A Good Tailor Season....

[masterdusky]

Hey guys, who wants to put their neck on the line and predict wether it will or wont be a good tailor season...??

Also what do think dictates a good season from a bad one..weather, previous year captures...netting....

A little bit of history..LOL I remember back in 97-98 on the central coast NSW a year where the tailor pretty much by passed the coast until north of norah head,why...?? people said currents, other blamed netters... some said too many caught the previous yr..... the only thing that changed was a more prevalent appearance of beach netters the yr b4.. would this have impacted the following yrs catch... ??

any opinions....

[fishingbarry]

Md,
Ask Slider(Lindsay) what that bloke dont know about Tailor and there habits only the fish do.
Cheers
Barry
P.s. Over to you Slider

[Slider]

Yeah thanks Barry?
Was planning on hearing other points of view on this thread before I let loose.
It's interesting that Masterdusky used the Central NSW coast as an example as my mothers family originated from that area and told me some stories when I was very young about netting effects. My grandfather who was a bit of a legend around Wamberal and Terrigal region from the twenties through to the seventies told me that when they started netting in the thirties along Wamberal Beach, everything changed straight away. Went from big snapper and Jew off the rocks and tailor, salmon, bream etc along the beach in plague proportions to not being able to catch anything when netting was being conducted. His conclusion was that the fish were being spooked and were leaving the area. Earn Grant told me about the same thing happening in Moreton Bay as early as the 1890's.
Now I could go into a great deal of depth on this subject as I have researched specifically the effects of beach seine netting on fish populations for the last 3 years on nearly a full time basis. I now know exactly what occurs and it appears that my theories now have the support of our Federal Fisheries Research Facility and State Fishery Authorities to the point where it has been tabled at a recent meeting of and is to be discussed in greater depth at the next meeting in August.
In order to be brief here though, I would suggest that reading a post I put up some time ago,would be advisable.
I will add to Masterdusky's post any relevent material I believe needs to be in order for readers to have as much anecdotal evidence available to them as possible. This is a very serious issue that we should all have an understanding of, so as to assist in the prevention of a major catastrophe occurring in our inshore and potentially offshore waters.

As to what makes a good tailor season, (netting and pollution aside) there are 2 factors that will influence this.
Firstly - baitfish. If there are healthy baitfish numbers in a locality then the tailor will be drawn to that locality and increase the likelihood of good catches by anglers. This year has seen an improvement in bait populations on the Sunshine and Gold Coasts as a direct result of a more normal wet season occurring here.
Secondly - beach formations. Sand has been building up along most 'natural' beaches for decades due to a lack of cyclones and low pressure systems that erode the beaches. A prevailing northerly wind pattern causing mostly calm seas inshore has been adding to the sand content of most beaches at a rate that no living person has seen before. Of course those beaches exposed to this unnatural phenomenon have actually being eroded more than they would normally be with a conventional south east trade wind pattern. Erosion of the beaches is what causes gutter and hole formations and thus locations for bait and smaller surf species such as whiting and dart to inhabit. This in turn presents opportunities for tailor to feed in these locations as is their instinct especially on a spawning migration. These formations also allow anglers to target tailor in a more efficient manner due to access, reduced sweep and surf reefs being exposed. This year with several systems causing erosion along our beaches, we have better beach formations than we have had for several years.
There are no other influencing factors, as tailor being a migratory and schooling species will do the same thing every year without outside influences such as netting or pollution affecting their movements. It is an instinctive thing and occurs as a result of millions of years of evolution.
So with all things being equal and no weed present on Teewah Beach or Fraser at this stage, then we are in for a good season.
The only thing other than pollution that will alter this is netting activity. That is beach seine netting of mullet and other species, or inshore prawn trawlers with a fish bycatch.

Anybody interested in an in depth explanation of why netting has such an impact on fish stocks and fish location can email me and I can email to you articles that I have written on the subject. But first I'll bring the previously mentioned post back on to page 1 so that you can read that first.

[Slider]

The above mentioned post is actually in 'saltwater reports - estuary, beach bay and river'.
If a mod would be kind enough to place in saltwater chat I would be very grateful.

