Throughout these University holidays the weather has been pretty average for what I have wanted to do, which is get away to less fished places, so I have been restricted to fishing the Jetties and beaches in this gulf down to Cape Jervois way. What I see is very, very, very annoying and makes me angry and I think the authorities should act and be more present as soon as possible.

Fishing the warm water outlet up at Torrens Island is usually horrific experience for one. Every single day, I see countless undersize fish taken and sometimes bag limits exceeded well excessively of both legal and illegal fish by our northern friends who do not speak English (apparently). I seen a couple come down with a bucket they leave empty, with another bucket full of empty chip, cereal etc packets and fill these packets up with tiny bream and mullet and ST's then leave as soon as I questioned them. I see the walk back to the car trick almost every day. Anyways, I fished it 3 days in a row as my girlfirend lives up that way and then I noticed they were rocking up and not fishing off the rocks and with a little exploration they had ducked into clearings in mangroves and across near bridge to do exactly the same thing, take our resources illegally, and leaving enormous amounts of litter behind. To my understanding and why I toil away at University, this Port River System is very, very important to healthy ecosystem and Gulf and this blatant behaviour makes me feel sick.

Cape Jervois on a weekend night, again our neighbours from north occupied the whole jetty, leaving no room for anyone with at least 4 lines each pursuing squid and one for tommies, and in the spots where we caught them moving around and berleying, they followed, flicking floats on top of ours. Anger was contained, as usual. Thank God, they couldn't catch much, but if the squid were on, I would garunteed exceeding the bag limit would be happening.

Another thing, not so much a problem right now, but increasingly so in warmer months is crab nets on jetties and the taking of hundreds of undersize crabs a night. Its a farce. There are the people there who obey and get there 10 or 20 good ones and go home, but its those ever present groups of non-English speaking people that never obey the rules, using chicken, plenty of nets and small crabs.

Can we ban crab nets on the last 15 to 20 metres of a jetty? And limit people to 2 each, as it is nigh near impossible in the warmer months to fish jetties nowadays.

Also, just finally, a few things I think can happen.

Can we set bag limit for mullet at 15 or 20 and take away minimum size?

Can we set the bag limit for crabs at 20 per person as 40 is just ridiculous?

Can we set the bag limit for mulloway at 1, as these are a slow growing fish like snapper (even slower) and I honestly think at this point in time mulloway are on decline. (Something I wish to study further later on at university should opportunity present itself, although I am told in aquaculture terms the mulloway is not important)

Also, I think the bream fishing limits need addressing, you used to always get a few large ones near structure around the Port, marinas etc, these are becoming increasingly difficult to locate with most fish tiny to 25cm. I do think there is a core of catch and release with bream, thank God (I am one of them).

I also think that the size limit for Yellowfin Whiting could be increased to let them breed once more before being allowed to take. Plus who wants a 24 to 26cm fish?

Gidday mate I totaly agree with what you have written Fish watch is the answer keep the no in your phone and call them 1800 065 522.
do this often enough and the pirsa people will take notice of a hot spot.
the language problem is not a problem a photo tells a 1000 words in any language no interperater needed they normaly pack up move on when I do this.give the photo's to pirsa with the number plates of the vehicles this will help also .
cheers Mark

sadly it happens just on about every jetty and fishable place in south australia...
and not just by non english speaking people either.
the rules are simple, and there for a reason.
i agree with wedgetail, rego numbers, descrition of persons, etc etc...
fisheries just dont have the staffing levels to cover every spot, and to a degree rely on US to phone them and let them know whats happening.
sometimes all that needs to be done is a make believe phone call, and speaking loudly into your phone so they can hear and hopefully pack up and go.

I have called fisheries countless times, but alas. I hope they keep records. Our government needs to employ just 2 or 3 more for each peninsula.

Yeh, I made a broad generalization above and I know lots of demographics take undersize fish. For example, an Aussie family on holidays, sometimes catch 3 small fish and keep them, whereupon you go tell them and they gladly return and thank you for alerting them to this, as they are not regular fishos.

