GONE FISHING
Craig Harris
THIS week is a bit of a bitter sweet column, the bitter part is that people, and these are local people, are still fishing (if you can call it that) illegally with set lines.
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Unfortunately for you, me and our kids, harvesting fish using set lines is still a fairly common occurrence.
You can travel in any river, impoundment or water way and you can still see set lines.
Some are hidden or have tried to be hidden and some are just in plain sight. I don’t understand the mentality of these people who think it is their right to take what they like, when they like or how they like when it is against the law.
The laws are not put there to stop people having fun – if you can call it fun when picking up an exhausted or dead fish from a set line – they are put in place after extensive studies by people in the now on how to minimise the impact of humans on depleting numbers of fish, I suppose it is akin to the low life thieves who think in exactly the same manner.
The sweet part is the following, a snippet from the court report –
“TWO Albury fisheries officers kept a Wagga man under surveillance with the assistance of a night viewing device before apprehending him for contravening fishing regulations last year, a court heard yesterday. The officers had received a tip off from the public and went to Beaver’s Creek near the Murrumbidgee River on May 19, about 22 kilometres west of Wagga. Between 8.30pm and 9.15pm they found unattended set lines on conduit poles which had been painted black. Fifteen of the lines had two hooks and the lines were baited with live carp. When an officer asked the man why he had so many illegal set lines, he responded: “No excuse. I like eating fish.” The man was due to appear in Albury Local Court yesterday on charges of leaving lines unattended, using more than two hand-held lines, using live fish as bait and possessing fish illegally taken. The man did not attend court, but pleaded guilty to the offences in a letter. The Wagga man is more than $4000 out of pocket after magistrate Tony Murray imposed fines totalling $2900 and awarded costs of $1130. The maximum fine for each of the four charges was $22,000.”
After taking to Fisheries Officers about this sort of activity and about what we (you and I) should do if we come across this type of activity or lines that have been set, officers said that take the vessel’s registration number, do NOT approach the people, do NOT remove the set lines as they could already be under surveillance and if you do remove the lines and are caught with them in your boat you could be charged with having illegal lines in possession.
Call Fisheries on 1800 043 536 and inform them of all the information that you have.
Fishing around
- Burrinjuck is still a little quiet with only a few small cod reported mainly trolling hard bodies and spinner baits around the edges, bait – scrubbies and yabbies have also accounted for a couple. Yellas are being caught on bait in amongst the structure, reddies are still on holidays and carp are a plenty.
- Blowering is pretty much the same as the Juck with the addition of a couple of extra reddies.
- Talbingo has numbers of small to medium reddies being caught with the odd large fish below or skirting the outside of the schools, once again finding the schools closer to the bottom is a better chance of catching a feed.
- Tantangara is still dropping making fishing harder with the shallow water, even the weaver’s of the wand are finding it difficult.
- Eucumbene is not bad; you do have to work for them with the water towards seven gates a lot cleaner than that around the Portal (lots of water coming from Tantangara around here making it fairly dirty and harder to fish). Some nice Rainbows around the top end on hard bodies, stuckies being the standout lure at the moment.
- Jindabyne is still good when you can get out of the wind, Rainbows outnumbering the Browns at the moment (a couple of months ago there were concerns on the “depleting” numbers of Rainbows) and the Atlantic salmon should be moving in the not too distant future.
- Hume weir has been a bit slow whilst just down the road at Dartmouth it is fishing pretty well. Good numbers of trout being caught with the odd Macquarie Perch in the pinch. The Mitta is fishing fantastic and would be a spectacular site with the changing of the seasons.
- Mulwala is getting better although you have to travel a bit to locate the fish, trolling hard bodies and casting Spinnerbaits is the most productive, baits are not accounting for a lot of fish.
- The river is fishing pretty good and is a great place to take the family for a weekend or a couple of days over the school holidays, cod, trout cod, yellas and carp are being caught with most reports past Currawarna towards Narrandera.
- The South Coast the beakies have moved on further south, down past Eden and the kingies aren’t as prevalent but the kingies that are around are good sized ones – just have to find them, plenty of Salmon and Tailer in the surf and bream and flatties in the estuaries. The leather jackets are about in numbers around the six mile so take plenty of terminal tackle and be prepared to tie some knots.
Water levels
- Eucumbene 50.8
- Hume weir 26.8
- Blowering 28
- Burrinjuck 23.2
- Jindabyne 65.2
- Tantangara 10
- Talbingo 81.9
- Mulwala 95.2
- Dartmouth 78.1
- Levels are in per cent
Send your pictures to – craig@waggamarine.com.au or 0419 493 313