And my email - ldines@bigpond.net.au

[Slider]

I'm hoping to attach here the first in a series of articles that I've written that was published in QFM last November. If it isn't here then I failed in the attaching process.

[fishingbarry]

No worries mate , the more we read the more we understand the more we can do to try and protect our future as rec fishermen.

[Slider]

Alright, it worked!

This is the second article in the sequence and will save me a lot of time in responding to individual requests for the articles.

[Slider]

Number 3

[Slider]

And number 4 which is the last in the sequence as I started to run out of material on the subject other than a heap of scientific bs.

[Jewmaster]

bump

[masterdusky]

n e more opinions, hmm good articles Slider have read them somehwere b4...

n e more opinions..??

[nigelr]

Hiya masterdusky.
Mate I think Slider has given the definitive answer to your post.
For which I thank him, damn interesting reading!
Certainly where I live MNC NSW tailor size is way up following measures taken to reduce commercial targetting of tailor at Fraser Island some years ago.
At least, that's my theory of why they are bigger these days!
Cheers!

[Slider]

They most certainly haven't stopped commercial netting of tailor at Fraser. There are 2 N1 licenses still operable at Fraser for the lifespan of the license holder. Could show you footage from last year if I could work out how to upload it. Also shows a fair bit of bycatch that no effort was made to save. As they always do - get what they want first and worry about the small dart, whiting, long tom etc later. This was at sandy Cape and there was a slick of dead bycatch floating away from the scene in the footage. We were getting GT's and queenies before the pros turned up and didn't get or see a thing afterwards. It was the week before Anzac day long weekend and all the campers that turned up for the weekend caught nothing other than 2 toadfish. Long way to go to be robbed of any chance.
If anything an increase in tailor size and probably numbers is as a result of the Hincksia weed restricting catches by commercial and recreational fishers.

[masterdusky]

Hmm interesting Slider good to see that vid if u can upload it

[Slider]

Ok guys and girls. Now I am 100% certain that most if not all of the content of the above is correct. And I've got to tell you that it's taken a long time to convince myself that such radical theories could be correct. It wasn't something I decided one day to start writing about but more a case of the facts were staring me in the face and then deciding what to do with them. To sit on my hands and do nothing would be negligent. I did for a while and I had trouble sleeping at night. And the longer I sat the more the evidence presented itself. That's when I started to really research things. The more I researched the more convinced I became. To date I have yet to find anything that doesn't support the theories and by christ I have been looking. If anyone can give me anything that contradicts what I have written, I want to know about it so that I can be accurate in everything I do in this regard.
Of course it's all very well for me to say 'this is bad' or 'that's not right' and stick it in to Fisheries and ask what they're going to do about it. But that wouldn't be fair on them. No government fishery anywhere in the world has this information to work with, so to have high expectations that DPI is going to jump all over it and solve the problem for us is simply unrealistic. So my thought process was to find solutions myself that would potentially assist our Fisheries in being able to respond to this new information as quickly as is possible.
Attached here is something I've been working on in essence since I was 6 or 7 years old when my father first started talking about spawning migrations of tailor and the southern inshore migration of greenback tailor. The interrelations between tailor and baitfish movements and the effects of commercial and recreational hauls of tailor on their migration and population levels. He was no goose my old man and he was a damn fine tailor fisherman that was unbeatable on Teewah Beach until that is he taught me to be better than he was. So I also owe it to dad who left this world too early in life to do what he no longer can. He never got to see the evidence from hydrophone experiments that were being conducted in North America and elsewhere that vindicated everything that he was saying in the mid seventies. He never had the internet to do the research that I have now done and he died long before any of his theories could be acted upon. He was a man before his time and if I can achieve what he never got the opportunity to achieve in this regard, then there is satisfaction in that.
The attached article is near complete and is one remedy for some species of inshore fish. It also is radical, controversial and leaves me open to criticism from many parties. But I believe that it will work.
So Ausfishers, read, be critical, but please keep an open mind.

Lindsay