Fishing Reports

Fish Movements

For one reason or another we didn’t manage to get away for the march moon, then after telling the boss, (who had concerns for the second cyclone in the coral sea), that, “nah, it will follow the first one in land” but instead, it decided to come straight down into the Tasman.  Well, it made a fool of me! Anyway, we waited for it to go and then, made the dash.

The fishing at the wanganella banks was excellent, 55 for the 5 days we fished. Our fish tally’s were as follows, 11, 8, 16, 14, 6.  We had great weather and got our satellite tags out into fish.  On the satellite topic, this trip, as with other trips this year, we have learnt some very interesting things about our friends the striped marlin.  One is that, if handled correctly, striped marlin do not die from the result of being caught recreationally.  Basically I saw what I thought was a dead fish revived and the sat tag data continues to transmit information on the where abouts of this fish.  This fish was caught on another boat, transferred, tagged and placed back in the water and swum beside the boat.  It was then released but swam erratically and eventually was colorless and motionless in the water by the time we got to it.  We then towed it some more, this time from some distance behind the boat until it swam off.  The fish then swam 90 nautical miles in 48hrs.  I thought it was a miracle.  But, we learnt just how robust these fish are.

The other point I will raise is that the fish we caught at the wanganellas were all very small, very small! The first few days the fish all came from the same mold, the 60 to 70kg one. Then we saw a few larger ones and got really excited, but these fish, once boat side were really only around the 80kg mark……Where had all the monster stripeys gone?  We did see some bigger ones, but I didn’t think we caught one over 110kg.  Is this a show of the times, ie are fish stocks so drastically low, resulting in fish not being able to reach full maturity before they are commercially caught?  Or is this just another cycle we havnt learnt about?  I would like to think it is the later of the two, and well, it just might be.   So who is to blame?? One thing is for sure it definitely is not the recreational fishers. 

The commercial take of striped marlin out side our EEZ probably needs some urgent attention, perhaps the Australians should pull there fingers out and knock the commercial take of striped marlin on the head.  They have their long range vessels and their coastal boats doing the damage.  I have talked with Ozzy boats fishing the wanganellas, and from what I can make out, they have been fishing there for about 6 years, and they are only there for the March and April moons. They are also more interested in the sword fish, remarking that, “swords make better weight”.  However, this doesn’t mean that they don’t take a heap of stripe marlin.   I also caught wind of a rumour that the NZ fish mongers wanted stipeys bought back whole, and I am guessing, because of the weight of the head and tail, the price the boats were getting was only .90 cents per kilo.  So this is a good thing, resulting in a couple of boats not bothering with the marlin, as it took up too much freezer room.  So basically it is not just our fishery, it’s the South Pacific fishery that we need to protect, and it’s the governments and fishery advisors that need to change the laws.  The commercial guys are just doing their jobs after all.

One thing is for sure, and that is that we can’t sit back and let it all happen in front of us.  If we want to continue to fish for marlin and other fish, we must stand up and put all the pressure we can on the companies and governing bodies.  We have to put in front of them the hard facts, regarding economic windfall from the result of recreational fishing, recreational fishing for marlin is sustainable and that striped marlin do not die after being caught recreationally.  These three issues have been vigorously debated in the past, however I don’t believe there is any evidence suggesting these statements are false. 

I have thought long and hard on whether I should talk about the fishing up at the wanganella, on our website not to mention publishing articles and producing dvds.  Also some of you may ask why I am putting up the results and movements of our tagged fish? “Surely, now it will only fall into the hands of commercial fishers!!”  Well, firstly this information is available to any one and is eventually published anyway, secondly, if this information is not shared with recreational fishers, then, how do we as a body benefit from it? And why would we want to support it?  However there is no point doing the research, if we are not going to use the results to protect our fishery.  We must present results from the research to the public to gather support, and to conduct this research, we must then support the people who do the research.

Many Thanks goes to John Holdsworth, Tim (the sepo) and Pete Saul of Blue Water Marine Research for their tireless efforts and to Enterprise Motor Warehouse for their generous donations.

Click here to view images of the tracks (2mb PDF)

Good fishing. Tom