Last week I wrote about yellow belly fishing and this week is going to be the same but for a different reason.
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I had good mate and fisherman extraordinaire Jamin Forbes come into work and naturally the talk got straight to fishing.
Forbsy was saying that he was on Lake Albert skiing with his family on Sunday and noticed quite a few fish floating and they weren’t sunbaking.
Unfortunately, nearly all of these fish were small to medium yellas. Now the past couple of months the lake has been fishing the best it has in ages and its fantastic to see families sitting beside the water wetting a line, what we have to do is show a little bit of respect to the fish that we catch when releasing them.
Yes, the majority of people are practising catch and release which is great to see, but if we release them haphazardly there will still be a high mortality rate so here are a couple of tips to assist the released fish to increase their chances of survival.
- When bait fishing, circle hooks decrease the chances of gut hooking or gill hooking a fish, these hooks are designed to catch the fish in the side of the mouth making releasing the fish relatively simple with the highest chance of survival.
- If you are using the “J” style hooks and you do gut or gill hook a fish, don’t try and remove the hook as this will just slowly kill the fish, yes it may swim off making you feel all warm and fuzzy, but the fish will die. If you do hook a fish like this and want to release it, cut the line as short as possible and release the fish, I am not saying that there is a 100 per cent chance of its survival, more like a 50/50 chance, but it is better than having its gut or gills damaged. If you hook a legal fish like this, you may as well keep it and have a feed cos as I said, it’s a 50/50 chance of survival.
- When handling fish make sure your hands, cloth, gloves, etc are wet, all fish have a coating of slime on their skin and the removal of this slime increases the chances of disease so the least amount of handling is the best method. Dry hands or a dry cloth immediately removes the slime.
- Holding a fish up by the fishing line with the hook inside it will kill the fish as well no matter what size it is and the bigger the fish the worse it is, all the weight of the fish is held by the hook and something obviously will give. The best way to handle a fish is to cradle it with the fish’s stomach along your arm the same way you hold a young child.
I am by no means saying not to go fishing because any fish you catch will not make it, I am saying a little care taken when fishing, catching and releasing will aid in the fish’s recovery hopefully allowing the fish to recover and then make more little fishies and then be caught and released again.
Fishing around
Burrinjuck
Some very good reports of nice yellow bellies on the troll even to the extent of bagging out within the hour and it just happens to be a long weekend.
Blowering
A few reports coming in on some half decent yellas and a few reddies – me thinks a trip next weekend might be the go.
Talbingo
A couple of trout down towards Sue City and some decent reddies among the timber.
Tantangara
A few trout on the troll flat lining tassies, mainly yellow wings, a couple on small shallow diving hard bodies as well.
Eucumbene
Still good reports from here with some good sizes p o the60cm mark, stuckies have been the best lure this week.
Jindabyne
Good reports on bait, not many on lures.
Hume Weir
Still good numbers of big yellow bellies on hard bodies like the McGrath lure, some good reports on the OARGEE plow as well – well worth a trip.
Mulwala
No reports.
Water levels
Eucumbene 52.8%
Hume 49.7%
Blowering 49.2%
Burrinjuck 74.9%
Jindabyne 64.9%
Tantangara 25.1%
Talbingo 87.9%
Mulwala 94.7%
Dartmouth 60%
