Slimey Mackeral

[Yeeros]

Does anybody know if there have been any slimey mackeral off the rocks in big numbers around Wollongong / Kiama in the last few days?

If not has anybody got them off Sydney?

Really after any reports of them in big numbers in close

[mark10187]

Does anybody know if there have been any slimey mackeral off the rocks in big numbers around Wollongong / Kiama in the last few days?

If not has anybody got them off Sydney?

Really after any reports of them in big numbers in close

Hey mate,

We caught about 30 or so off belambi near the pool rocks burleyed with bread and pilchards mashed together with tuna oil and picked up the occasional yellowtail in with the lot and this was last friday early morning

[Yeeros]

Hey mate,

We caught about 30 or so off belambi near the pool rocks burleyed with bread and pilchards mashed together with tuna oil and picked up the occasional yellowtail in with the lot and this was last friday early morning

cheers mate

Just trying to track the bait

[Yeeros]

theres heaps out there got some about 30cms long the other day and downrigged it but no hits

the bloody trawlers are out of the hacking and cleaning out some schools ...

so get some while you can...

Don't worry about the traulers mate, they take a bit but there are a few slimies out there. Worry about the government allowing this to happen again!

No wonder the 2009 LBG and from what i heard game fishing season was bad, with this happenning and 1700 marlin being taken in one day by a single longliner (by catch) I wonder how long it will be before we have no game fishing in NSW.

Here's the report that i dug up, its from 2008 but holds relevence.

"While you could hear the cheers echo out across our waterways in 2004 after the banning from Australian waters of the Veronica, a 106-metre super trawler with the ability to catch the equivalent of three jumbo jets of fish with every scoop of its nets, there’s been little condemnation – till now – of a super seiner from New Zealand fishing big time out of Eden on a farcical trial basis.

The purse seiner Captain MJ Souza, a 68-metre vessel with huge fish-taking capacity, was operating on a three to five week trial basis starting in January and running till February 28. The ship is operating under a special licence granted by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) and, for legal reasons, the ship has been declared an Australian fishing vessel.

Yet its history fishing in the Pacific is well known. In the last year, the purse seiner has fished in New Zealand waters and in the west and central Pacific, hammering each area for six months at a time.

Here, the ship has an east and west skipjack tuna licence and a leased quota for commercial by-catch including yellowfin tuna and non-commercial by-catch such as slimy mackerel, that critical baitfish which forms the cornerstone of the marine food chain. But the really sad thing is that these fish are being caught for nothing more than fishfood for the Southern bluefin tuna farms in South Australia. In other words, the waters off NSW are being ravaged for the benefit of Croweaters (and the owners of the super seiner). And, ironically, these are the very tuna fished to the brink of collapse by past purse seiners.

Won’t they ever learn? How serious is the fishing operation? Very. The Captain SJ Souza has a 1,000 tonne capacity and, according to one reliable source, caught 37 tonnes of fish in one recent night’s fishing. Whether slimies or skipjack, that’s an awful lot of bait to remove from the foodchain.

Like a cannon ball blast through the mainsail.

Captain MJ Souza employs specialist fish spotters, who fly in the ship’s own helicopter and a chartered light plane. The ship’s captain also engages ocean-current experts to tell him where to deploy the huge nets.

But this isn’t the first time large-scale fishing has occurred off Eden. The port has a history of boom and bust ever since the Department of Primary Industries agreed in 1951 to invite the Senibua, an American vessel previously fishing in Fiji (more ravaged waters) to demonstrate how to pole fish. With a seaplane on deck, the ship could catch 40 tonnes of tuna in a day.

Indeed, Eden’s once healthy professional fishing fleet has been reduced to dregs due to the collapse of its Southern bluefin tuna fishery. I quote from Down to the Sea, the true saga of an Australia fishing dynasty (the Warren family) by John Little, a must-have book in your armchair fishing library:

“It was like the Battle of Britain up there [flying spotter planes in the late 1960s off Eden]. The planes used radios with scrambled frequencies to confuse their rivals. For the three to four months of the tuna season the boats on Eden wharf were six deep.

“Perhaps the fish would have survived still if it wasn’t for the advent of an even more efficient means of slaughter. Purse seining … unlike pole boats, they don’t just take part of the school they take it all.”

So here we are, back in Eden, looking as though history will repeat itself. I quote from a press release buried at the bottom of an AFMA newsletter from January 2008:

“It is hoped that the trial will demonstrate the unique position Eden holds at the centre of the skipjack tuna fishery (east) and this will in turn encourage greater commercial activity in Eden.”

The super seiner Captain MJ Souza is owned by Tally’s Group Limited, one of New Zealand’s biggest seafood producers, whose Port Nelson facility includes a 4,500 tonne coolstore, a 900,000 litre fuel bunker and 80 tonne ice holding. The company has spent four years negotiating to expand into foreign fisheries such as those in Australian waters.

But why the ship is fishing on a trial basis is anyone’s guess. From all accounts there’s nothing hit and miss about it. Nor is there any doubt about anglers’ sentiments about operations that target baitfish – the key to our sport and game fisheries – on such a massive and murderous scale. "