppers dec to feb. My old man and myself would catch most of our tailor off surf club racing skis around the bommies off the cape and broken head, but I remember defenite times of getting gutters full of tailor down near belongil creek and further west toward greys lane that would hang around for a few weeks and were then gone. ie exactly as you described the flat waveless conditions for a moon phase or so.

It was about the late 80's to mid 90's that the mullet crews who used to regularly net in Byron, started doing shots for tailor coz the mullet stocks seemd to have collapsed.

Since then, I have never seen the tailor school up in the gutters around Byron like they did when I was a kid.

I've been working overseas for the last 14 years or so, but would chuck a line in every time I was home, but always had the updates as to how the old man was going. Unfortunately I nor he ever kept a log, but the general trend could be described as not only a decline in tailor numbers and qulaity in the mid 80's to late 90's, but also a disruption to the old definite two runs per year.

Over the last 5 years or so, though, it seems from the old mans reports that Byron has seen improvement in tailor numbers and quality. Fish can be caught just about all year round and unlike the old christmas run of choppers that were always empty, large and full tailor are turning up all through the warmer months as well as the normal winter run. Niether of the runs seems to be a definite or prolific as they used to be. Seems very much like you described as the cross over of various spawing migrations. There also seems to be bait schools finally getting back into the bay over the last few years, which I hadn't seen or heard much about since the late 80's. I'm pretty sure they stopped the tailor netting mid or late 90's but were still doing shots for mullet or bait fish when I was home last year. With the marine park there now, I hope / presume there will be no more beach netting and the spawning poulations of old will once again make Byron a stop on the way north.

Hopefully it will help in general recovery right up and down the coast.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing the great info. [smiley=2thumbsup.gif]
It has made a lot of sense out of what was a confusing change in the tailor habits I had observed as a kid.

Cheers
Jeff

[Burley_Boy]

Thanks for a great read mate.
Appreciate your work.

[Slider]

Gorilla. I found your reply very interesting from a couple of points of view.
Firstly the timing of the runs you desribed in the 70's and 80's. At Noosa we had fairly predictable runs of likesized fish throughout the migration as well.

May and June was the initial run of small to medium choppers of 30 - 45cm fish.
July and August would see some better quality fish coming through with schools of small greenbacks of 5 - 6lb. Saw many times these schools spawning to the south of Teewah.
September and October was always when the larger greenbacks would come through with fish that we saw up to 12 - 13lb.(Your June to August fish) There wouldn't be too many choppers at this time as I think the big tailor feed on them.
Things would slow down a little in November before the first of the southbound small greenbacks would hit the southern ends of the bays and beaches around mid December. There would sometimes be schools of choppers around Christmas that must have gone seaward from Sandy Cape and then come inshore once the large greenbacks have gone through. At Byron there is a longer time span and distance for those choppers to come inshore and would be why you experienced more of a chopper run than here on the southern migration.
January and February was a mix of 5 - 12lb fish mainly feeding on the whitebait and froggies and near river mouths especially after rain.
March and April things would slow down unless there was flooding of streams and the fish would congregate at the river mouths in the dirty water feeding on whiting, gar, prawns and froggies.

In recent times there does seem to be a more confused pattern to the migration in both directions as you say Gorilla. And your comment about full mature females in the warmer months which is something we don't have here certainly has me thinking. You also mention that most of the netting was of mullet and then later they focused on the tailor. It wasn't until then that the tailor really started to change here either. It would seem that as each species becomes a target, they learn to avoid the nets after a while. Dart have started to disappear during netting activity in recent years as the market for them increased.

The baitfish numbers are most definitely up here since I would say early March 2003 when a low pressure system flooded many streams and brought on a baitfish and pelagic show that lasted until the 1st week of May. There has been incidents of mass schooling of bait and pelagic action somewhere in the area each year since.

As much of my research is centred on this region,(Noosa) it is difficult to be certain that the same principles can be applied elsewhere. Especially with varying influences being applied in different locations. Reports such as yours Gorilla help substantially in putting an overall chart of tailor movements in place. And of course until there is a thorough understanding of the resource, then management of the resource can only be inefficient. I hear all sorts of stories from NSW in areas where netting has been stopped and how the salmon and tailor have come back in great numbers. Unfortunately at this point of time, it would appear that much of the good work south of the border is being undone once the fish arrive in Queensland waters where the fish are at their most vulnerable due to the nature of the spawning migration. It is, I would think, a little rediculous to be managing a single resource with 2 separate strategies depending on which side of the border they swim.

Gorilla, I suspect that there are anglers everywhere who have noticed similar things to us and haven't been able to work out why. If I hadn't seen a doco on the netting of atlantic salmon and heard the distress vocalisations they recorded from the netted fish and the subsequent area abandonment by the fish, then I'd still be confused also.

Lindsay

[liltuffy]

Really interesting read gents. I too have been surf fishing for the last thirty odd years and have noticed a number of your comments are correct, however one question lingers in my mind is if netting causes such an extreme level of area abandonement then why is netting still an ongoing industry??. I used to fish the gold coast as a kid with my surf fishing mentors (father and his best mate Alec Quelch), (Slider you may remember Alec and his brother Ronnie who used to fish Teewah since WW2, banana farmers from Pomona), we used to do very well up and down the coast especially when you used to have to park at Sea World and walk to the end of the spit at the Goldy (before the pumping wall and jetty).

I have maintained a fishing log book of all surf trips since 1985 and have noted that catching tailor up untill about 1995 was always a given, they were there and you caught them. Over the years especially at Moreton Is the number of netters has dropped off however so has the quality and quantity, why I do not know, some years we do well some years we don't. The years 2001 and 2002 was some of the best surf fishing I have had, 2003 was average, 2004 was shocking, 2005 was again average but with more bream than I can remember.

Why do think some days you can see netters hunting fish, shooting nets and pulling fish day after day and still have an ongoing fishery??, they obviously still have schools to net on an ongoing basis. Do not get me wrong I neither like or loathe these blokes rather see them as pursuing their chosen career in the best way they can and providing fish for the non fishing public, I just wish they would take up macrame or some other productive hobby instead of what they do and leave the beaches to us.

Maybe we all just have sour grapes because we don't get the reward for effort we used to and the netters are a soft target. Maybe just maybe we should all do our best so I can take my 3 year old surf fishing one day and he can catch a 10lb tailor like his old man has.