One Last Time

[Nude up]

One of the best reports I have read on this site great story great fishing and educational as well love your work

[ecoronad]

Great report and write up Truedogz. Are you sure those photos weren't taken 40 years ago and you just had them digitally altered/coloured?

I still can't believe your success with artificials on maccas. You've certainly opened my eyes to the viability of maccas as a possible rec angling species. I've always been led to believe that like the river blackfish, they are more suitable to bait fishing methods. It's been about 15 years since I've been to similar territory - using my fly rod targeting the trout and not realising the existence of maccas in the same type of pools. That's why when I read about the Ovens river receiving the stocking of Maccas it did, I thought it was more for conservation purposes (using recreational angling funds) rather than for anglers in general.

I love my trout/fly fishing, but once they sort out a reliable and cost efficient breeding program for maccas, how great would it be to have the delatite or the Howqua as a dedicated macca waterway. They've done it for trout cod in Lake Sambell and Lake Kerford. They've also removed the closed season for murray cod at Lake Eildon. Estuary perch and bass are just starting to take off, so who knows what could be next?

[Tackleberry]

truly amazing rightup Truedogz and you have some very nice old gear and I love the old Mitchell spinners .

you are dragging up some old memory's of my fathers old fishing gear , gee I wish he had of kept it .

my cousin used to keep hundreds of maccas in one of his dams they grow a lot slower than the trout do .

and yes they were great fun to catch even if they were in a dam .


cheers TAC

[Cornacarpio]

Old School Cool!

[Truedogz]

Econorad

Many of the pictures could have been taken 40 years ago - but the carbon fibre flyrod proves otherwise! The rod and line are modern but the reel is a fairly large and old Hardy salmon reel.

As I indicated, Macquarie perch have been stereotyped as really being a fish to be targetted with baits. Totally wrong. They have their own quirks and once you understand them they are easy to catch on artificials.

Without going into detail, they often have defined feeding cycles in daylight that you could run a clock off. When using spinners a stop/start sink and draw retrieve method is necessary as they don't 'bite' like a cod but suck their food in. Certain types of lure actions they love, others they are usually not interested in. Maccas are not aggressive but are inquisitive and intelligent. If a lure or fly stops they will study it but if it suddenly moves they will pounce. Brown trout can be fussy with lures and the same effort in creating subtle lure actions for them needs to be applied when targetting Macquarie perch. They have superb night vision - so you can lure fish in the dim light at dusk and at night exactly the same way you would fish during the day. During twilight and into the night they become easy to catch on lures - look at the pic of the fish with the Plucky in its mouth - that would have been after 10 with no moon.

Macquarie perch love nymph type flies - you can't go past bead head nymphs. In small streams they will feed at the surface when the hoppers and crickets are around. One young bloke I knew some years ago caught nearly all of his maccas on flies - and he caught fish most trips.

I have in the past caught Macquarie perch in the Yarra on flies and lures. It is tougher in discoloured water but it still works.

If you can get a copy of A Guide to Trout Angling by Roger Hungerford published in the 1970s there is a whole chapter on fly fishing for Macquarie perch. It was written by Bryan Pratt up at Canberra. Forty years ago people would not have really entertained that you could catch cod and golden perch with artificials the way we do today. It took people like Pratt, Harrison and Winter to develop and popularise the methods we all enjoy today.

Tackleberry

I'd be surprised that the dam actually had Macquarie perch as they have never been available for stocking private dams - unless the fish were caught from the wild and placed there. They might have been silver perch, which have forked tails whereas maccas have rounded tails. Here is a pic of silver perch:

Silver perch.JPG (218.85 KiB) Viewed 1400 times

Maccas can grow quite fast - when Dartmouth was first filling some fish were getting up about a kg in two years, certainly at three years. Two kg is a big macca and 4 kg is the upper limit.

Best Wishes

Truedogz

[smokin_reels]

Awesome Article Will.
This year the river ran a little too high and the timing was wrong and the NFA netting resulted in primarily male captures.
I helped Tim Curmi out during the second phase of the netting and was really happy when one of the nets that I checked had 5-6 Little Maccas in it .
They were all males however. We are in a better position for 2017 as compared to 2016.
We at NFA shall continue to work towards making glimpses of your childhood a reality for future generations . It is sad to see a native fish species suffer into decline .

A more educated angling fraternity with an open mind will ensure that even if there is nothing else , there is hope for the future.

Your writing is as passionate as your presentations , I sincerely hope every suffering native fish species across the world was lucky enough to have a someone of your stature be their voice to fight a tough battle. That is a cause for all of us to aspire towards.

[Truedogz]

Thanks mate.

NFA have put in a massive effort over the years for native fish such as Macquarie perch and trout cod.

The way they have been treated by some people in government is a disgrace. They for many years were the voice for trout cod in the community, putting on displays at boat shows, public meetings, lobbying for funding, getting areas set aside for natives through stream classification. It is the only organisation, apart from a government agency, to have produced trout cod and Macquarie perch for stocking. A few years back a group of scientists wrote that unlike Murray cod and Mary River cod, trout cod lack champions in the community. Doesn't NFA count as a champion, the work of dozens of people over nearly 40 years? What about Rod Harrison and his promotion of trout cod decades ago? He discovered the population in Cataract Dam. Your a champion only if you are in the inner circle of the radical greens.

I am going to be direct and to the point.

The biggest issue is some people at DELWP - not all but some. How they behaved over trout cod has very much trashed co-operation, absolute disgrace. Use our money and goodwill when they need it but work against us when they have got what they want. I know Tim challenged them at a meeting - they bluntly stated what was agreed to in the past they don't have to do now. NFA wrote a number of proposals on developing recreational fisheries for trout cod, the last one being for the Goulburn at Trawool. Apparently Tim was told by some people that they had never seen them - even though they had been widely circulated by email.

Trout cod are no longer endangered but we will never have fisheries for them ever again in rivers, that has been made clear. This seems to be the fate sadly for Macquarie perch - we are lucky to have the Yarra, probably because they are not native to it. In fact, one bloke in government told me he fought hard to keep them available to anglers in the Yarra as once a fish becomes totally protected anglers will never get them back. A little while ago I told someone in a government agency that I can't see widespread recovery of Macquarie perch without funding from anglers. Their response that if anglers won't pay for it then they will use crowd funding through facebook!

Keep up the good work mate.

Truedogz

[rb85]

Truedogz congratulations on a great session thanks for sharing. More so thanks for your passion when it comes to such a species. It's amazing how a fishing community can be vocal about certain issues but deathly quiet about the protection and growth of iconic native fish.

It would be heartwarming if the same resources were put into Macquarie perch and the like as has been put into Hazelwood Barra. That wouldn't make a quick few dollars for some though.

Thanks again for sharing and providing an insight into what's happening.

[Tackleberry]

Tackleberry

I'd be surprised that the dam actually had Macquarie perch as they have never been available for stocking private dams - unless the fish were caught from the wild and placed there. They might have been silver perch, which have forked tails whereas maccas have rounded tails. Here is a pic of silver perch:

Silver perch.JPG

Maccas can grow quite fast - when Dartmouth was first filling some fish were getting up about a kg in two years, certainly at three years. Two kg is a big macca and 4 kg is the upper limit.

Best Wishes

Truedogz

come to think of it they look a lot more like them as not as dark and a bit less dent in the forehead .

[deathray]

Thanks for another incredibly informative report TD. I do however think there's a difference between animal rights extremists and true greenies. A true greenie would like to see a return to the native glory days you described (and possibly exterminate trout).