Ozzybass

You budding bass fishos might want to consider fishing Bass Sydney's Hawkesbury-Nepean Bass Catch next weekend Feb 18 & 19th. This is NOT a comp! Info - The second H-N Bass Catch of the season is coming up again over the weekend of Feb 18 & 19. As always, anyone who wants to fish for bass, provide info to NSW Fisheries and get together with a bunch of friendly, environmentally-conscious bass fishos is asked to register via our website (www.basssydney.com) or you could try going direct via this link to the BassCatch registration form: http://basssydney.com/basscatch/index.php After you've registered, you will be contacted by our Bass Catch Officer with more details. During the registration process, you will be asked if you want to camp with us at our (free) campsite and if so, which nights (Fri 17th &/or Sat 18th). Bass Catch newbies will be required to attend a briefing either at our club meeting at Northmead Bowling Club on next Tuesday night, 14/2/17 or at the campsite during the weekend. Our food is OK, plentiful and cheap - you don't even have to cook after a day's fishing! Raffle prizes galore, the Port Appreciation Club, friendly folk... PM me if you want to ask anything.

The second H-N Bass Catch of the season is coming up again over the weekend of Feb 21 & 22. As always, anyone who wants to fish for bass, provide info to NSW Fisheries and get together with a bunch of friendly bass fishos is asked to register via our website. The link to the BassCatch page = http://www.basssydney.com/basscatch/index.php After you've registered, you will be contacted by our Bass Catch Officer (me!) with more details. During the registration process, you will be asked if you want to camp with us at our campsite and if so, which nights (Fri 20th &/or Sat 21st). Camping is pretty cheap @ $14/day. Bass Catch newbies will be required to attend a briefing either at our club meeting at Northmead Bowling Club on Tuesday night, 10/02/15 or at the campsite during the weekend. You can fish for as much or as little you want over the 48hrs. Our food is OK, plentiful and cheap - you don't even have to cook after a day's fishing! Raffle prizes galore, the Port Appreciation Club, casting targets, friendly folk... PM me if you want to ask anything.

This is my first post on this particular forum. I'm quite active on others, but I apologise that my first post on Fishraider is a political one and not a fishing story, but if you think the fishing has got better in the last few years because of the reduction in commercial fishing in many areas, including where most of us fish (estuaries), you should make your voice heard ASAP. I've put together (with the help of veteran recfishing advocates more qualified than me) a little "opinion piece" all of you might be interested in reading &/or using as you see fit: The so-called NSW commercial fishing "reforms" represent the greatest attack on recreational fishing resources and therefore recreational fishers and the billion-dollar industry we support, since commercial fishing began in the State. These "reforms", a government sop to the political anti-rec fishing lobbying of the commercial fishing industry, including small-time, inefficient and largely subsistence licence-holders, wind back the fisheries resources' conservation and protection initiatives hard won by recreational fishers during the past 40 years (read as: Minister Hodkinson’s National Party electorates). And all this from a government which only recently announced the results of a State-wide survey which showed recreational fishing in NSW to be far more valuable economically - in dollar and socio-economic returns to the State - than the commercial fishing industry. (A result, incidentally, entirely consistent with the results of recreational fishing surveys conducted by other States and nationally in the past 30 years.) Survey link: http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/499302/UOW-statewide-economic-survey-final-report.pdf The main issue for the majority of recreational fishers because estuaries and inlets are where the majority fish, is the dramatic widening the free-for-all the "reforms" will give commercial fishers in netting the estuaries. Mesh nets are going to be permitted in a huge number of new locations in NSW estuaries in which they are banned now, and the time in which commercial fishers can undertake the netting is being extended. The reason that there are currently widespread bans on netting in these estuaries/inlets/lower rivers is that their fish resources were netted to near extinction by commercial fishers in the past. Some have still not fully recovered and some are in reasonable shape following the imposition of bans years ago, but the planned "reforms" will take us back to the real dark ages and estuaries - the main spawning and nursery areas for most of our finfish species (including Australian Bass) - will once again be denuded by the commercials. Not only is a wholesale expansion of estuary netting planned but there is no provision for the prevention or limiting of bycatch in the government's proposals. Nor is there any mention of new and extra funding for the number of Fisheries Officers which are going to be essential to ensure commercial fishers abide by the fisheries laws and regulations, particularly in the very sensitive estuaries/inlets/lower rivers. Individual rec fishers and all recreational fishing clubs, associations and organisations in NSW must loudly voice their outright opposition to the proposed commercial fishing "reforms" and especially concentrate on the "reforms" proposed for the estuaries/inlets/lower rivers. This opposition can be expressed in a number of ways, but could start with an urgent letter of opposition to the Ministerial Fisheries Advisory Council (MFAC) rec fishing member and Fishing World editor, Jim Harnwell, asking him to inform the Minister immediately about your concerns and your strong opposition to the commercial industry "reforms". You could also make strong and immediate representations by letter and in person to all local State Members of Parliament and keep voicing your opposition to those local MP’s as the issue develops. Finally, you should ask every rec-fishing related and natural resource-related organisation or entity with which you have an affiliation or association, to take up the cudgels immediately and start telling the government in no uncertain terms that its proposed commercial fishing "reforms" are unacceptable - for fisheries resource, fisheries habitat and estuary ecosystem sustainability reasons, as well as for economic reasons. (Always remember, the government, by its own survey, knows that the recreational fishing industry is more valuable socio-economically than the commercial fishing industry and that the recreational fishing industry is entirely dependent on the maintenance of healthy natural resources and habitats in the estuaries.) You should also record your opposition in a strong but carefully, constructively worded letter to the NSW Fisheries Minister and encourage all your fishing associates to do the same. Letters to the editors of all suburban newspapers in your catchment, warning of the dangers to valuable local fisheries and natural resources should the "reforms" proceed, would also alert the wider public to what they stand to lose if the government and commercial fishers have their way. Do it soon!