I am talking about people who the Australian government have deemed priveleged enough to live here, BLATANTLY disobeying and conceiving many different plans to actively break the laws, demonstrating no respect. They should be deported, god knows, if we go to their countries and get caught doing the wrong thing, we end up in jail or something bad.

and their jails dont have pool tables , internet, rec rooms, gyms etc


know the feeling

boondocksaints wrote:


Nothing wrong with current limits on bream in my opinion and to suggest that numbers are on the decline is nonsense in my view. Its just that they are harder to catch.

But I do agree that limits for other species, yellowfin included, could be reviewed.

Why is there nothing wrong with limits on bream if there are noticable differences over last few years of evident fewer numbers. I have not read anythiing of behavioural changes in bream populations to indicate the noticable changes.

I would love more feedback on my thoughts of possible reviews. Like I don't think the Kingfish needs stricter rules, in fact lighten them, as they are very difficult to catch, not heavily targetted compared to other species and are fast growing with very noticable increases in numbers every summer.

And why I suggested to remove the minimum length for mullet is to allow at least one species we can use legally for live bait apart from trumpeter, and I would be very happy with a limit of 10 to 20 rather than 60.

boondocksaints wrote:

Can you point me in the right direction to find a scientifically valid study which shows Bream numbers are on the decline?

While we are on this subject, I'd also be interested to see any local studies on all commercially targetted fish numbers in our state.

Wasn't a survey of some kind done recently, which provided raw data on species?

Ranger wrote:


Yep, id like to know also.

Loads of good bream the last few years in the Port....

Far out, I had a good reply and pressed wrong button lol.

There are extensive studies conducted on King George Whiting, Snapper, Kingfish, Tuna, Rock Lobster, Abalone, Oysters, Salmon as these fish species are very important to our economy. These studies lead to things like the Snapper closure in November, the change in the King George Whiting minimum legal length from 30 to 31 etc.

I read an interesting article the other day on decline of the Rock Lobster industry in the South East, and while I was over there at Easter I remember the locals complaining the pros had all their pots over the inshore grounds as the shelf had no lobster, these kind of reports lead to a review of an industry like this as there is much money involved.

I will try and find some peer reviewed articles and post them, I'd love to read more too.

I, personally, would love to study the Mulloway further, to understand its movements, breeding patterns and the impacts of removing big fish on stocks due to their slow growth rate. Mulloway however are not commercially viable to aquaculture and therefore there is not much money made available to study them and their importance, which begs the question, why are Snapper so important, when they grow even slower than Mulloway?

You can track these studies down on science and economics databases, and I would love to see some put up here too.

The MLSSA site is excellent, there is a special about the Western Blue Groper on there at the moment: www.mlssa.asn.au/issues.html

Here is a link to scientific journals regarding various aspects of marine life in South Australia

www.mlssa.asn.au/cgi-bin/Publications.cgi

Brilliant scientific article about Snapper in South Australia from 2003

digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/b...2083/1/09phm4789.pdf

boondocksaints wrote:



boondocksaints wrote:


boondocksaints wrote:


Dont see anything there about how the bream fishery is on the decline. I agree they are harder to catch, but IMHO it has more to do with them getting smarter as opposed to the numbers decreasing.

I may have read your response to kingfish wrong, but you surely couldnt be suggesting a loosing of restrictions there?

boondocksaints wrote:


Are you prepared to pay for the additional staff you seek?
Think hard about where the money for thes staff come from, think REAL hard. Unless you prepared to pay for the things you seek I'd forget it.

In my view there are far greater fish to fry, than the lowly scum who you refer to. I dont like it any better than u, but I'm pretty sure others with far greater at stake have a pretty good say into where the compliance $ are spent.

boondocksaints wrote:

Bream are also an important commercial catch in South Australia, but this is not what I asked.

You made mention earlier that there is a noticable decline in Bream numbers over the last few years.

Can you point me in the right direction to find a scientifically valid study which shows Bream numbers are on the decline, or is this just heresay based on your own opinion?

The Marine Life Society provides some interesting reading, but at the end of the day, aren't they a local conservation group rather than an association which collates raw and impartial statistical data?

I think the data I'm searching for may have been performed by SARDI or another research institution. I have searched "Fisheries Management and Ecology" as the most probable avenue to find this study, but have thus far been unsuccessful in my search.