Fishing Victoria Forum

barra mick wrote:

DougieK wrote:

barra mick wrote:I worry abt two things

Water temp drop and not catch and release.

1600 isnt many fish for state.

There were talks about 12-15,000 at one stage weren't there?

could it sustain that many barra dougie???

I have no idea. I'm sure i read that figure somewhere, might have been pre election and wasn't necessarily from an official source.

15k was what was promised, the 1600 are still a test. i'd say the rest will start going in in about 6 months

From the time it was mentioned they would stock Barra in Hazelwood I was sceptical they would survive. I will be interested in Broomy's thoughts too, cheers davo

I don't see how they wouldn't survive provided the power station still runs. However if be interested to see what kind of predators lurk within the pondage already. You can't tell me there's such an abundance of small fish without something that has been released.

There have been rumours there's been fish in the fenced off area for the last little while as a test to see if they'd survive or not prior to the major stocking

Rumour has it their have been penned fish in there for a little while, making sure that the whole idea wasn't going to be one enormous flop.

Probably a good move, and probably a good thing they kept it quiet or there would've been a small army of fishermen trying to sneak in every night and catch them.

I can't see any problem with the barra surviving in Hazlewood - if it stays above 16 celcius there wont be any issue. The fact that the cichlids survive supports that. There are farm dams on the Atherton Tableland which get into the teens in winter and the barra survive.

I think I read somewhere that Hazlewood stays above 22 celcius. In that case they will defintely survive but they might not grow as fast as everyone expects. The optimum temperature for barra growth is around 30 degrees.

The area of the pondage is about 300 hectares so divide that into 15,000 fish and you get 50 fish per hectare. The target stocking rate of fingerling barra into Tinaroo each year is 100 fingerlings per hectare each year though this is generally not obtained and is closer to 20.

The barra I saw on the news the other night were not fingerlings but were over a foot long. At that size 50 fish per hectare would be a very high stocking rate. Perhaps they will eventually revert to stocking fingerlings, which will be a lot cheaper, or they really want to have a high impact on the Tilapia. That might also expect a high angler impact.

Anyhow, I'm pretty confident that they will survive.

Best Wishes

Truedogz

Brett wrote:Rumour has it their have been penned fish in there for a little while, making sure that the whole idea wasn't going to be one enormous flop.

that was the rumour.

also that there was a death rate of fish in there test, hence only atocking 1600.

At least the goverment is giving it a crack.

bm

barra mick wrote: At least the goverment is giving it a crack.

bm

The last 18 months they've finally figured out how many Rec fisho's there are. I really like this kind of initiative. Someone in power seems to be at least vaguely in touch.

DougieK wrote:

poodoo wrote:

Broomstick wrote:My lab does a fair bit of research at Hazelwood and has just gotten funding to start a project on the barramundi, which is super cool. The project will look at interactions between the barra and the most common fish at hazelwood, the red devil (Amphilophus labiatus). Red devils occur in two morphs - a gold and a brown morph. My lab has done a fair bit of research looking at these different morphs (eg: the relative abundance of each morph, how they differ in diet and habitat use, how their behaviour differs, etc) and comparing it to that of native red devil populations in Central America. Anyway, this new project will look at how the introduction of a top level predator will influence the relative abundance of these morphs, and how it will alter their behaviour, habitat use etc, which, from a fishing point of view, will give some really good insights into what the barra are feeding on and where (eg: are they feeding on gold or brown morphs). But yeah it will be a couple of years before we see some meaningful results (assuming the barra survive).

Hey Broomie whats your view on the liklihood of the barra surviving in those water conditions?

I'm very interested to hear your thoughts on this and also on the stocking of Mulloway into the East Gippsland estuary systems.

I think they'll do really well. The water quality there is good (pH, dissolved oxygen, heavy metal concentrations, agricultural contaminations, etc) and there will be so much food for them.The water temperature in the pondage varies quite a bit (20-35 degrees), so I think that might dictate where the barra spend most of their time. There aren't any large piscivorous predators in their either so even the smallest stocked barra shouldn't get preyed upon. You can read the full risk assessment of the stocking (conducted by fisheries) here:

http://www.frdc.com.au/research/Final_R ... 04-DLD.pdf

As for the mulloway in Gippy, they will do fine if they can avoid the big flatties and tailor until they get a little bigger (there are already good populations of mulloway in Tyers and Tamboon - this initiative is just aimed at replenishing stocks). It would be nice to see them released a little bigger, but I guess that probably isn't feasible.