Netting of mullet

[Doctor_Bait]

The netters were out on Bribie's ocean beach yesterday morning. Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe it's not, but it's the first time I've fished Bribie without catching anything.

[Hainer]

Lets not blame the pros for everything thats wrong in fishing. Sure, I have my concerns about some of the professional fishing that goes on but what about the selling of fish and crab on the black market by professional ametures, or the raping of mud crabs by certain members of the community that are also known for the huge amounts of prawn they take.

As much as I would hate to see it, I think very strict bag limits with heavy fines for breaches or even possible closures of areas and species may be the way to go. Just look at the Blue Groper situation in NSW. Closed for how many years combined with strict bag limits and look how many there are now. Heaps.

I think we all agree there is a problem . Maybe we should all agree to disagree on the solution.

[banshee]

Fastboy,can't agree with you on commercial fisherman,but any member of the community that rapes a mud crab deserves to feel the full weight of the law !!

[Doctor_Bait]

They're game raping mud crabs, those claws can take off a finger they say let alone some bloke's c0_k

[bugman]

Gav - nice topic.

I was on North Straddie this weekend watching a pro I know beach net. He's an extremely well respected member of the pro fishing community and a very well reasoned and good bloke to boot.

Watch about three (that I saw) shots all within about 1km of the pin corner. Target was mullet but of course other species do get hit. Some tailor that I saw would have passed the 4kg mark. I wont lie that it broke my heart seeing them lying on the beach drowning but the target and predominant 90% catch was mullet.

In total - probably saw 7-9 tonnes of fish pulled off that area in 24 hours. Those fishing windows that they have wind (predominantly) and weather don't come along all the time though.

I think the netting of mullet can be sustained and in fact can make these guys a lot of money (beleive me they do get a hell of a lot more than $1.45kg for sea mullet). They know their time on netting (targeting) Tailor is limited and I actually support that. However I want to see these guys paid out for their loss of access to a communal resource. As rec fisho we don't own it - same as pro fishers don't own it. But the Govt has no plans to raise money to buy back licenses or species fishing rights which means these guys will probably continue to beach net tailor for a while yet. Early and late season Tailor can fetch these guys well and truly over $3.50 a kilo. My mate got $4+ for some early season stuff this year. (I saw tailor as $16 retail recently).

So our efforts should be on coming up with plans to enable the Govt raise revenue in order for these guys to bow out gracefully.

I hope that doesn't come accross as pro pro but more of a reasoned reply. Beach fishing is probably my favourite pastime and I hope it stays that way for 50 years.

PS the rod is proving it's wait in gold. I'm thinking of large Straddie greenback on 500ms of 6kilo just to give it a good run through.

Bugman

[banshee]

About seven or eight years ago I was driving up the beach at Lennox looking for a good gutter when I came across a group of commercial fishermen working on their catch,they had a pile of mullet probably five to six cubic metres and a backhoe,they were simply taking the roe and disposing of the fish in a hole.These blokes were not breaking any laws but is what they were doing right? Likewise when I was a kid I worked on a trawler for a while,each night we threw back a lot of large sole and bream amongst other things,when I asked the skiper why he didn't take the fish in he simply answered that he was only licensed to take prawns.Who knows what the right solution is,but if we don't get it right soon we might find ourselves confined to fishing stocked impoundments for a hefty fee and being denied access to any wild stocks.